Finance Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, Ojan is a 2nd generation Iranian American, born and raised in the Bay Area. His past work, from healthy land use to real estate development, informs his mission driven integration of social justice and real estate finance. Ojan lives in a co-op in Oakland and is also a landscape contractor and regenerative permaculture designer. While earning his B.A. in Economics from Pitzer College, Ojan was inducted into the Economic Honors Society and organized a local chapter of the Occupy movement.
Rebekah Papé
Rebekah works as the Director of Community and Outreach at Ecolibrium Farms and as the Executive Director of the Papé Family Foundation. She is also a writer, yoga teacher, and mother. She has an MA from in Whole Systems Design, specializing in Sustainable Food Systems, Permaculture Design, and Sustainable Change. Rebekah is passionate about exploring wellness, community, and social change through our connection to food and participating in social justice efforts that shift patterns of inequality by focusing on food access and affordability. Near and dear to her heart are the rituals of gathering, preparing, and eating food together.
Brandon Harrell
An urban planning and software product management consultant turned full time diversity, equity and inclusion advocate who digests permaculture systems design on nights and weekends :)
Annie Zeng
I am currently working in scientific and engineering R&D within the field of CO2 utilization (www.opus-12.com). Very interested in learning more about socio-cultural and economic systems which affect richness of life and the ability to thrive for all.
Doningnon Soro
Doni Soro is CEO/Founder of Unsounded African Minds, a strategic advisory and consulting firm supporting organizations and communities implementation of cultural, diversity and programs.
Amelia Ahl
Amelia is honing her expertise in understanding and investing in the human component of supply chains as a good business practice. Her experience includes research and advocacy for protection of women and children refugees at UNHCR, managing development projects in India with women as the central agents of change at Traditional Medicinals Foundation, and for profit supply chain engagement strategy development at Traditional Medicinals.
Faith Gilbert
Faith is a farmer, educator and initiator of collaborative projects in the food system.
Matthew Rose-Stark
Matthew Rose-Stark is a first generation regenerative farmer, currently working as a manager at Be Love Farm. He is passionate about addressing issues of justice, equality, deep ecology, through changing the way we relate to food and land. He is currently working to develop a cooperatively owned and managed farm grounded in a new economy and culture that heals, helps, and holds all life.
Charlotte X. C. Sullivan
Charlotte X.C. Sullivan works as the Social Entrepreneurship Program Associate at Middlebury College. She is the co-founder of May West, a design studio and material research laboratory specializing in milkweed-based textile innovation. She serves on the Board of Directors at Cabin-Time, a roaming artist residency program to remote places. Previously, she co-founded the Frontier Fellowship with Epicenter, a rural design resource center in Green River, Utah. For several years she worked at Queens County Farm, the longest continuously operated farm in the state of New York on the largest tract of undisturbed farm land left in New York City.
John Mathai
I love operating in/at intersections, and think climate change bring a tremendous amount of differing fields/viewpoints together to try and achieve a common goal. Additionally, I’m an avid reader and love stumbling across new, interesting things to read so please share resources/influential reads.
Keren Reichler
Keren was born in Israel, grew up in Chicago, and resides in Berkeley, California. She currently works at Certified Employee-Owned as the Director of Membership, working to increase visibility and support for employee-owned businesses.
Prior to her current role, Keren spent several years working at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and social and economic justice. She helped to found a community garden and a garden-based education program while studying at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and more recently, Keren served as Program Manager at the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, CA.
Among other interests and curiosities, Keren loves all things food, farming, feminism, and fermentation.
Find Keren on LinkedIn.
Joseph Rousu
Joseph Rousu is the founder and Chief Operations Officer of Ogema Organics. He is a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and resident of the White Earth Reservation. He is the youngest of six siblings and was raised off of the land. From an early age, values of sustainable resource management have been instilled through seasons of traditional harvests: maple sugar production, wild rice harvests, fishing and trapping.
Christina Jean-Louis
M.A. International Affairs, B.A Advertising/PR & Business Administration
Christina Jean-Louis is an entrepreneur, artist and expert in international development with over a decade of experience. She holds degrees in Advertising & PR, Business and International Development. She co-founded Eucalyptus Village, a real estate development venture which is also home to an award-winning auberge– Eucalyptus Guesthouse and community of homes located minutes from the international airport. She recently moved back to Haiti to do what she loves most: create jobs, channel creativity, and partner with those around her as they seek to maximize their potential. She currently serves an International Development, Communications & Business Consultant to a number of organizations across the country and oversees the operations of Eucalyptus Village. At her core, she works to ensure that all peoples have the freedoms to lead fulfilling lives with dignity.
Bridget Guiza
Bridget Guiza is the co-manager of Ogema Organics. She is from California and is of Mexican heritage. She was raised on the principle that food is medicine and strives to understand the intricate relationships between food, agriculture, sovereignty, and climate and environmental justice. Bridget Guiza is a scientist and planner by training. Her academic and personal interests are at the intersection of regenerative agriculture, public health, traditional ecological knowledge, and the adaptation of science and policy for tribal, local and regional planning. Her research interests include microbiology, geochemistry, agricultural restoration and plant biology, and climate change science & impacts. Bridget also served as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Northfield, Minnesota where she worked on a local food systems model in 2014.
Amy Short
Alchemical Entrepreneur and Baltimore native, Amy Short expresses her highest good and feels her happiest when working to create, shape, shepherd, and sustain participatory communities that engender personal and societal transformation. Amy’s vision of collective social impact includes her work through 2015 founding and growing NYC Social: a friend factory for young professionals in New York City that worked to eradicate loneliness and touched over 20,000 lives annually. Amy also spent several years as volunteer facilitator of the life-affirming Opening the Heart workshop and has established the Drug War Memorial, an online memorial for the casualties of the War on Drugs. Amy also serves on the board of the O+ Festival. You can find Amy walking the cobblestone streets of Lisbon, Portugal, playing in the dust of Black Rock City, tending to her backyard garden, and zooming around the Catskill mountains on her vintage Honda motorcycle.
Lauren Magrisso
I live in Stinson Beach, California. I enjoy dancing, spending time in nature, and hanging with family and friends. I live with my partner, Will and our four-legged friend, Obi. Will owns and operates a small scale organic vegetable farm and farmstand in Freestone, CA: Worker Bee Farm. Obi likes to chase birds on the beach and hunt for gophers on the farm.
For my vocational practice, I am founding Generativ Labs, a life-centered design studio. My background is in human-centered design, innovation, permaculture and transition design. My intention in participating in this class is to 1) build out the offering 2) run prototypes to test messaging and services 3) cultivate community with other people committed to creating a future that works for all life 4) transition more and more of my life force and financial energy to the next economy.
Jared Wood
I am a freelance writer and web designer in career shift. In 2012 I co-founded Villagecraft, a decentralized community education network that failed just as it was starting to appear sustainable. After that painful experience I’m here to better understand businesses, and how next economy principles can help create more opportunity for justice and right livelihood. As someone from a mixed-class family with a lot of institutional privilege, a musician and global citizen who walks in many different communities, I am starting to see how I might be bridge, signal boost, and entrepreneur, and I’m thinking and learning a lot about how to best be of service.
Jake Ifshin
Jake Ifshin is a community organizer, green entrepreneur and educator based in Silver Spring, Maryland. After being deeply inspired through leading his first garden program at Temple Emanuel Early Childhood Center, Jake decided to make a full-time commitment to sharing the joy of growing food and exploring nature. One of his specialties is making horticulture accessible to the youngest and oldest members of our society through innovative techniques and adaptive intergenerational programs. He brings his passions for nature, music and creativity to each of his projects.
Jake is the executive director of Everybody Grows, a non-profit that equips and inspires people in the Washington, DC area to grow their own food. He is also the proprietor of Ifshin Gardens, a business with the mission of connecting communities to nature through gardening, wilderness and regenerative programs that has partnered with companies such as Discovery Communications and Senior Lifestyle Corporation. Jake has a BA and MA from St. John’s College, where he studied philosophy, ancient languages and the history of science. As a musician, he has performed and directed ensembles in Washington, DC and New Mexico.
He has pursued many learning opportunities in his field, including a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) at the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan and a certification as a DC Urban Master Composter.
Dann Moreno Alcala
A social entrepreneur that promotes impact investment and social business as means to transit to a juster and more sustainable paradigms. I work in the autonomous/state owned company that manages the power grid in Mexico. I am creating a social crowdfunding startup which aims to promote exclusively impact projects. I am also working with some fintech and blockchain related projects. I am very active in the social entrepreneurship, fintech, energy, environmental and blockchain technology.
I am passionate about the democratization of everything/ democratization of opportunities. I want to help to create systems that make easier for people to take ethical/responsible/sustainable/holistic/bioregional decisions.
Susan Fairchild
As the Director of Investor Relations & Impact at Green Canopy, Susan works to improve and bolster Green Canopy’s impact capital raising efforts, align impact investors capital to their values, manages and measures Green Canopy's impact metrics and theory of change. She has worked in the non-profit, philanthropic and business sectors – always with an eye towards impact. Susan holds an MPA from the University of Washington. Susan is an ultrarunner and her happiest of moments are when she, her husband and their two children are skiing or running in the mountains.