HARTLAND, VT (September 5, 2009) The 2009-2010 Fellows cohort is perhaps the most diverse cohort yet with fellows coming from seven states nationwide as well as Switzerland, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Brazil and Costa Rica. The Fellows work will bring knowledge and experience of sustainability from an assortment of issue areas including but not limited to climate change, agriculture, transportation, the arts, philanthropy, business and television. The forth cohort is predominantly female by design and includes fifteen women and five men.
Fellows were selected for their ability to grapple effectively with multi-stakeholders and diverse issues in their current work, and for their potential to influence thinking in wide circles of people. Each Fellow employs an approach to sustainability that displays analytic clarity, systemic change and attention to spirit, values, and meaning.
Fourth Cohort Workshops:
- 1st Workshop: April 26-30, 2009
- 2nd Workshop: July 12-16, 2009
- 3rd Workshop: October 4-8, 2009
- 4th Workshop: February 7-11, 2010
Biographies
Evelyn Arce
Executive Director, International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP)
Massena, New York
For seven years, Evelyn Arce has been working for International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP), where she currently serves as its Executive Director. IFIP is an international organization whose membership is comprised of donors seeking to promote effective grantmaking strategies for Indigenous sustainable projects and communities. It accomplishes this by providing an educational forum that increases knowledge and understanding of Indigenous Philanthropy; encourages innovation, collaboration and a cross-disciplinary understanding of Indigenous holistic approaches to sustainable living.
Evelyn has a Master’s of Art in Teaching Degree from Cornell University, with a concentration in Agriculture Extension and Adult Education. She formerly served as a high-school teacher for nearly seven years and instructed Science, Horticulture and Independent Living Skills.
She plans to incorporate the principles of systems thinking to further communicate IFIP’s vision, initiatives and research; as well as hopes to inspire true partnerships between organizations that seek to implement sustainable efforts that utilize Indigenous and traditional knowledge.
Andrea Athanas
Senior Program Officer, Energy, Ecosystems and Livelihoods, IUCN
Gland, Switzerland
Andrea Athanas is a Senior Programme Officer of the Energy, Ecosystems and Livelihoods initiative. She is responsible for IUCN`s work with the extractive industries and coordinates IUCN`s energy, ecosystems and livelihoods leverage initiative. In her tenure with IUCN Andrea has helped to develop good practice guidance on biodiversity management for the International Council on Mining and Metals, the International Finance Corporation, and with the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative. She also has field experience working with the oil and gas sector in China, Russia and Italy.
Andrea has a Masters in Environmental Assessment and Evaluation from the London School of Economics and a Bachelors degree in Economics and English from the University of Michigan. She served on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Impact Assessment and is a member of Executives International.
Rachel Bagby
Founder, Choral Earth and Singing Farm
Charlottesville, Virginia
Just this once, let’s bust out of the paradigm of third-person bios. Instead, imagine meeting me at the solar-powered Singing Farm I now call home. Singing Farm is aching into a living and learning sanctuary for a deliciously diverse, intergenerational community of practice; women and men who, like you, are stepping up to serve the great turning of our time. Imagine coming here to refuel your being with wild food and cultivated caring. Imagine learning how to rest in an evolving balance with all beings dwelling here. Consider coming here to learn how you can sing truth to power and practice leading from that.
All else is ground: authoring Divine Daughters, being a founding member of Green for All’s board, founding Choral Earth, graduating from Stanford Law School, thriving through a raucous North Philly daughterhood, and innovating resilience with practices honed by four generations of artists, musicians, farmers, cunningly crazy elders and activists through all sorts of times. (www.twitter.com/rachelbagby)
Alexandra Bauermeister
Project Manager, Environmental Defense Fund
Boston, Massachusetts
Alexandra Bauermeister has worked in the public, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. Her passion lies, however, where the three intersect (and sometimes collide). Through her position at Environmental Defense Fund, Alex works with industry and government to improve the environmental impacts of businesses. Alex designs, lobbies for and facilitates the implementation of policy changes that are environmentally, socially and economically desirable.
Currently, she focuses on policy and market transformations that would realign fishermen’s economic incentives with ocean resource conservation. Alex spends her days developing relationships among diverse stakeholders, organizing coalitions, negotiating with conflicting interest groups, and participating in the public policy process. She looks forward to applying the Fellowship’s systems approach to a variety of environmental and human challenges throughout her career.
Huma Beg
Managing Director, Serendip productions
Islamabad, Pakistan
Huma Mustafa Beg has been connected to the electronic media now for over two decades. She initiated her television career as a producer and presenter for a morning programme for children on Pakistan Television Network. Today her company Serendip Productions has evolved as the only private production house working on all issues pertaining to development. Serendip has been ceaselessly working to create awareness at various levels to audiences from parliamentarians to women on the street. It has generated programmes to inspire the youth towards leadership and development, brought values and understanding to children, raised profiles of activists to garner support to their work and tackled many issues like terrorism, climate change and democracy for this century.
Her programmes have been screened at numerous international film festivals and have won awards from the British Medical Association in UK to the Sony awards in Japan. For her services in media she was awarded the “Champion of Reform” in her home country. Huma is Pakistan’s first female hot air balloonist and is a member of many international environmental groups. She is now working to establish Pakistan’s first development channel to create a permanent platform and space for all issues related to self and societal development in relation to the new global challenges for communities today.
Jed Davis
Director of Sustainability, Cabot Creamery Cooperative
Montpelier, Vermont
Jed has been involved in dairy agriculture and cooperatives his whole life. Raised on a seven-generation family dairy farm in Central Massachusetts, he has spent the past 18 years working in a number of positions for Cabot Creamery in Vermont. In late 2007, Cabot began to explicitly address issues of sustainability and, in April 2008, created a full-time position to help establish a framework for sustainability management at the 90-year-old dairy cooperative.
The Donella Meadows Fellows Program will provide valuable perspective on approaches to both vision and successful communication with internal Cabot audiences and with external stakeholder engagement, as well as the opportunity to apply systems dynamics thinking to specific sustainability efforts.
Michelle Erickson
Initiative Director, Environmental Sustainability for Global IT, Global Operations & Technology, Citigroup
New York City, New York
Michelle designed and is leading Citigroup’s highly recognized environmental sustainability program for global IT. Her work focuses on implementing cross-enterprise innovative programs that produce increased efficiencies, cost saves, and environmental benefits in the areas of power management, paper substitution, travel substitution, and sustainable supply chain. In addition, Michelle oversees comprehensive marketing and communication campaigns designed for employee education and engagement and represents Citi internally and externally conveying the enterprise-wide strategy for Green IT.
Prior to joining Citi in November 2006, Michelle consulted for several industries, including print and multi-media, NGO, philanthropy, and higher education. She has also held teaching appointments at New York University and Yeshiva University.
Erickson holds a PhD and MA from New York University and a BA from Newcomb College of Tulane University.
Amba Jamir
Executive Director, The Missing Link (TML-India)
Guwahati, Assam, India
A development consulting expert with over 15 years of multidisciplinary experience from policy formulation to project development, Mr Amba Jamir is professionally trained as an environmental lawyer and development communicator. Amba is an acclaimed grassroots trainer, facilitator and community leader with experiences in the Asia Pacific region in the areas of education, development, livelihood, and policy advocacy by working with policy makers, NGOs, community leaders and the poorest of the poor. Besides being a consultant and trainer who works directly with mountain farmers, communities and intermediary organizations, he has vast experiences working in local NGOs, National and International NGOs, the government and even with advanced regional policy and research think-tanks like the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan.
Sarah Khan
Assistant Scientist, University of Wisconsin, Department of Family Medicine, Integrative Medicine Program, Director, The Tasting Cultures Group, LLC
Madison, Wisconsin
Sarah has worked in the field of integrative medicine and biocultural diversity for nearly 20 years as a clinical nutritionist, ethnobotanical researcher of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese medicine, and as a clinical researcher. At present she is developing multidisciplinary interventions to combat obesity using mindfulness, exercise, and nutrition education in diverse communities in Madison and Milwaukee, WI. At the same time she is assessing the built environment in South Milwaukee to ensure food security for the poor and uninsured; and to develop sustainable preventive medicine interventions.
As Director of The Tasting Cultures Group, she is developing innovative multi-platform programming on the dynamic intersection of food and culture. Sarah is collaborating with artists, educators, chefs, culinary, agricultural/sustainability experts, and filmmakers to develop The Tasting Culture Series, a series that looks at the world through the lens of food. Upcoming events include an educational panel entitled: “Tasting Cultures: African American Foodways”, and a multisensory art exhibit at the Avery Research Center, College of Charleston entitled “The Art of African American Foodways”. Most recently she has partnered with the Media Working Group to produce a documentary of Kentucky agriculture and foodways.
Kristi Kimball
Program Officer, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Menlo Park, California
Kristi Kimball is a Program Officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and makes about $10 million in grants annually to improve k-12 education in California, mainly through changes in state policy to redesign school finance, build education data systems and increase college readiness. At the foundation, she has helped design special initiatives to increase arts education in schools, to improve the quality of education in developing countries, to reform California’s dysfunctional budget process and political governance system, and to pilot a new business model for the withering media sector. Kristi has also done federal education policy work in Congress and at the US Department of Education and environmental advocacy work in California focused on smart growth, transit, walking, and biking infrastructure.
With the help of this fellowship program, Kristi hopes to bring systems thinking and other skills to the Hewlett Foundation and to other colleagues in the philanthropy sector to inform new investment strategies.
Phonchan (Newey) Kraiwatnutsorn
Director of Youth Venture Thailand, Ashoka:Innovator for the Public
Bangkok, Thailand
In 2003 Newey co-found a local non-profit in Bangkok to support young people to start projects or business to address their communities’ need with seed grants, training and mentorship. Then in 2006, she joined Ashoka to run a similar program called “Youth Venture” in Thailand with an aim to continue to increase the number of young changemakers and set up support systems for long-term support.
Besides assisting young people toward creating positive change based on their very own interest or concerns, Newey is also working on creating workshops to put creative thinking and systems thinking in the project development process for youth to lead a sustainable society.
Lorie Loeb
Research Assoc Professor, Director of Digital Arts Minor, President/Founder (TellEmotion), Dartmouth College/TellEmotion, Inc.
Hartland, Vermont
Lorie’s interest is in the innovation and creativity that happens at the overlap of science, art, visualization and activism. Lorie is a Research Associate Professor at Dartmouth College and the director of the digital arts minor. She is also the president and co-founder of TellEmotion, a start-up inspired by the work of Dana Meadows. TellEmotion (www.tellEmotion.com) displays real-time energy data using animation, goal-setting and interaction in order to provide feedback and encourage sustainable practices through a connection between behavior and its impact on the environment.
Lorie is excited to be a Fellow and hopes to learn how to articulate ideas more effectively, find mentors and inspiration from the teachers and participants in the program, reconnect with her playful spirit and develop strategies for staying focused in the midst of seeming chaos.
Jennifer Mayer
Senior Project Advisor, Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Innovative Program Delivery
San Francisco, California
Jennifer has more than seventeen years of experience in transportation and other infrastructure finance. Currently, she conducts policy research and education on funding and financing of transportation projects, and provides technical assistance nationwide on public private partnerships and project finance. She is part of a new office established by the Federal Highway Administration to encourage innovative thinking and cultural change in the transportation infrastructure industry.
She intends to use systems thinking to develop a vision for a sustainable national transportation system, which delivers mobility, not just capital facilities. She also intends to use the fellowship to improve skills that will help her implement that vision, including how to make it simple and compelling, and how to bring about culture change both internally and externally.
Marcelo Michelsohn
Executive Director, Serra Acima
Cunha, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Marcelo is the executive director of Serra Acima, a Brazilian NGO that works to preserve and restore one of the most important pockets of biodiversity in Brazil, the Mata Atlantica and to help local farmers stop using chemical inputs in their production so they can lower their costs and increase their income by tapping into the organic products market. Marcelo worked for 8 years at ABN AMRO Bank in São Paulo, Amsterdam and Chicago implementing the bank’s sustainability strategy and structures and also working as a social and environmental risk analyst advising the bank’s credit committee on the risks of financing its global clients.
Marcelo has a BA in Psychology and an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath (UK).
Christine Negra
Director of Climate Mitigation Programs, The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment
Washington D.C.
The Heinz Center collaborates with scientific, business and political leaders to bring scientific views into key environmental policy dialogues. Christine leads the Heinz Center’s efforts to promote scientifically-based policy strategies for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, with emphasis on terrestrial carbon sequestration and the pathway to sustainable energy use. Christine came to the Heinz Center in 2005 to develop indicators of carbon storage and environmental contamination for The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems 2008.
Previously, she worked with farmers, local and state officials, and environmental advocates on sustainable agriculture, water quality, forestry and community leadership projects. She has a Ph.D. in soil chemistry and M.S. in Natural Resource Planning from the University of Vermont. By participating in the Fellows program, Christine aspires to master the art of compassionate, collaborative and entrepreneurial leadership.
Mary Roscoe
Coordinator, Children in Nature Collaborative
Mountain View, California
Mary currently coordinates the Children in Nature Collaborative in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of over fifty regional movements and a national movement to reconnect children with nature. The Collaborative, made up of over fifty-five organizational partners, believes that the well being of our children and the health of the earth are intertwined – the ultimate goal of the Children in Nature Collaborative is to create a major cultural shift so that nature is an essential part of children’s daily life.
For over twenty years, Mary has also been engaged in an educational movement with the mission of social change through developing capacities and new social forms based on interest, understanding, and compassion. She seeks to apply systems thinking to her current work in social and educational movements and complex issues that require clear thinking, imagination, and leadership to meet the current challenges and opportunities.
Sudha Soni
Chief Functionary, The Environment Collaborative (TEC)
Alleyppey, Kerala, India
Sudha has been engaged for more than 12 years in the development/environment /sustainable initiatives sector and for three years in her current position as Chief Functionary of The Environment Collaborative (TEC). The TEC believes in working collaboratively and networking with similar organizations to bring about social change and to create synergy among them to generate more impact in the chosen area of work. She intends to apply the fellowship tools in her Food and Food Sovereignty movement in Kerala, which is on the southern most tip of India, and later expand the work to other states in the country. This is a multi stakeholder process that facilitates an environment that supports communities in adopting healthy food practices and provide sustainable systems of food security leading to an ecologically sustainable community that is in harmony with the whole. She aims at taking this movement to the youth and children as they are the future of the world.
Through this fellowship Sudha would like to learn to develop a systems dynamic model for the processes and projects she is undertaking, to evolve visions and strategies and to apply such system thinking in my projects and personal life too. Some of TEC’s focus areas of work include forest certification, nature education and documentation of indigenous knowledge and enabling environmentally sensitive conservation processes that address key issues of Water, Land, Energy, Climate Change and Livelihoods. She is a science graduate with a Masters in Management and in Philosophy.
Dominic Stucker
Fellows Network Coordinator, Sustainability Institute
Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica
Dominic started working as SI’s first Fellows Network Coordinator in early 2009. He is responsible for increasing connectivity and collaboration among the Fellows’ network. Dominic comes to SI from Earth Charter International, based in Costa Rica, where he was the International Youth Coordinator for over 2 years. In this role, he connected and catalyzed a global network of university students and young professionals in over 70 countries. Dominic has led workshops at major international conferences, including ones organized by the United Nations, IUCN, and CIVICUS.
Dominic earned his M.A. in Environmental Security and Peace from the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. An elaboration of his thesis, which focused on environmental security in rural Tajikistan, was published by MIT Press in Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union. Dominic also holds an M.A. in Teaching from Brown University and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University.
For 3 years, Dominic served as a Peace Corps Volunteer and subsequently worked with humanitarian and educational organizations in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. He also has 2 years’ experience working as an education and community service program manager at CooperRiis, a healing farm community in North Carolina, United States for adults suffering from mental illness.
Dominic was born in Germany and raised in the United States. He loves hiking and mountain climbing and is a trained Wilderness First Responder. He is married and the father of young twin boys.
Jodie Tonita
Director, Social Transformation Project
Oakland, California
Jodie is known for her work in supporting social change leaders to develop strategic visions and translate them into organizational and movement level projects and practice. Jodie’s experience and work synthesizes a diverse background in developing theories of change, political and citizen engagement strategies, strategic and organizational planning, organizational and network development and information technology systems consulting.
Jodie’s current work is dedicated to growing the field of Transformational Leadership and Change in the social change sector. She is working with Robert Gass and his strategic partners to support the wide distribution and deep integration of the powerful tools and education he and they continue to develop and evolve.
Tse-Sung Wu
Environment, Health and Safety Department, Genentech
San Francisco, California
Tse-Sung Wu has a longstanding interest in helping corporations reduce their ecological footprint by improving decision making and promoting innovation to minimize environmental impact. He currently works in the Environment, Health and Safety Department at Genentech, the biopharmaceutical company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he’s been for almost a decade.
Prior to that, he worked briefly with the Environmental Strategies and Technologies group at Apple Computer, and was co-director of the Consortium for Green Design and Manufacturing at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in Engineering and Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997.
Recently he volunteered with a small eco-lodge in SE Asia helping it receive GreenGlobe21, the green tourism certification, making it the second establishment to do so in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.