This is a program to increase the effectiveness of people dedicated to creating change in our society. The fellowship honors the work and life of Donella Meadows by teaching balance between scientific rigor and connecting from the heart.

~Lynn Stoddard, Department of Environmental Protection, CT

The 2005-2006 Fellows came from the non-profit, government, business and philanthropy sectors. They brought on-the-ground involvement in forest resource management, pollution prevention, solid waste management, corporate social responsibility, conservation of fisheries and marine habitats, sustainable agriculture, youth, teen reproductive health, energy efficiency, rural development and the organic spice trade. They came from eleven states nationwide, and from Indonesia, Mexico, British Columbia and Guatemala. Fellows have their roots in small rural towns such as Ascutney, Vermont and major cities like Chicago. Through their individual projects and home organizations, the Fellows impacted conservation activists, farmers, industry executives, legislators, citizen boards, and government officials. Their work represented diverse sectors, bioregions and ecosystems. By design, fifteen of the eighteen Fellows were women.

Biographies

	Dayna Baumeister Co-Owner and Co-Founder, Biomimicry Guild Helena, Montana
With a background in biology, a devotion to applied natural history, and a passion for sharing the wonders of nature with others, Dayna has worked in the field of Biomimicry since 1998 as an educator, researcher, and design consultant. As keystone for the Biomimicry Guild, Dayna acts as the liaison between all members of the Guild and oversees most projects. In addition, she brings her skills as a systems thinker and organic communicator to her dynamic workshops, presentations, seminars, and exhibits, which have introduced the idea of “nature as model, measure, and mentor” to thousands of designers, business managers, and engineers around the country. More (+)
	Michaelyn Anne Baur Country Director, ForesTrade de Guatemala, S.A. Alta Verapaz, Guatemala
Michaelyn oversees technical services in sustainable and organic agriculture production, organic and Fair Trade certification, organizational strengthening within the producer groups, management of working capital loans, procurement and management of grants from donor organizations, quality control and processing of product, as well as other daily operations of the company including financial and human resource management. Her work embraces her personal commitment to sustainable agriculture, honoring indigenous knowledge, empowering disadvantaged people, and creating a vision that will bring about social change. ForesTrade Inc. is an international organic spice, coffee, vanilla and essential oils trading company based in Brattleboro, VT.
	Maria Carvajal Executive Director, Gulf of California Region, Conservation International Sonora, Mexico
For the past 14 years Maria has worked in conservation and management of fishing resources, natural protected areas and wetlands in the Gulf of California region. In this context, Maria has promoted and developed multi-institutional and interdisciplinary projects in this region. She has helped form several regional coalitions such as ALCOSTA which integrates 20 conservation organizations, and Noroeste Sustentable (NOS) which integrates 25 business leaders for Mexico and the Gulf region.
	Elizabeth Luc Clowes Director of Replication, The Food Project Boston, Massachusetts
The Food Project (TFP) brings youth and adults together from city and suburb, to grow and distribute healthy food using sustainable agriculture practices. TFP’s community develops youth leaders, connects people to the land, teaches people about their food system, and empowers all towards personal and social change. Liz is developing replication strategies, and processes that capture the organization’s management, operational, and educational systems, to bring this innovative model to communities nationwide. She also manages a national training program that shares this organizational knowledge.
	Abigail Corso Associate Director, Delta Institute Chicago, Illinois
Abby works on projects aimed at reducing toxic chemical emissions and use through pollution prevention and energy efficiency strategies as well as green purchasing initiatives. With her Delta colleagues, Abby is developing processes and methods that will allow companies to incorporate local eco-system issues into corporate policies in a way that will increase environmental stewardship and achieve environmental improvement. She is also involved with establishing the Delta Institute as a verifying agency on the Chicago Climate Exchange and has been working with farmers and foresters in Illinois and other Great Lakes states that are involved with land practices that sequester carbon to enroll in the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Delta Institute engages in the policy and practice of improving environmental quality and promoting community and economic development in the Great Lakes region.
	Michael Dupee Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. Moretown, Vermont
Michael Dupee serves as the Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Mike leads the company’s overall Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, including providing strategic direction and reporting publicly on the company’s social and environmental responsibility initiatives and programs; managing the company’s allocation of 5% pre-tax earnings into socially responsible projects; and generating increased understanding of and recognition for the company’s SR activities, both internally and externally. Outside of his work at GMCR, Inc., Michael volunteers as a mentor, serves on the Steering Committee for the Society for Organizational Learning’s Sustainability Consortium, plays guitar, sings, writes music, snowboards, sails, meditates, gardens, and roots for the New York Yankees. He shares his home with Carmen Negron-Colon, Paz (a sweet yellow Labrador retriever), and Sancho (a feisty black Chihuahua). More (+)
	Jennifer Fletcher Program Coordinator, Trust for Public Land Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jenna leads the open space/greenways collaborative, “Embrace Open Space,” that brings together local officials, staff, soil and watershed district leaders, non-profits, agency staff and environmental consultants. The collaborative promotes sustainable land use in the Twin Cities and outlying fast growing suburbs with the goal of protecting sensitive natural areas by increasing awareness of economic and other benefits. The collaborative’s work encourages cities, townships and counties to conduct open space planning using maps and adopt local policies as part of their required comprehensive plans in order to guide communities’ growth. More (+)
	Elaine Kohrman Social Scientist/Economist, USDA Forest Service Baker City, Oregon
Elaine is a part of a team engaged in revising forest plans for the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in northeast Oregon and southwest Washington. This collaborative effort encompasses a diversity of interests about how to best manage public lands for a sustainable future. The team is using a systems-based approach to create the vision and plan for sustainability with criteria and indicators. Elaine focuses on designing both the plan and the process of working with people to include the social and economic aspects of the system along with ecological considerations.
	Valerie Langer Director of British Columbia Coast Campaigns, ForestEthics Vancouver, British Columbia
Primarily engaged in implementation of Ecosystem Based Management in the Great Bear Rainforest (6.4 million hectares/15 million acres of temperate rainforest on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada). Through political advocacy, leveraging marketplace pressure and application of science based principles to forest management, ForestEthics has worked to create a new model for large scale conservation that includes initiatives to concurrently achieve Human Well Being for the indigenous population in the region. The process involves a collaborative model with the logging industry, ENGO’s and the provincial and First Nations (indigenous) governments. ENGO’s secured a $120 million fund for First Nations Economic Development and conservation management. To date 2.1 million hectares are protected from logging, new logging regulations have set another 700,000 ha (1.68 million acres) of forests and species habitat off limits to logging and First Nations communities are beginning to access the Coast Opportunities Fund for conservation compatible businesses (e.g. shellfish growing, non-timber forest product development). Valerie has been engaged in forest conservation campaigns for twenty years, working as the forest campaigner for Friends of Clayoquot Sound from 1988 to 2004. She co-founded ForestEthics as a coalition project and joined the organization as an employee in 2006. In the early 1990’s she pioneered the market campaign strategy of influencing logging companies practices by engaging their commercial customers to pressure them to change. She continues to consult on a project to encourage major North American pulp mills to utilize agricultural byproducts such as wheat straw (as they do in India and China) as an alternative to using primary forests for pulp and paper.
	Terrie Lind Associate Vice President of Teen Programs, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte (PPMM) Sacramento, California
Terrie acts as an “internal consultant” to maintain the quality of education programs for PPMM and address system and service provision issues. She also oversees and manages a program-scaling project designed to replicate Teen Success, a support group for pregnant and parenting teens. The project seeks to replicate the program that has been effective in the PPMM service area in at least 12 new sites throughout the United States over the next 3 years while maintaining program integrity and achieving similar results to those achieved by the original program.
	Sally McGee Marine Conservation Advocate, Environmental Defense Mystic, Connecticut
Sally promotes sustainable fisheries and marine habitat protection in New England’s coastal and offshore waters. In June 2003, she was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce as a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, which develops management plans for all fishing activities in the US exclusive economic zone (out to 200 miles offshore). Sally promotes sustainable fisheries by working with fishermen to develop fishing cooperatives. She works to protect marine habitat as chair of the Council’s Habitat, Marine Protected Areas, and Ecosystems Committee.
	Jerry Nagel President, Northern Great Plains, Inc. Fargo, North Dakota
Jerry serves as the President of the Northern Great Plains (NGP) Inc. a non-profit applied research, demonstration and convening organization. NGP Inc. focuses its work on futures study, creating economic opportunity, and supporting a healthy environment and vital communities. Jerry provides leadership, strategic direction and management to this a five-state collaborative rural development initiative.
	Trista Patterson Ecological Economist, USFS Pacific North West Research Station Sitka, Alaska
Trista is a research and application specialist in sustainable production and consumption of forest resources; specifically non-market resource use, ecosystem services, wilderness and subsistence issues. Trista returned to Alaska from Tuscany, Italy, where she served as Sustainability Analyst in the Complex Systems Group to the University of Siena. More (+)
	Matt Roman Environmental Health and Safety Affairs Manager, Visteon Corporation Beverly Hills, Michigan
Matt’s role is to design and implement the corporate environmental strategy for both products and manufacturing processes at Visteon, an automotive manufacturing company. In this capacity he has responsibility for helping to communicate best practices for energy efficiency and waste reduction at the manufacturing plants as well as tracking the performance of the company against stated goals through the development and communication of appropriate metrics. His current work also focuses on ways to reduce the use of materials and substances that are potentially harmful to human health and the environment within the company’s products. Matt is also tasked with communicating the role that every employee has in improving the company’s environmental performance. More (+)
	Nonette Royo Executive Director, The Samdhana Institute, Southeast Asia Vice President for Research and Social Outreach, Xavier University Ateneo de Cagayan, Mindanao Philippines Southeast Asia Regional Coordinator, Global Greengrants-Alliance Fund Facilitator, Ecosystems Grants Program for Southeast Asia-IUCN Cagayan de Oro, Philippines
Nonette actively bridges community actors and institutions in key ecosystems, including forest, agroforest and agricultural landscapes, for the Philippines, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries. She provides facilitation, support, mentoring and advise in policy and practice, institutions and institutional arrangements for natural resource management, land rights, indigenous peoples legal rights, and negotiation options for Indonesia and the Philippines. In Xavier University, Northern Mindanao where her family lives, she leads the research and social outreach cluster (composed of Directors of Research Units and University Outreach Programs) to combine teaching, research and extension in a robust inquiry into education for sustainable development, working in a ridge to reef landscape involving the last remaining forests of Mindanao, around which watersheds feed key aquifers and rivers, into Macajalar Bay area bursting with beautiful and endemic marine life. Her greatest challenge remains working with and/or mentoring stakeholders in keeping a balance between rights and interests of millions of poor people living within protected areas or key environmental corridors in the Philippines and Indonesia, within conditions of resistant, cash strapped governments and a semi accountable private sector. This becomes doubly difficult when reliable science and good legal recourse are not readily available. More (+)
	Elizabeth Soderstrom Senior Director of Conservation, American Rivers Nevada City, California
Elizabeth joined American Rivers in 2008, and works in the California Office on headwater restoration, acquiring water rights for instream flows, and incorporating Native American interests and practices into river restoration. She also enjoys grant-writing and fundraising. For the previous seven years, Elizabeth was the Senior Director for Sierra and International Rivers at the Natural Heritage Institute, during which time, she managed the Sharing Water Project on the Okavango River in Southern Africa, and applied adaptive management principles to river restoration as a Switzer Leadership Fellow. She also assisted both the CALFED Science Program and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in developing and using performance measures. Previously, Elizabeth served as an International Engineering and Diplomacy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science at USAID’s Center for the Environment in Washington, DC, and at USAID’s Regional Center for Southern Africa based in Gaborone, Botswana. Elizabeth lives with her husband, Steve, their daughter, Tova, six goats, ten chickens, and one duck in the foothills of the Sierra. More (+)
	Jennifer Sokolove Senior Program Officer for the Environment and Family Advisory Board, Compton Foundation Menlo Park, California
In its Environment and Sustainability grantmaking, the Compton Foundation seeks a balanced and healthy relationship between humans, other life, and the planet. Jen’s environment portfolio covers grantmaking in the fields of fresh water, climate change, and community-based conservation in the western United States. She also manages a family grants program in sustainable food systems, youth, the arts, and spirituality. Jen has been working on sustainability issues for the past fifteen years, with a focus on natural resource-based economies and collaborative decision-making. Prior to joining Compton, she worked on a variety of community-led projects in California, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest. She conducted post-doctoral research on sustainable food systems in northern California, and completed her PhD at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. She received her BA from Stanford University in Human Biology (concentration in environmental policy) and English in 1994. Jen serves on the boards of the Pesticide Action Network North America and the Switzer Foundation, as well as the advisory board of the Northern California Environmental Grassroots Fund. More (+)
	Natalie Starr Principal DSM Environmental Services, Inc. Ascutney, Vermont
As part of an environmental consulting firm, Natalie’s recent domestic projects have included an analysis of the costs of recycling vs. disposal in New York City, development of systems to divert the waste stream from landfilling to composting and recycling in the State of Delaware, development of a cooperative waste management and recycling program for industry and households in Devens, Massachusetts, and an assessment of environmental conditions on a large northern Adirondack forest. Her international work focuses on citizen participation in local government related to solid waste management and water quality improvements. This included development of a national campaign to Clean Up Bulgaria based on grassroots participation in the majority of Bulgarian municipalities, an assessment of existing materials recovery and the costs and methods to increase it in the City of Johannesburg, and a citizens led water conservation and metering pilot in two cities in Tajikistan. She also serves on her local conservation commission.

Application to Work

Dayna Baumeister

Co-Owner and Co-Founder, Biomimicry Guild
Helena, Montana

I find that seldom does a lecture, workshop, or consulting event go by that I do not draw upon the tools I learned and practiced through my fellowship. I frequently find myself diagramming systems, helping groups dream visions, and practicing my own reflective conversation skills. Most significantly, I was so impressed by the learning that happens through two years of interacting with peers, that I started my own two-year program, effectively creating a Master’s in biomimicry. Our program has 16 participants representing business, design, engineering and biology. We have 5, week-long in person sessions and 4 semester long on-line courses. Beth and Edie came to one of our sessions and spent two-days with us on systems thinking.

Like any good experience, you weave those lessons into your life, ultimately unable to separate out your thinking prior to that experience with your new way of being. I’m pretty certain that my fellowship with SI had such an impact on me, and therefore inundates all of my work endeavors. I move forward with gratitude and hopefully grace.

Michael Dupee

Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
Moretown, Vermont

Prior to joining Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Mike was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York, NY, making and managing opportunistic investments in distressed financial assets from 2000 to 2004. Mike earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, and Master in Business Administration degrees at Georgetown University and his B.A. in history, magna cum laude from Boston College.

Application to Work
Forget about work – let me tell you about how my experience as a Fellow affected my life!!

The Fellowship Program helped me to profoundly reconnect with (A) the natural system in which we live and (B) my own potential as a creative being. The result for me has been a deepening experience of very powerful way of being in the world – a way of being that creates the space for me to show up for life differently, to connect with people differently, to ask different questions, and to generate different responses to the challenges I encounter. I hesitate to describe this as a NEW way of being – rather, in my heart, it feels like an entirely OLD way of being…but a way of being to which I had lost my connection. The pedagogical approach of the Fellowship experience – blending the art of visioning, deep reflection, a set of very practical tools, a grounding in real-life challenges, and the rich experience of living in the Cobb Hill community and contributing to farm work (even for a little bit) – is unlike anything else I’ve experienced or seen offered anywhere else.

As a result, I continue to explore the path that first emerged out of my Fellowship experience – namely, a new way of being in the world that is made available to us through a conscious cultivation of creativity and connection to the natural world. In the world of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, we often find ourselves weighed down by so many lists of things to DO (true in nearly every aspect of modern life) that we can easily forget to spend time practicing how to BE.

Speaking strictly in terms of using the tool set, I used the tools to create a workable systems model of how corporate social responsibility supports a for-profit business. I’ve used the model both internally and externally to educate and to identify leverage points in need of additional resources.

Jennifer Fletcher

Program Coordinator, Trust for Public Land
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Previously Jenna was Policy Analyst, Minnesota Forest Resource Council, Edina, Minnesota. Jenna served as project manager, financial manager, communications and public relations officer and helped to shape public policy options to work towards the sustainability of Minnesota’s forests. This work served to frame what forest sustainability looks like in Minnesota. The organization created the venue for trust-based decision-making that balances economic, ecological and social goals.

Jenna is past-board chair of Eco Education, a small non-profit that provides experiential environmental problem-solving education in urban schools.

Application to Work
Through the Fellow’s work with visioning skills, Jenna led the Eco Education board through a visioning process that has resulted in a vision/growth plan that is currently being implemented. In addition, Jenna continues to work to influence local decision-makers on land use and natural area goals, and utilizes leadership skills that were honed through the Fellowship program.

Trista Patterson

Ecological Economist, USFS Pacific North West Research Station
Sitka, Alaska

Tools from the Fellows Program have proven to be particularly valuable when working in large, dynamic, and challenging systems. She and Cohort 3 Fellow Anna Jones-Crabtree used systems analysis to diagnose and communicate needs and accomplishments of the USFS Sustainable Operations- an effort to ‘green government from the ground up’ (75 Green Teams of FS employees across the country). Trista also frequently draws on the role of vision in creative and transformative public speaking and science delivery projects. One example is the use of photojournalism and new media in ongoing forestry projects in Vietnam and the Tongass National Forest.

Matt Roman

Environmental Health and Safety Affairs Manager, Visteon Corporation
Beverly Hills, Michigan

Application to Work (more directly Application to Life)
For most of us who view work as an extension of their own personal visions and passions, I think it is more appropriate to discuss what the application of the Fellows Program has meant to our life work. Yes, during the program there were concrete tools and skills acquired that have been adapted to my work. Some include a better practice at reflective conversations to really understand what others are trying to tell me, and a better knowledge of how to build system models and explain them to others so that there is more awareness of what is happening around me and how my actions and the actions of others fit into the models. But more importantly the program worked most effectively at the most basic level, what really is my own personal vision (or visions) and how can I go about spending more time working on them, refining them, or learning when to let them go. I went into this program thinking I had a pretty good handle on what I wanted to do and be in this life, but the program helped to unlock within me a level of self awareness and understanding of others that I could not have imagined prior. We all are taught to speak with our mind, it comes from years of learning in our respective fields, the tough part is learning to speak to those same people with our hearts, and this is where the Fellows program is at its best.

Nonette Royo

Executive Director, The Samdhana Institute, Southeast Asia
Vice President for Research and Social Outreach, Xavier University Ateneo de Cagayan, Mindanao Philippines
Southeast Asia Regional Coordinator, Global Greengrants-Alliance Fund
Facilitator, Ecosystems Grants Program for Southeast Asia-IUCN
Cagayan de Oro, Philippines

A change in ways of doing earned through two years of personal mastery from interaction with Fellows and mentors at SI, assisted reflective conversations, and understanding of systems, led Nonette and colleagues to evolve the Indigenous Peoples Support Fund. Building upon local community initiatives, ‘assets,’ innovations, and within the last remaining forest corridors, she set up with Global Greengrants Alliance, an Indigenous Peoples Support Fund for generating sustainability of support for local natural resource stewards and indigenous peoples in SEAsia. The local Foundation for Philippine Environment has aligned with Samdhana Institute for this initiative.

Elizabeth Soderstrom

Senior Director of Conservation, American Rivers
Nevada City, California

Frequently, I find myself drawing on the tools that I learned and practiced during my fellowship, including diagramming systems, helping groups vision alternative futures, and practicing reflective conversation skills. In particular, I have found that articulating a vision and diagramming the system in which I propose to work and exampling the critical leverage points are critical tools for strategic planning and grant writing.

Jennifer Sokolove

Senior Program Officer for the Environment and Family Advisory Board, Compton Foundation
Redwood City, California

Application to Work/Life
I applied to the Fellows program to learn the practical skills of systems thinking. While those have proven useful new areas of knowledge, and I have found application for stock and flow diagrams as well as mapping both vicious and virtuous cycles, it turned out (as it so often does for me) that what I needed most was not what I first sought. In the years since the Fellowship concluded, I have much more often used the visioning process (as uncomfortable as it remains for me) to help me focus and plan out steps for moving forward to the places I really want to go. Just watching how it works has made me believe at some deeper level that the courage to aim for what doesn’t feel possible can change what in fact is possible. I also learned to apply reflective conversation skills in my professional life as well as my personal life, and, surprise (!), they work just as well in the new arena. Finally, I think often of our first conversation with Peter Senge, in which he encouraged us to act with passion and commitment but to hold things loosely, in case it turned out we weren’t right in our initial analysis. Holding things loosely, not so that I work any less hard, but so that I am less attached to one particular outcome, has often, in the subsequent years, proven to be the critical factor that allows my work to move forward and allows other people to engage with it and take some ownership of it.