2018 Convergence Workshop: Social Forestry

Caleb Gordon is the garden manager and intern coordinator at the Solar Living Institute. He has been living and working at the institute for three years where he is learning and practicing different techniques in sustainable living. His passions are teaching and learning new and innovative ways to live in harmony with the natural world. He is in charge of maintaining the large CCOF certified organic garden as well as assisting interns in site projects throughout the center. His dreams are to create strong resilient communities that provide abundance for all.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Earth Bench & Garden Tours of SLI gardens

Ellen Bauer is the Public Health Division Director for the Sonoma County Department of Health Services.  Prior to this assignment, she was the founding manager of Health Action, a coalition of diverse community leaders convened by the Health Department to identify priority health issues in Sonoma County and to offer leadership to implement initiatives and policies to create a healthier community.  Before coming to Sonoma County, Dr. Bauer had over 20 years of experience designing and implementing national and community-level health program evaluations.  She has led research and evaluation on a wide range of health issues, including implementation and outcomes (quality, utilization and cost) of managed Medicaid for both acute and long-term care services.  She earned a BA in Economics from Stanford, a Masters of Public Policy, Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D., Health Services and Policy Analysis, University of California at Berkeley.  She was also awarded several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships from the National Institute on Aging and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.

2016 Convergence Panel: Grassroots & Government: Collaborations to Grow the Movement

Sunday, September 18th | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM | Main Stage

Matthew Anthony Stephens was born in Beverly on Chicago’s South Side. While the Windy City has not typically been the first place one would think of with regards to permaculture and urban sustainability, up until now, anyway, Matthew is doing his part to change that. As founder of the Earth Reforestation Project, Permaculture America, and Permaculture Chicago, Matthew has done forums for students at his alma mater, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, and conducted after school mentoring programs about sustainability, design, and permaculture. Here he has been able to effectively put into practice his seven years of teambuilding, along with his study of urban food deserts and the nutritional dilemmas in urban environments that ensue from such designations.

Today, in addition to his work as a local community organizer in Chicago’s historic Hyde Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side, Matthew works with the Unitarian Universalist Church on garden maintenance and design consultation where he counts to his credit putting in a low-maintenance shade garden with swales. This fits right in with his study of passive solar architecture—a passion since 1987—and his practice of indoor gardening since 2011. He’s the proud archivist of the work of Lee Porter Butler, creator of the double envelope passive solar house design, and America’s pioneering passive solar architect of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s last century.

Placing exclusivity on the importance of neighborhood living, Matthew travels only by foot or bicycle and does not take public transit out of protest for safety and environmental conditions, concerns, and service quality. He has boycotted AT&T and Comcast since 2011 and Big Oil since 2010.

Matthew Stephens is one of the founders and the designer of Hales Franciscan Food Forest, Chicago’s First Urban Food Forest in 2014.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Community Organizing for Urban Permaculture

Tara Marchant is re-defining herself, like many others, in the emerging Green paradigm. As the Local Director for Emerald Cities Bay Area – Oakland Council, Tara is working across a host of stakeholder organizations (public, labor, community and industry and workforce development) to bring a collective effort to retrofit our urban core. In doing so, create high road job and build our democracy, reduce energy use and direct investments to our local communities. Tara also created and was the program manager of the Green Assets Program at the Greenlining Institute, where alliances, advocates and elected officials contributed to California’s Climate legislation AB 32: an ambitious climate framework for pricing Green House Gases (GHGs) and pricing carbon.  She holds a permaculture credential, and longs for a big garden to produce food and develop urban food systems that are sustainable.

Tara graduated from Yale University with a degree in Theater. Her first love was performing. Yes, as a little girl, she sang, and twirled and made up songs.  As she explores what her expanding role is in healing of Pachamama, she recognizes that it involves music and song and narrative: which are universal and necessary for the health of the human ‘body’ on this planet called earth.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Music of the Movement – Singing our Community into Life (Circle Songs Around the Fire) 

Wes Roe is a co-founder of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, an educational non-profit founded in 2000 that has sponsored hundreds of workshops and events about permaculture and sustainability to Santa Barbara region. Wes Roe served as board member & President of the Permaculture Credit Union. he has served as a volunteer coordinator for the International Permaculture Convergence Support Group since its inception in 2005, which has evolved into the Friends of the International Permaculture Convergences (FIPC) & the International Permaculture Convergence Council (IPCC).

2016 Convergence Workshop: Why International Permaculture Convergences are Important for PC Global Movement

 Margie Bushman is a co-founder of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, an educational non-profit founded in 2000 that has sponsored hundreds of workshops and events about permaculture and sustainability to Santa Barbara region. Until recently, Margie was the Program Coordinator for the Santa Barbara City College Center for Sustainability. She has served as a volunteer coordinator for the International Permaculture Convergence Support Group since its inception in 2005, which has evolved into the Friends of the International Permaculture Convergences (FIPC) & the International Permaculture Convergence Council (IPCC).

2016 Convergence Workshop: Why International Permaculture Convergences are Important for PC Global Movement

2018 Pre-Convergence Workshop: Music as Medicine Day Long Intensive

Thurs, Sept 20| 10:00am – 5:00pm

Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which was awarded the Nautilus Gold Medal in 2011, was named by the Washington Post as one of the ten best gardening books of 2010, and is the best-selling permaculture book in the world.

His new book on urban permaculture, The Permaculture City, was released in July, 2015.

Toby has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and has taught over sixty 72-hour permaculture design courses. He has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review, and American Gardener. He has contributed book chapters for WorldWatch Institute and to several publications on ecological design.

After obtaining a degree in biology from Tufts University, Toby worked for many years as a researcher in genetics and immunology, first in academic laboratories including Harvard and the University of Washington in Seattle, and then at Immunex, a major medical biotech company. At about the time he was growing dissatisfied with the direction biotechnology was taking, he discovered permaculture, a design approach based on ecological principles that creates sustainable landscapes, homes, and workplaces. A career change followed, and Toby and his wife, Kiel, spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. He was the editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2004, and spent six years developing urban sustainability resources there. Toby and his wife now live in Sebastopol, California.

One word goes a long way to capture the restlessness of Bayo – subversion. Born in 1983 to Nigerian parents, Bayo’s lifelong quest for absolute ‘truth’ was his most cherished preoccupation as a pioneer undergraduate in the then new Covenant University, Nigeria. His Christian upbringing deeply influenced his imagination, and inspired his decision to study human behaviour and, later, to specialize in Clinical Psychology. He graduated summa cum laude in 2006, and returned to his alma mater to teach and pursue a postgraduate degree in Clinical Psychology. It was during his clinical training (at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Enugu, eastern Nigeria) that he chanced upon new strains of thought that completely unravelled his quest for epistemic finality. Shaken to his intellectual core, Bayo now holds a largely participatory view about the world – one in which the notion of ‘truth’ is stripped of its pretensions to universal validity. His alter-modern suspicions of ‘knowledge’, ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘truth’ as Eurocentric metanarratives led him (and his wife, Ej) to develop the first International Workshop on Alternative Research Paradigms and Indigenous Knowledge Promotion (WARP, 2011).Bayo

His writings and publications have taken him to multiple conferences and counter-cultural events around the world. He initiated a book project called ‘We will tell our stories: Reimagining the Social Sciences in Africa’ in 2011, and is currently publishing the book with Professors Molefi Asante (USA), Augustine Nwoye (South Africa) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), among other African intellectuals. Bayo is co-founder of Koru, co-designer of Dreamscape, Kalengo (a reality television concept based on community activity that never got off the ground), and the Dreamweavers’ Network (which didn’t fly either).

In 2014, Adebayo was invited to be the Coordinator/Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Local Futures (USA). He temporarily left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance for a more beautiful world.

Bayo is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change, and was recently enlisted as the recipient of the Global Excellence Award (Civil Society) 2014 by FutureShapers (California). He is the Initiating/Coordinating Curator for The Emergence Network (A Post-Activist Project) [www.emergencenetwork.org], and host of the online writing course, ‘We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence’. As Coordinating Curator of The Emergence Network, Bayo works with other curators like Eric Chisler (USA), Nuno Da Silva (Portugal), Alnoor Ladha (South Africa) and Annie Levin (USA) – and hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise’…one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to ‘us’ or the ‘solutions’ that conventional activism offers as discrete or separate from the problems that we seek to nullify.

Though young, he is a frequent keynote speaker and has been invited three consecutive times to be the only keynote speaker at the European Union-sponsored DEEEP/CIVICUS Summit on Building a World Citizens’ Movement. His non-linear contributions to the discourse on sustainability, the changing ontology of activism, climate change, poverty eradication and decolonization, led to the adoption of the Johannesburg Compass – in place of a Declaration, which had been earlier intended. Bayo hopes to help co-create a trans-local ‘mycelial’ sharing of wisdoms, evoke a ‘politics of surprise’, and nurture a counterintuitive ‘movement’ for a more beautiful world.

Bayo is writing his second and third book, ‘And We Shall Dance with the Mountains’ and a novel, ‘The Boy Who Stayed Outside’. Ej and Bayo are ecstatic parents of a girl, Alethea. His most fervent passions are Ej, drawing, singing, writing, designing, speaking, and travelling.

Warren Brush is a mentor, storyteller, a certified Permaculture designer and teacher, as well as a husband, a father and a grandfather. He has worked for over 25 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner. He is co-founder and a tender of Quail Springs Permaculture, Regenerative Earth Enterprises, Sustainable Vocations, Wilderness Youth Project, Casitas Valley Farm and Creamery and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design.

Warren works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and Australia. He has devoted many years to mentoring youth and adults to inspire and equip them to live in a sustainable manner with integrity and a hopeful outlook. His mentoring includes working with those who are former child soldiers, orphans, youth, young adults, families and indigenous peoples worldwide. He teaches courses including: Permaculture Design Certification, Permaculture for International Development, Train the Trainer, Consultancy Training, Rainwater Harvesting Systems, Ferro-Cement Tank Building, Spring Rejuvenation, Compost Toilet Systems, Water for Every Farm, Drought Proofing, Earthworks, Ecological Restoration, Cultural Mentoring, Introduction to Permaculture Systems, Food Forestry, and Origins Skills among other offerings.

Brandi Mack is a mother, holistic health educator, therapeutic massage therapist, and permaculture designer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Human Service Management and a certification from Starhawk’s Earth Activist Training. Brandi has worked and trained in the youth development sector for 15 years. Brandi currently is the national director of The Butterfly Movement where we are committed to support healing the wounds of our Soul (through Rebuilding and Re Framing our emotional selves), planting a Seed of hope as we Regenerate and Reconnect our hearts and our hands to the earth, leading ultimately to manifestation in the Soil of our Reactivated lives! Brandi uses permaculture principles to support individuals and communities connection back to the land. Brandi offers a Farmers Market basket full of workshops and trainings to help your rural or urban garden grow.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Working at the Edges: Exploring Our Personal and Cultural Eco-Systems

Brock Dolman is nationally recognized as a leading permaculture educator and innovative design consultant. He is co-­founder and program director of the widely acclaimed Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and a co­founder of the Sowing Circle, LLC, intentional community. He has been working in the fields of horticulture, biology, landscape design, and installation for more than 20 years.

He co­-directs the WATER Institute, Permaculture Design Program and Wildlands Program. He has taught Permaculture and consulted on regenerative project design and implementation internationally in Costa Rica, Ecuador, U.S. Virgin Islands, Spain, Brazil, China, Canada, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba and widely in the U.S.

He has been the keynote presenter at numerous conferences and was featured in the award­ winning films The 11th Hour by Leonardo DiCaprio, The Call of Life by Species Alliance, and Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution by Vanessa Shultz. In October of 2012, he gave a City 2.0 TEDx talk. For over a decade, he has served as an appointed commissioner on the Sonoma County Fish & Wildlife Commission.

Michael Pilarski founded Friends of the Trees Society in 1978 to double the world’s forest cover. He has been studying, writing, teaching and doing hands-on earth repair activities ever since. He has been active in the permaculture movement since 1982 at the local, regional, national and interational levels. He has been farming and gardening since 1972.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Ecological Restoration, Earth Repair and Permaculture: Setting up a working group

Robert Kourik started his organic maintenance and landscape design company in 1975—long before the word sustainable “existed”. Since that time his designs, consulting and books have focused on organic and sustainable gardens, water management, drip irrigation and edible landscaping. Published (Metamorphic Press) eight books. Including: Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape – Naturally, 1986. Authored six other books. Including: The Lavender Garden, (Chronicle Books, 1998).

2017 Workshop: Good Fungi, Happy Plants

Kat Steele is a permaculture activist, designer, educator and founder of the Urban Permaculture Guild in Oakland, CA. She facilitates workshops on ecological design, sustainability, facilitation, permaculture and holistic healing. Kat speaks publicly about eco-social design, city repair, social permaculture and the power of placemaking. She has played a leadership role in developing women’s permaculture gatherings and support circles.

Trained in Ecovillage Design with the Findhorn Foundation of Scotland, Natural Building with Kleiwerks International, and Permaculture Design with the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, she also holds an MA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University. She is the former Sustainable Development Manager for the Esalen Institute in Big Sur California and now resides in Oakland, California where she co-teaches Permaculture Design in the Landscape Horticulture Department of Merritt Community College.  She is recently engaged in counseling and coaching via the Interchange Counseling Institute and continues to be devoted to promoting inclusivity, localization, personal and community resiliency, believing these to be key strategies towards sustainability and “thrive-ability”. Reach her at katsteelenow@gmail.com.

2016 Convergence Panel: Widening the Circle – Eco-Conscious Leadership in Practice

2016 Convergence Panel: Permaculture and the Indigenous Contribution: A Courageous Conversation

This ranges from installing community food forests to dozens of greywater systems and planting hundreds of gardens in a weekend through the 350 Home and Garden Challenge. He lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine and wonder while working to compost apathy and lack.

2015 Convergence Panel: It’s On! Water Challenges and Solutions for 2016 and Beyond

2015 Convergence Panel: Collaborative Action to Take Community-Based Solutions to Scale

Aaron Lehmer-Chang, who comes out of the San Francisco Bay Area’s social and environmental justice movement, is a veteran of fair trade fights. He participated in the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999 where union members, environmentalists, and global justice activists shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting, and organized against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement with a student, labor, and community alliance. Aaron co-founded a regional eco-justice organization, Rooted in Resilience (formerly Bay Localize), which works to build equitable, resilient communities. He holds a Master’s in Globalization and the Environment from Humboldt State University. Aaron’s background includes working for Van Jones’ Ella Baker Center for Human Rights as State Policy Director, for Julia Butterfly Hill’s Circle of Life Foundation, for David Brower’s Earth Island Institute, and with the Student Environmental Action Coalition.

Will Wiltschko is a graduate of UCLA with a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science. At UCLA, Will worked as a student organizer for civil rights and studied the theory and philosophy behind nonviolence. He was a legal intern with the ACLU in Southern California, where he planned community outreach strategy within the state of California, fighting school districts in response to D.J. v. State of California on issues of equitable access to English Learner programs. Will was also recently a staffer on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Presidential campaign, where he was the lead field organizer in Southwest Virginia. He ran operations out of the Southwest Virginia regional field office, where he trained and recruited hundreds of new volunteers.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Protecting Democracy from the TPP