David Casey is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, with concentrations in Global Poverty & Practice and Energy & Resources. David has lived and worked in seven countries in Latin America, where he has built an extensive network of connections to individuals and organizations. His work has focused on marketing, social networks, experience design, and event production. He is the co-founder and CEO of NuMundo, a platform that connects people and impact centers, encouraging resource sharing on the web and on the ground to catalyze planetary regeneration and individual transformation. NuMundo has recently been accepted into Startup Chile, a prestigious business accelerator facilitated by the Chilean government. With his strong vision and clear articulation and conviction, he is able to attract wide support from multiple sources in the form of donated labor, land, and financial capital. Among other things, David is also the founder and co-producer of Cosmic Convergence, an annual gathering of art, music, tribal technology, education for conscious living, and Mayan culture on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and a co-founder of Tribal Alliance Retreat in Costa Rica. David successfully bridges the worlds of technology startups, permaculture, international development, and retreat and festival production.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Networking the Transformational Ecosystem

Ryan Rising is a community organizer and permaculture educator based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. After organizing Pushing Through the Pavement: a Permaculture Action Tour with The Polish Ambassador in the Fall of 2014, Ryan co-founded the Permaculture Action Network and has worked with festivals and artists like Lightning in a Bottle and Rising Appalachia to mobilize concert-goers and festival attendees to install permaculture systems and create community spaces that move us further on the transition to a just and regenerative world.

Permaculture Action Days have brought out hundreds of people at a time after concerts and before music festivals to plant public food forests, build urban farms & community gardens, install rainwater catchment systems, and construct greenhouses & earthen buildings. Having organized more than 50 Permaculture Action Days across the country and taught numerous courses and workshop spaces before and within festivals and gatherings, Ryan works at the edge of culture and ecological justice to catalyze the growth of a broad and diverse network set on taking action to build a better world. Visit the organization’s website to learn more about Ryan’s work and the Permaculture Action Network.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Permaculture Action Network: How We’re Organizing and How To Get Involved