I see my primary work at this stage of my life as embodying possible futures, prioritizing well-being, and enabling and amplifying the amazing work of others. I have decades of experience managing and operationalizing work to "do good" and I am now seeking to shift toward embodying a regenerative paradigm and working more indirectly to build a future where we all can thrive.

I see my role as one of supporting others, providing access and resources, shaping strategy, showing how to take the theoretical and make it practical... revealing the magical in the mundane.

My goal is to be able to authentically bring a regenerative approach to my climate resilience work, to support my partners and grantees to help them reach their potential, and to help transform community projects from just "green infrastructure" into truly regenerative communities that prioritize well-being. (All while offering real alternatives to the current capitalist/supremacist status quo.)

I started my inner work journey in 2009 with traditional Western therapy, and transformed that practice in 2021 with a deep compassion practice, parts work, and meditation. My next areas of personal growth are to continue to reduce my reactivity/anxiety about an uncertain future, learn true acceptance of what is (so that we can work to change it rather than struggle against reality), and allow myself rest when needed.

I would like to be able to bring a regenerative lens to my strategy, philanthropy, and management roles in a deep and authentic way. So much of the time we want to do things differently but we are so socialized into the status quo (top down, authority/expert-driven, supremacist, capitalist mindsets) that we fall back into those patterns. I want to strengthen my regenerative muscles to enable me to escape the gravitational pulls of these powerful systems to allow new ways of being to grow.

I have invested so much: Many, many years of therapy. Many years of schooling and professional development. Many years of hard work to escape childhood poverty and build a stable life for myself. I am now at a place where I am more comfortable with uncertainty, and feeling strongly the need to contribute more deeply to building a world where we can all thrive, not just mitigating harm.

I am a trained anthropologist and public policy professional, and while I value those fields of study, they have grown less important to me over the years (although having a foundational understanding of kinship is valuable every day in this hyper individualistic society). The thinkers who are most relevant to me in recent years are James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Noam Chomsky, Jason Hickel, adrienne maree brown, leftists of color, Palestinian activists, the Zapatistas, communities on the front lines of environmental pollution and climate change, permaculturists, my compassion/meditation teacher... the list goes on. Anyone working with their hands in the soil is my teacher. And all of the more-than-human beings are my teachers, too.

Humans are part of a complex web of life. It feeds us and we feed it. And yet many of us humans (not all) do everything in our power to separate ourselves from that web, to cut the web down, to extract everything we can from it. This belief -- that we are separate from and must control nature -- is the foundation of the capitalist, supremacist systems that generate so much harm. I am both a small primate in a complicated material world and an immense cosmic being of vast potential. I am a vegan, a leftist, a reader, a lover of all plants and animals and mountains and waters, and someone just doing their best in a messy world.