New Perennials Team
Bill Vitek
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Bill is Director of The New Perennials Project, Editor of New Perennials Publishing and a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College. He taught philosophy for 32 years at Clarkson University, always with the objective of helping his students understand that the philosophical imagination can and must do useful work in the world. Much of his writing has engaged ecological issues, including collaborations with Wes Jackson and The Land Institute for over three decades. Vitek and Jackson co-edited two books, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996) and The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008). Bill is also a semi-professional jazz pianist (that means he plays a lot and gets paid sometimes). billvitek.com
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Nadine Canter Barnicle
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Nadine is the Community Engagement Specialist for The New Perennials Project and co-teaches The Perennial Turn in Ag and Culture. She is also a Professor of the Practice in the Environmental Studies Program at Middlebury College and teaches the course Approaching Sustainability from the Roots each spring. She has a 30-year career in strategic community engagement, journalism, advising, mentoring, facilitation, and teaching that began with a master's degree thesis focused on the collaborative top down-bottom up community process to protect river segments under the Federal Wild and Scenic River Act. Much of Nadine's work focuses on strategic coalition building in the areas of land use, transportation, air quality, conservation, and climate change. She is a student and teacher of contemplative practices including Tai Chi Chuan. Her roots are in New England including 22 years in Vermont, but she also calls the Pacific Northwest home. wooddragonadvising.org.
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Marc Lapin
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Marc is father, spouse, gardener, and Associate Laboratory Professor of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College where his courses focus on the radically interdependent Earth and socioecological systems, the Perennial Turn, and nature conservation. Marc is also the College Lands Conservationist, responsible for the stewardship of Middlebury’s 6,000 acres of forest, wetland, field, and leased agricultural land. A consulting ecologist for over three decades, he works with state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, and private landowners. Marc’s interests in multiple ways of knowing, traditional ecological knowledge, ecophilosophy, and Earth-based spirituality, contribute to his leadership in both contemplative pedagogy and place-based education. To help co-create Earth-honoring culture and community, Marc also facilitates the Work That Reconnects and related gatherings and workshops throughout the region.
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Partners and Panelists
Donna Bailey
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Donna Bailey is the Co-Director of the Addison County Parent/Child Center in Middlebury, Vermont and has been since 2000. She has worked at the Center since 1998. Donna earned her Bachelor’s degree and M.Ed. at the University of Vermont and has worked as an educator and in human services in Vermont for almost three decades. Donna is a passionate advocate for children and families and is committed to societal change regarding issues of class, race, gender, and justice in our world. She is a parent of an amazing young actress and circus performer and guardian of an amazing six year old. Donna lives in Bristol, Vermont.
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Lindsey Berk
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Lindsey is a local foods advocate, environmental activist and agritourism entrepreneur. After spending seven years in marketing, advertising and PR in the private sector, Lindsey escaped the cubicles of New York City to find herself nestled in the vines of Mendoza’s wine country as a harvest intern. What was meant to be a five month hiatus became a four year journey around Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. A few life-changing roles working with a Peruvian disaster relief organization, a Guatemalan coffee cooperative, and various WWOOFing properties locked her into the good food movement for good.
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Marian Bouchard
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Marian Bouchard, MD is a family physician who has been deeply embedded in the Bristol, VT community for more than 25 years. She is Board Certified in Family Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). She also has an interest in Integrative Medicine and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Physicians (ABIHM). Dr. Bouchard did her residency training at Highland Hospital and the University of Rochester, just before she arrived in Bristol in September of 1993. She obtained her medical degree from McGill University Faculty of Medicine, and an AB in Biology from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges. Dr. Bouchard is passionate about primary care and enjoys teaching. She has been involved with UVM Medical School, offering rotations for medical students, and Middlebury College, offering "Jan Plan" programs and as a community partner in Middlebury's New Perennial Project. She is the mother of two teenagers, and enjoys an active life skiing, cycling, gardening as well as exploring Vermont and the surrounding mountains and waters by hiking, canoeing and camping. In her free time she dreams about a sustainable world.
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Ally Bonsant
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Ally Clark Consent is a student at the University of Southern Maine and has been working with ceramics for the last 6 years. She is majoring in nursing with a minor in ceramic studio art. She is set to graduate with her 4-year degree in December of 2021 and plans to become a registered nurse midwife. In addition to being a student, Ally likes to kayak, play basketball, and travel with her mom in their van. She lives in Augusta, Maine with her boyfriend and two cats.
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Megan Brakeley
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Megan is a parent, gardener, and educator residing in Middlebury. She has the great pleasure of serving as the Food & Garden Educator at the Knoll, the college’s student-run garden and mindfulness space. She is amazed by the endless creativity and reciprocity found in the natural world and the rich experiences of others, which inspire us all to reimagine what is possible in our collective future. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Middlebury College and a masters of environmental management from Yale School of the Environment.
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Matthew Burke
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Matt Burke is a sculptor and has exhibited works and taught sculpture for the past 30 years. Currently, he teaches part-time at Southern Maine Community College and University of Southern Maine. He also works part-time at the Union Street Bakery and as a funeral attendant for Brackett Funeral Home, each in Brunswick, Maine. In addition to enjoying many nourishing relationships within his community, he likes to cross-country ski, sail and explore Maine’s many hiking trails. Matt has worked in a variety of materials and formats throughout his career, always with an interest in spirituality, ecology and community. While teaching at the University of Kansas and forming an Art and Ecology program, he drew inspiration and support from many Kansan environmental organizations including The Land Institute, where he served as a contributor to the Ecosphere Studies Program. He lives in Lisbon Falls, Maine with his wife and son.
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Joshin Byrne
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Sensei Joshin is a Zen priest and teacher and the founder of Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community near Middlebury Vermont, which started in 2017. Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community offers a spiritual home to a global community of socially-engaged Buddhist practitioners who are conducting humanitarian, peace-building, social action and service projects based on the Zen Peacemakers’ Three Tenets of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Taking Action. Joshin maintains a core practice of bearing witness to homelessness and offers street plunges (periods of voluntary homelessness) in cities around the country, and frequently teaches at the intersection of Dharma, social suffering, and our complicated relationship to money. Professionally, Joshin spent much of his career working for social change nonprofits providing executive leadership in the areas of AIDS and HIV prevention and community-engaged philanthropy. In addition to being the guiding teacher at Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community, he is actively involved in the inter-spiritual New Monastic movement, and serves as an affiliate chaplain at Middlebury College.
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Clara Carroll
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Clara is an outreach worker at the Addison County Parent/Child Center and works directly with young families throughout Addison County with a particular focus on those experiencing housing insecurity and/or houselessness. She has worked at the Parent/Child Center for over 10 years and before that at homeless shelters and with incarcerated women and those under Correction’s supervision. Clara is committed to offering support through relationship and connection. Clara grew up in Starksboro, Vermont, received a BA from Colorado College, ran a small livestock farm in Starksboro and currently lives in Lincoln with her husband and two young children.
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Marc Cesario
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Marc, along with his wife Cheryl and daughter Normandie, have owned and operated Meeting Place Pastures in Cornwall, VT since 2009. The mission of their grazing business, The Perennial Grazing Company, is to provide Trusted Grazing Services for Livelihood, Livestock & Land. They believe in a grass-based and perennial agriculture and run a custom grazing service for cattle owners, along with a hair sheep enterprise to help achieve these goals.
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Don Chatfield
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Rev. Dr. Don Chatfield is an interfaith minister with a history of leading spiritual communities and nonprofit organizations. Don holds a Master of Divinity degree, a Master’s degree in Land Use and the Environment, a Master’s degree in Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Development. Prior to coming to All Souls, Don was the Executive Director of the Osage Forest of Peace, a contemplative interspiritual retreat center near Tulsa. At the Forest of Peace, Don launched a new School of Spiritual Direction and successfully hosted international interspiritual dialogues in partnership with the Charis Foundation for New Monasticism and InterSpirituality. Don’s previous experience includes working as Chief Operating Officer at the Sonoran Institute, a nonprofit environmental organization in the Western United States, and as the Executive Director of a nonprofit agency in Tucson dedicated to serving the needs of the homeless and working poor. Don served for a period as a therapist, working with those experiencing chemical addictions, sex and love addictions, and eating disorders. Don and his wife Karen have been married since 1987 and live in Shelburne. Don enjoys cross country and downhill skiing and bicycling.
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Gillian Comstock
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Gillian Kapteyn Comstock, MA, co-founder, and co-director of Metta Earth, which integrates regenerative farming, contemplative practices, community living, and sustainability education. Gillian offers mentoring, program facilitation, and leadership trainings. As a holistic psychotherapist, certified permaculture designer, and advanced yoga guide she synthesizes disciplines to support cultural renewal. She is dedicated to creating sanctuaries for others to experience vibrant presence. With a passion for discovering the wild in mind, body, and earth, she has led yoga retreats, wilderness quests, and trainings in nature sanctuaries around the world. Gillian has intertwined this work with grounding in regenerative agriculture and focalizes this in the care of gardens and greenhouses, carbon farming and grazing processes with Icelandic sheep, Milking Shorthorn cows, and heritage breed chickens, as well as the growing and wildcrafting of herbal teas and medicines. For more than two decades she has been a participant in the Assisi Institute community, which engages in a highly dynamic interdisciplinary investigation of Jungian psychology, creative process, mythology, and the new sciences. Mother of three adult children and grandmother of five, Gillian has lived a life immersed in cooperative community, the gift economy, and innovative social processes resonate with natural systems and wild nature.
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Cameron Davis
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Cameron Davis is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Art & Art History, and Environmental Program Affiliate, at the University of Vermont, Burlington. She teaches Painting: Color & Invention, Drawing, Perspectives on Making, and courses on Art & Ecology. Davis graduated from the University of Vermont, BA, Studio Art; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, 1981, MFA Painting, post graduate studies in Art & Ecology, Schumacher College, UK. 1998, 2015. Davis’ exhibits and in collections nationally. www.camerondavisstudio.com
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Rena Detrixhe
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Rena Detrixhe is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Kansas. Through objects and installations, ephemeral sculpture, performance, drawings, and process-based work, she explores systems of value and cultural relations to land and the more-than-human world with attention to histories of injustice. Her research has been supported by multiple grants and residencies including: a Serenbe Co-Esistere Residency, Stoneleaf Retreat, Tallgrass Artist Residency at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a two-year residency with Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, and a one-year Research Residency with The Land Institute among others. Detrixhe’s work has been shown nationally and internationally; recent exhibitions include Place out of Matter at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in NYC and In Times of Seismic Sorrows, at the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. Detrixhe holds a BFA from the University of Kansas.
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Clark DeVoto
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Clark Devoto is a junior at Middlebury College who became involved with the New Perennials Project after taking the Perennial Turn class in fall 2020. Clark has a personal background in small scale agriculture and is studying Environmental Anthropology at Middlebury. He’s worked with Interlace Commons on college land projects as well as Interlace Agroforestry Farm. He is happiest when moving livestock to fresh pasture or looking for food in the woods.
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Judy Dow
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For 35 years, Judy Dow has been a visionary mentor, braiding into all of her educational work core concepts of the Wabanaki people of New England, Respect, Reciprocity, Relationships, Responsibility, Reverence. Judy was the recipient of Vermont Governor’s Heritage Award for Outstanding Educator in 2004. She has taught students from pre-k to university and worked in community settings, reservations, prisons, and assisted living centers. Over the past few years she has taught in Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Quebec, California, Illinois and many other places. Her current focus is reclaiming historical Indigenous stories, and mapping these stories to provide youth with another perspective of history, science and math. These tools will assist them in making meaning of their own lives.
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Melissa Dubroff
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Melissa Dubroff (she/her/hers) grew up in upstate New York and developed an early affinity for The Green Mountains on family ski trips to Vermont. She attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an undergraduate and then moved to New York City to attend medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Following medical school, she completed an Internship in Medicine and Surgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan before returning to Columbia for her Residency in General Psychiatry and then her Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is board certified in Psychiatry and Neurology. Since 2005, she has been working in private practice in Bronxville, New York where she treats patients of all ages and a range of diagnoses. She has been providing continuous care for young people since the inception of her practice, and this continuity has enabled her to see the impact of mental illness on development and across the stages of the life cycle. Dr. Dubroff maintains her practice in New York in addition to working with True North Wilderness. She enjoys running, hiking and skiing, although she has mostly traded in her Alpine skis for Nordic ones. She now only races in attempt to keep up with her family’s beloved dog who is swift-footed and drawn to the distances by squirrels and her wandering soul.
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Willow Galusha
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Willow Galusha is a senior feb from Middlebury, CT majoring in Agroecology with a minor in music. They sing in the College Choir and the Mountain Ayres (the renaissance a cappella group), and they help lead multiple LGBTQIA+ groups on campus. Their hobbies include painting, knitting, crochet, embroidery, songwriting, farming, and plant-based cooking. This summer they have continued the work of a cohort of students, professors, and professionals involved in the New Perennials Project aiming to address the land use practices of Middlebury College on its significant amount of land assets. Willow and their fellow students (Ella Roelofs and Clark Devoto) have worked closely with Meghan Giroux, New Perennials Project Partner and Agroforestry expert, in assessing two sites of agricultural land owned by the college as places to implement agroforestry practices to address problematic past agricultural practices and enhance experiential education opportunities for students at the College. They hope to design and implement an agroforestry landscape in a plot of land just west of the college near the Knoll.
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Paige Giasson
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Paige Giasson is a student at the University of Southern. She is majoring in Art, Tourism and Hospitality.
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Meghan Giroux
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Meghan Giroux is an experienced agroforestry researcher, practitioner, and technical service provider, as well as a seasoned land use planner with 15 years of experience growing perennial crops in both agricultural and nursery settings. Meghan has a Master’s of Science degree in Agroforestry and is a current Climate Adaptation Fellow. Through her company, Interlace Agroforestry LLC, and with funding from the USDA and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, Meghan is establishing a 23ha site with all five USDA-defined agroforestry represented. Additionally, Meghan has 25 years of experience in organizational development, project management, and marketing and outreach, having worked for many for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
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Sam Guarnaccia
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Sam Guarnaccia, composer and classical guitarist—Master of Fine Arts, California Institute of the Arts; created and directed the guitar program of U-Denver’s renowned Lamont School of Music; instituted programs at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont, as Spanish scholar, performer, and teacher. He writes music almost exclusively in the service of supporting an evolved consciousness of humanity’s responsibility to, and interconnectedness with, the entire Earth Community, within the great scientific story of Cosmogenesis and the Epic of Evolution. His major works: 9 Peace Songs for Children; A Celtic Mass for Peace—with Celtic Spirituality author/poet John Philip Newell; the Emergent Universe Oratorio, world premiere with full orchestra, Cleveland, June 2017; O’er Every Living Thing; and the unpublished recent work, THRESHOLD—for chorus and orchestra, primarily without lyrics, expressing the voices of other-than-human Earth beings and life support systems—all owe a debt to the extraordinary cosmic vision of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, and their understanding of the ‘undivided wholeness’ of matter, pattern, process, and spirit. With creative partner/producer Paula Guarnaccia—a near future performance with the Albany Pro Musica chorus/orchestra, at the iconic Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (TSBMH), New York, May, 2024. (SGM) www.samguarnaccia.com.
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Emily Hoyler
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Emily is an educator, facilitator, mother, partner, and mountain dweller. Her work centers on transforming herself and the systems she is enmeshed within toward justice, joy, and sustainability. She is currently the managing director at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education, as well as a professional affiliate with Shelburne Farms. Emily has worked as an educator/learner for over two decades, in roles such as classroom teacher (grades 3-8 & undergraduate), environmental educator, curriculum specialist, and facilitator of professional learning and systems change. Her current interests include unsettling self/systems, critical pedagogies, Education for Sustainability, compassionate systems awareness & social fields, community-engaged learning, place-based learning, youth leadership, climate justice, and middle level education. Emily co-wrote Shelburne Farms’ Cultivating Joy and Wonder, an early childhood curriculum guide to educating for sustainability. She has also served as a Visiting Lecturer in Education Studies at Middlebury College. She is a current doctoral student in the University of Vermont’s Transdisciplinary Leadership, Creativity & Change Ph.D program, and holds a B.Sc in Geography from the University of Victoria, in BC Canada and an M.Ed in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University. She delights in weaving these interests and experiences together in perpetual pursuit of vitality & resilience.
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Saifa Hussain
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Chaplain Saifa supports the Muslim and Interfaith community at Middlebury College. She completed her BA in Religious Studies at DePaul University, with a focus on Islam in South Asia. She worked as a community organizer in Chicago and Vermont. In the last few years, she explored and committed to sustainable models of living. She attends Bayan’s Masters of Divinity program at Chicago Theological Seminary.
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Thomas Jackson
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Thomas Jackson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Middlebury, Vermont. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and Hunter School of Social Work, he has worked with a wide variety of populations in New York City and Vermont. He completed his analytic training at the Brooklyn Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy with a particular focus on the work of Carl Jung. For thirty years he has studied and practiced many of the techniques championed by the Center for Mind-Body Medicine; hence his delight at encountering this model and its integration of so many powerful practices. He facilitated many groups at the Fordham Tremont Center for Mental Health in the Bronx in the late 90s including for men convicted of domestic violence. Aware of the power of group work, he is extremely grateful to be facilitating groups again and is especially interested in this model’s applicability for students and migrant workers. In addition to the professional PTPs and ATPs, being involved in the Pine Ridge, Broward County and Western Maryland programs has been a great privilege.
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Laurel Jenkins
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Laurel Jenkins’s choreography has been presented by Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, REDCAT and the Getty Center. She danced in Peter Sellars’ work and was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Jenkins has received funding from the French Institute, the Vermont Arts Council and the Asian Cultural Council and currently is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Middlebury College.
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Christopher Kiely
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Christopher Kiely is a teacher and healer primarily focused on reclaiming and restoring the simple balance between mind and nature in the complex lives of modern people. Leaning ever more towards learning than curing, transformation than remediation, his approach emphasizes the merciful disciplines of daily practice and internal cultivation as the primary means of ensuring positive personal growth and planetary evolution. Firmly grounded in a lifetime in the internal arts of old China and other deep wilderness explorations, Chris is a forager, herbalist, acupuncturist, Tai Chi Chuan instructor, meditation coach, translator of ancient Chinese texts, sometimes spiritual activist and whenever-he-can-help-it accidental mystic who is working to clarify and preserve the natural path to whole being health without the use of synthetic interventions or industrial technologies. Ultimately seeking to ensure open and unfettered access for all to the deep resources of old-growth mind that keep the lasting heart alive and thriving, Chris walks the middle way and plies the space between the great hope that all we are doing is indeed enough while never forgetting at the very same time that it could always be more.
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Katelyn Lipton
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Katelyn Lipton is a Korean American artist currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied Environmental Studies and Studio Art at the University of Vermont focusing on communicating environmental concepts through visual art. Lipton’s work explores the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world to help realize our place as stewards of the land and our communities. She finds inspiration in the stillness of nature and the ecological relationships that mirror those of humans. Lipton’s art making process is often meditative and cathartic, using various mediums, including woodcut and linocut printmaking, collage, drawing, painting, clay and graphic design, to process and express the current state of the world.
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Craig Maravich
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Craig Maravich is the Co-Founder of Courageous Stage – a program that uses theatre arts to activate creativity in schools and communities across Vermont. He is a member of the faculty at The Bread Loaf School of English and Program Director of Bread Loaf’s Beyond the Page program. He has been a company member of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble since 2010. He has held teaching positions with Middlebury College Theatre Department, The University of Vermont, St. Michael’s College, Hofstra University, and The Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. His work as a teaching artist in Vermont includes the development of several classes and community initiatives with The Flynn Center for the Arts, The Town Hall Theater, and The Community Engagement Lab. As a practitioner, Craig’s work as an actor spans a professional career of 20 years and includes credits with leading theatres across the country. Craig is a recipient of a Vermont Thriving Communities Grant and the 2021 A. Bartlett Giamatti Award for Professional Development: Bringing creative practices into Bread Loaf and Middlebury classrooms and, through that work, cultivating inclusive learning and teaching environments. He holds an MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting/George Washington University.
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Nancy Winship Milliken
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Nancy Winship Milliken, b. 1962, runs a place-based environmental art studio committed to building community through collaborative expressions of reverence for the land, humans, and animals. Milliken creates sculpture, installations, prints and photographic enactments concerning the health of the land and surrounding communities, aiding in the desired change for the (socio)environmental course of our society.
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Evelyn Monje
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Evelyn Monje, a sophomore at the University of Vermont who juggles full-time enrollment in school, works as the Youth Program Specialist at UP for Learning, and has been drawn to supporting youth through her work in connection to the Rooted Organizing Community. At UP for Learning, a major responsibility with this statewide nonprofit is her coordinating the multi-stakeholder Winooski School District’s Antiracism Steering Committee that reflects an exceedingly diverse community with 60% students of color, many refugees. With Rooted Organizing Community (ROC), Evelyn has been working in partnership with her peers to create a deeply connected curriculum for youth. Evelyn truly invested in her community and is always excited to be learning more.
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Mark Orten
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Mark joined Middlebury College as the Dean of Spiritual and Religious Life and Director of the Scott Center in 2016. In his various roles he works to make spiritual and religious life relevant, central and visible on the campus. Supporting all mature religious expressions alongside worldviews of no faith is a life-long commitment, growing out of his own pluralistic journey. Mark has experience and various certifications working with intentional community among people of vast differences, employing interpersonal and inter-group dialogue models, implementing restorative practices for mediation and healing, as well as leading contemplative practices in several modalities (yoga, labyrinth, mindfulness meditation). Mark lives in Middlebury with his spouse and four children and enjoys meditation, reading, walking conversations, cooking, board games and keeping up with politics.
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Clark O'Bryan
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Clark O’Bryan, b. 2001, is a Midwestern transplant to central Vermont from Evanston, Illinois, and a student of architecture and biology at Middlebury College. Personal goals include laying a full track of stone wall dry, tight, and honest, for townspeople to enjoy for generations.
Mentor: Nancy Winship Milliken Studio |
Corie Pierce
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Corie Pierce is a farmer and educator. She is the owner and operator of Bread & Butter Farm in South Burlington/ Shelburne, Vermont. Bread & Butter Farm is a diversified farm where they produce delicious and creamy raw milk, grass-fed beef, pastured raised pork, and vegetables, specializing in growing greens all winter long in unheated, passive solar greenhouses. Additionally, the farm is a community hub, hosting a winter concert series (Silo Sessions) led by her musician partner Chris Dorman and other educational workshops, internships, and programs. Leading up to farming full-time, Corie attended the UC Santa Cruz Apprenticeship and then worked at Michigan State University where she developed and launched the Organic Farming Certificate Program based at the Student Organic Farm. Most recently, she was the garden manager and Sustainable Agriculture faculty at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont. Corie grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire, and got her farming start at Barker’s Farm in Stratham, New Hampshire. She loves basketball, yoga, biking, music, and spending time with her partner Chris Dorman and their children Henry and Samantha.
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Kendal Pittman
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Kendal Pittman (Intern Summer 2020 & 2021) was first introduced to the New Perennials Project through the second iteration of the Perennial Turn class in the fall of 2019. Now a senior majoring in Education Studies and American Studies with a concentration in Food Studies, she was particularly excited to connect perennial ways of thinking with her work as a future educator. Upon completing the Perennial Turn, she applied the new frameworks and ideas she had discovered to Nadine’s Sustainability from the Roots Up class the following semester. As a New Perennials Project intern during the summer of 2020, she worked to widen the project’s audience by creating a workshop for local elementary school students and compiling a glossary of key terms. Central to her work as an intern was exploring how social justice and perennialism are deeply interconnected and critical to pursue as we imagine and build new futures. Originally from Leverett, Massachusetts, Kendal enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and helping plants grow whenever she has the opportunity.
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Lindsay Pontius
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Lindsay Pontius has been a professional actor, director, and teacher working both regionally and internationally for over 25 years. Pontius is Co-Founder and Director of Education of Courageous Stage, and also serves as Education Director of Town Hall Theater (THT) in Middlebury, Vermont. Over the last seven years, Pontius developed the THT Education Program, which annually serves more than 20 schools and a thousand children in Vermont. She has a doctorate in Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Vermont.
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Meghan Rigali
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Meghan Rigali is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Interdisciplinary Studies; teaching certificate from Upper Valley Educators Institute; licensed art educator K-12 in Vermont; Wilderness EMT from SOLO. Rigali danced in studios from San Francisco to New York, including Dartmouth College where she performed in Cistern: An Uncommon Ritual (2007). Work as a wilderness therapy guide with at-risk youth in Vermont transformed Rigali’s relationship to the natural world. She completed national service in Vermont Housing & Conservation Board AmeriCorps repairing and weatherizing low income homes with teams of volunteers in 2013. As an interdisciplinary artist-educator, Rigali’s work is informed by practices in Tibetan Buddhism, Eco-psychology and contemporary wilderness rites in addition to being a certified yoga teacher. Her art work has been exhibited in the United States and Ethiopia. Meghan Rigali is a Founding Core Teacher for Willowell’s New Roots Project and summer camp instructor offering original curriculum in the interdisciplinary arts, outdoor survival & medicine for youth, wildcraft, mind-body cultivation and holding council around the fire.
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Ella Roelofs
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Ella Roelofs became involved with the New Perennials Project through the Perennial Turn class in Fall 2020. She connected with Meghan Giroux at Interlace Agroforestry Commons through the Community Connected Learning aspect of the class and really enjoyed learning about the benefits of agroforestry practices for Vermont farms, especially in the face of a changing climate. Starting in spring 2021, she has been working as an intern to learn about agroforestry and to help develop agroforestry plans for college-owned agricultural land. As an Environmental Chemistry major and Food Studies minor, she has a strong interest in learning about how perennial crops can improve soil health and make food systems more sustainable. Ella is originally from Newburyport, Massachusetts, and she loves hiking, skiing, running, gardening, and exploring Vermont.
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Matt Schlein
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Matt Schlein M.A., M.S.W. , a former actor, writer, and storyteller, has spent the last twenty-two years as Founder and Director of both the Walden Project and The Willowell Foundation. The Walden Project takes students out of the traditional classroom and provides students grades 10-12 an interdisciplinary writing and environmental studies immersion in the woods of Vermont. The Willowell Foundation is a non-profit devoted to the consilience of arts, education, and the environment. In addition to artist residencies, summer camps, forest preschools, Willowell advocates for holistic solutions that connect people with the environment, themselves, and each other. The above mentioned work has been documented internationally in a range of newspapers, magazines, films, and radio stories, including NPR, Edutopia, and The Huffington Post.
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Jon Turner
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Jon Turner operates Wild Roots Community Farm in Bristol, focusing on resilience through food systems education and service learning projects. Wild Roots is a 10 acre operation that includes annuals, perennials, integrated livestock, and is the new home for Wrens Nest Forest Preschool. Jon is the recipient of the National Farm To School Innovations Grant, Farmer Veteran Coalition Fellowship Fund and the Spirit in Nature Eco-Award.
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Sister Gail Worcelo
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Gail Worcelo is a Catholic sister and a co- founder along with Bernadette Bostwick and the late Passionist priest and cultural historian Thomas Berry, of Sisters of the Earth Community whose mission is: Honoring and Protecting Earth as a Single Sacred Community. Currently the community has a worldwide base of Partners in Mission, and sisters located in Vermont - USA, Indonesia and Kenya. Sr Gail travels around the world offering retreats and programs on the Spirituality of Earth and Cosmos, Interspecies Connectivity and our Place in the Story of the Universe. Sr Gail is a Liturgical dancer, and has a passion for the theater arts and bringing beauty to the world.
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Raechel Zeller
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Raechel Zeller (Intern Summer 2020) joined the New Perennials Project as a summer intern after taking the Perennial Turn class in the Fall of 2019. As a Conservation Biology major Raechel is interested people's connection to place through the communities-human and other than human- they find themselves part of, and particularly in the ways they sustain themselves through and with their environment. As an intern Raechel developed a workshop for local high school students and co-created the New Perennials Glossary and continues her work now at the College's garden creating an inventory of perennial plants and educational signage about perennial agriculture. Originally from the mountains of Western North Carolina but calling Vermont home now, Raechel enjoys ultimate frisbee, hiking, swimming, boats, gardening, and cooking in her free time.
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