Adam Boyce

Adam believes housing is foundational to the culture of our communities. He wants to optimize housing not only for deeper connection with each other and the planet, but for our psychological well-being. With a degree in Experience Design and having worked for multiple tech companies in Learning and Development, Adam has dived deep into how to help people thrive. Currently, Adam has much more flexibility as an independent handyman in Oregon City, OR. Adam also is a husband, father of three, and volunteers with Clackamas County Search and Rescue.

Brad Smith

Brad has been a musician, woodworker, salesperson, business Dennientrepreneur, community organizer, and social entrepreneur and is now based in Eugene, OR. He was co-founder of Interplay, Sweetwater Collaborative, Youth Drought Project, Community Healing House, and now the Resilient Communities Network.

He has visited or lived in numerous ecovillages, intentional communities, and co-housing developments. He helped organize and lead the New Era Convergence, a weekend retreat in August 2022, out of which the Resilient Communities Network was conceived. He currently lives in an urban housing co-op on a community land trust as experience to help establish the first prototype rural Resilient Community this year.

David W. Newton

David brings over four decades of hands-on experience in sustainable development, renewable energy, and community-based entrepreneurship. As the founder of multiple mission-driven businesses, including a healthcare publishing company and an online activated charcoal store, David has also led grant-funded renewable energy initiatives and provided consulting for intentional community and ecovillage development. His background spans construction, property management, marketing, and technical innovation, including a biomass gasification project and the design and build of geodesic structures. David contributes his lifelong passion for resilience, stewardship, and regenerative living, multidisciplinary skill set, and grounded leadership to the vision and implementation of the Resilient Communities Network. He currently resides on the Navajo Nation near Farmington, New Mexico where he and his wife Lydia serve as volunteers.

Eric Whalen

Eric is a permaculture designer and environmental educator who specializes in ecosystem restoration and community-based food systems. He has worked internationally on regenerative agriculture projects and consults with local organizations on sustainable land use, water management, and community education. Eric is passionate about bridging traditional ecological knowledge with modern regenerative practices to empower communities and strengthen resilience.

Julie Wolf

Julie has spent her life exploring permaculture, intentional community, and regenerative design. With experience in editing, writing, and project coordination, she supports teams in creating cohesive communications and structures for sustainable projects. Julie contributes her organizational skills, creative problem-solving, and facilitation experience to Resilient Communities, helping to connect people and ideas into actionable plans for community resilience.

Patrice Cortes

Patrice is a community engagement strategist and environmental advocate. She focuses on creating spaces where diverse voices are heard and meaningful collaboration can flourish. Patrice has led numerous workshops on civic engagement, social design, and sustainability, emphasizing inclusive practices and regenerative impact. She is based in Sacramento, CA, and brings her skills in facilitation, education, and strategic planning to the Core Team.

Ryan Hartnett

Ryan is an Environmental Solutions Architect dedicated to solving climate change through regenerative, nature-based systems. He works at the intersection of ecology, technology, and community design, focusing on regenerative agriculture, biodiversity restoration, and human-included ecology. By combining whole-systems thinking, field observation, and data-driven modeling, he designs community-scale land-use models that restore ecosystems, draw down carbon, and support long-term human wellbeing. Based in Mountain View, California, Ryan brings a background in data engineering, research administration, and finance, and holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from Santa Cruz Permaculture and a degree in Accounting.

Sage Faraday

Sage is a regenerative agriculture designer and educator, with experience in ecological restoration, permaculture, and intentional community living. She facilitates hands-on workshops and design projects, helping communities integrate sustainable practices into their daily lives. Sage brings a balance of practical skills, teaching, and vision to the Core Team.

William "Willi" Paul

Willi is a communicator and producer at heart. He has worked in civil engineering, facilities management, and community building for start-ups. He writes blogs for the Resilient Communities Network. Recent eBooks by Mr. Paul include: "remembering Earth," "luna bee," "bear bag camp," and "lunar garden," that feature sustainability blogs, poems and stories.

Please see "Building resilient villages in western Oregon with AI Tools" and "Four Stories from an Environmental Storyteller," both online. Mr. Paul has achieved "Creator" status on Facebook (with 5.9K followers). Willi's private group on Facebook is "William Paul's Big Bang."

Antigone Allena

Antigone is a native Oregonian who grew up on the coast and has spent most of her years living in various places in the Willamette Valley. She feels a deep sense of home in this area. Her BA is in Community Health and she has been teaching wellness workshops, Pilates, yoga, & bellydance classes for over 35 years, creating opportunities for people to improve their health and develop connections.

Lately, she has been practicing natural alternative building, having taken a deep dive and studied with numerous instructors to gain a wide range of techniques & styles. Her passion is to create collaborative opportunities to encourage our ancient urge to make structural art out of earth. She loves to help folks engage in earthy projects in an intimate & meaningful way.

After getting her PDC, she has also been using elements of wholistic design as part of a larger worldwide movement to develop sustainable ways to create positive changes in our relationship with each other and the planet. She has lived in various intentional (and not so intentional) communities, and is excited to network and collaborate with people who are seeking more opportunities to share.

Becca Perry

Becca has lived communally most of her adult life, in both formal (Lost Valley, Tiara Intentional Community, Duma) and more informal settings with family and friends and other shared households. She is also a trained mediator and professional therapist and former facilitator of Heart of Now.

She is also an ecstatic dance DJ and co-facilitates Turning Tides Community Dance on Sundays in Eugene, OR. She believes that win-win-win solutions are the only solutions and that play is an essential part of a healthy life.

Bill Klaverkamp

Bill is owner of the Urban Garden Company, which promotes and facilitates home gardening with tools and educational materials crafted for the Pacific Northwest. They educate for sustainable home food production from seed to compost, encouraging local independent economies, promoting post-carbon practices in anticipation of a post-carbon world, and striving for adaptability in the face of climate change.

He is past president of the Eugene Chapter of The NW Eco Building Guild, an alliance of builders, designers, suppliers, homeowners, and partners concerned with ecological building in the Pacific Northwest. They work to build local living economies, safeguard the ecological diversity of their bioregion, and champion human health and community.

Bill is a former Board Member of Euglena Academy, an independent, college-level school offering academically rigorous workshops, courses, events & resources about new systems sciences to students with any educational background. Their long-term goal was to facilitate the emergence of human cultures able to survive and adapt to the significant challenges of the 21st century - notably climate change and peak oil - grounded in a systems sciences knowledge of how nature works. He was the Manager of Operations at EcoBuilding Collaborative of Oregon and has established information systems, quality control systems, personnel review processes, and inventory systems.

Chris Lee

Chris is a scientist, tech startup founder, professor, and researcher in fields ranging from evolution, game theory, accident investigation, and computer science. In connection with Resilient Communities, he has focused on developing its core economic principles and financial models: mechanisms such as equity share; import replacement (a la Jane Jacobs) as a means of "unplugging" from the extractive economy; and the "bootstrap" phase (as opposed to maintenance phase) of Ostrom's 8 principles for a sustainable Commons.

He also made this website.

Dennis Britton

Dennis offers coaching inspired by patterns within nature and the principles of Aikido, which enhance meaningful productivity and strengthen resiliency. He has applied these adaptive practices to enhance the world's most well-known brands such as HP, Macy's, Sephora, Visa, Nike, GE, Cisco, Stella & Dot, and various startups. He has trained executives, product, program and technical managers in large and small organizations in customer-centered, lean, and responsive business practices. He has also organized many open spaces and unconferences as well as founded what became the largest agile meetup on the west coast. Living in Rogue River, Oregon, Dennis is a frequent speaker at many product, agile, and regeneration conferences across the country.

Mark Lakeman

Mark is the founder of the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon and served as the Co-Director of Creative Vision from 1995 to 2008. He has also been a long-time board member as well as a core member and project leader for the annual Village Building Convergence. Mark is the founder and principal of Communitecture, Inc., a cutting-edge design firm with sustainable building and planning projects at many scales.

These highly popular projects include such social and ecological innovations as The ReBuilding Center, numerous ecovillage projects and infill co-housing examples, and many projects involving low income and homeless people in the development of sustainable community solutions.

After working for several years in the 1980's as a lead designer of large-scale corporate projects, in 1989 Mark embarked on a series of cultural immersion projects with numerous indigenous societies in order to derive place-making patterns which could be applied in urban settings in the United States. These patterns include broad participation, local ownership, transference of authority to local populations, creative expression in planned and unplanned processes, and social capital as the primary economic engine of change. His travels lasted until 1995 when he returned to Portland to undertake a series of creative, culturally restorative initiatives. In addition to the above-mentioned projects, his cooperative initiatives include the Last Thursday Arts and Culture Project, the Intersection Repair Project, the T-Horse mobile public gathering place, Dignity Village, and the annual Earth Day celebration of localization.

Maha Syed

Maha proudly hails from the picturesque city of Raleigh, North Carolina. With a background in operations, critical thinking, and data analysis, she brings a polished edge to her work, fueled by a passion for catalyzing radical change and promoting self-care in today's world.

Rooted in the principles of regenerative system design, she firmly believes in the transformative power of choice and is dedicated to environmental regeneration and community building. She is always eager to connect with like-minded individuals who share her enthusiasm for making our planet a better place to call home. She says, "Let's unite our efforts and change the world!"

Ricky "RC" Clarke

As an enrolled member of the Numunu (Comanche) Nation, RC cherishes the innate wisdom of the natural world. He imparts his vast knowledge and passion for sustainable living as a permaculture instructor at Oregon State University. He earned his Permaculture Design Certificate from Atitlan Organics in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and his Permaculture Teacher Training Certificate is from Jude Hobbs of Cascadia Permaculture and Rico Zook in Granada, Spain.

With over 15 years of immersive experience, RC has honed his skills in permaculture across a variety of ecosystems in North America, Central America, and Spain. RC's expertise lies in whole system design, striving to achieve ecological harmony through advanced techniques in silvopasture, food forest development, syntropic agroforestry and integrated alley cropping systems.

His consulting work spans large-scale farm and ranch design projects, concentrating on critical areas like soil erosion control, water remediation, wetland restoration, and native plant propagation, particularly in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. He has facilitated sustainable farming transitions for coffee farmers and supported indigenous communities with natural building and eco-community design. He now oversees Spotted Wolf Nursery and Farm and is the president of High Quality Gardens, Inc., within the ancestral Kalapuya/Siuslaw territories of the Willamette Valley. RC studied fine art at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the University of Montana.

Upgeya Pew

Upgeya devoted his life to understanding humanity’s existential challenges and building compassionate, resilient communities. His path included communal living, study with a spiritual master, deep meditation and group work, and many years of learning, practicing, and teaching Compassionate Communication (NVC). He also explored Sociocracy, implemented Permaculture solutions, and worked in software engineering and systems administration.

Upgeya facilitated “Connection Circles” to help people strengthen communication, heal the impacts of domination culture, and cultivate compassionate, partnership-based ways of being. He envisioned spiritually grounded, community-based living in Southwest Washington focused on resilience, localization, and creating real value. Upgeya lived in Vancouver, WA, and his legacy continues to inspire compassionate wisdom culture.