Meet the FIC Team

Cynthia has traveled to over a hundred intentional community projects worldwide and is Co-Director of the Foundation for Intentional Community. She helps connect people to intentional communities as a coach for seekers and marketing consultant for growing projects. She is the founder of Ecovillage Tours, was an officeholder on the Board of Trustees for the Global Ecovillage Network (2015-2020), and was Director of the youth ecovillage network NextGENNA (2013-2018). Cynthia lives in an intentional community in Vermont where she is currently building a passive solar home and tending a permaculture garden. www.cynthiatina.com

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Kim has been working with the FIC since 2014, largely managing the operations of both the Communities Bookstore and Communities Directory. Kim is a member of Sandhill Farm, serves on the board for Red Earth Farms, both neighboring communities to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeast Missouri. She’s dedicated to the re-imagination of 45+ year-old Sandhill Farm and also strengthening the wider community in her region. When not immersed in spreadsheets, she is often found working in her gardens, walking her two dogs, or crafting something by hand.

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Neil is a founding owner and co-developer of Swan’s Market Cohousing, and longtime FIC ambassador. Over the last 20+ years, he has held volunteer and leadership staff roles with the Cohousing Association of the US and the Cohousing Research Network. His national communities tours have introduced hundreds to the world of cohousing and intentional communities. He is a certified life coach who helps individuals through life’s many transitions. He loves working with seekers, residents of intentional communities, nonprofit technology leaders and other coaches. Neil is a connector and champion for open source software. neilplanchon.com

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Osa is Co-Director and IT Director at the FIC. She has a background as an architect, developer and project manager within which contexts she’s focused on how to translate sustainability into practice – in particular how technology can promote healthy human habitats. She has eight years experience of the UN system, where she developed a love for local communities and a strong belief in their power to self-organise, develop and test their own methods of implementing holistically sustainable practices, her passion lies in providing tools that both locally support this work and that enables a global sharing of the result. She is based in Sweden, where she is the co-founder of Bygden and a member of the baugemeinschaft factory, Egnahemsfabriken.

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Lauren brings with her 10+ years of non-profit marketing and event planning experience. She currently lives in a tiny house within a small intentional community in Portland, OR. In her spare time, Lauren manages a community garden, serves on the board of The Talented X, and provides marketing support for a new-ish vegan permaculture farm and animal sanctuary called Wild Earth Farm & Sanctuary. You can find Lauren biking around Portland, knitting/crocheting, and learning about + practicing emergency preparedness, herbalism, gardening and other permaculture-y things!

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Adam is a technologist and entrepreneur with a passion for finding ways we can work together to create sustainable, harmonious human society on planet Earth. A lifelong communitarian, Adam brings a decade of experience running a web development and consulting agency to his role as FIC’s IT director. When not writing code or planning upgrades for ic.org, he writes essays, investigates cooperation through the Collective Intelligence Network, plays music in a family folk band, and travels from his home base of Cortes Island, Canada.

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Bianca is a journalist who dropped the newsroom to explore communitarian ways of living in this world. She volunteered at intentional communities in Brazil and Asia and has been living at permaculture farms since 2019. She is a member of Pertim.org, a collective that connects small organic farmers to vulnerable communities in peripheral regions. She is also a farmer and seed saver.

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Dasha is a queer, dog-loving, writer, and alternative lifestyle seeker. In 2016 her therapist, Mary, enlightened her to the ideas and direct experience of intentional community. Mary described living at Twin Oaks and encouraged Dasha to retreat to a Zen Buddist Monastery called Blue Cliff. She was 19 when these wholesome experiences enriched her path, seeding within her a particular craving for intentional community. She frequents community gatherings, particularly those centering and offering refuge to BIPOC. She is eager to contribute to exposing fellow BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ identified folks to the realities of intentional community, and blossoming alongside them.

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Emlyn fell in love with communal living at Birdsfoot Community in Northern NY in 2012. As a community organizer and outdoor educator, Emlyn aims to promote the natural world as a space for everyone, regardless of race, culture, or economic background. She sees intentional communities as a solution to environmental, cultural, and economic concerns and is excited to help others find and curate community in their lives through her work with FIC.

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Kim worked as a Certified Public Accountant in San Antonio, TX before moving to Northeast Missouri in 2005. She is a founding member of Red Earth Farms, a co-homesteading community, and lives there on a homestead of 12.6 acres named Dandelion, an egalitarian-style sub-community based on the ideals of simple-living, permaculture, feminism, and open kind communication. She works part-time doing accounting work for the FIC, GEN-US and some local non-profits. Kim likes to be the change she wishes to see and aims to have a lifestyle such that if everyone on Earth was living this way there would be plenty for all.

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Ecovillage and Permaculture enthusiastic with a technological professional background, Rodrigo has traveled the world contributing to meaningful projects, interacting with different communities to get a wider perspective of how our existence on this planet can become healthier and more sustainable. Currently, he is living a nomadic life traveling Brazil with his partner and their dog in a small van, researching eco-communities and eco-projects. He is also a web developer for GEN, a member of CASA Latina and CASA Brasil, and enjoys discovering new agro-ecological products, surfing, and hiking.

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Ryan lived in Nickel City Housing Co-op’s Plankton House in Buffalo, NY for two years before moving to join an intentional community forming in New England. She is passionate about skill sharing, removing access barriers, and creating space for community connection. She spends her free time hosting events and potlucks, crafting things by hand, and hiking to nearby swimming spots. Ryan is a serial hobbyist and has recently taken an interest in pottery, gardening, and beekeeping.

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Todd has been a core member of a variety of intentional communities in western North Carolina over the last decade and is dedicated to building community in both residential and nonresidential settings. Following a career in marketing professional services, he intentionally shifted to offer his marketing services to community builders and is now FIC’s Marketing Manager. Outside of his professional and community life, he can most likely be found out in the garden or hounding the countryside in search of wildflowers, mushrooms, rocks, minerals, and more. 

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Cassandra has pioneered the field of cooperative real estate to serve those seeking to share land and create community. She has years of grounded exposure to what it takes to establish community in rural, suburban and urban settings. Cassandra has lived in intentional community since 2006 and in 2016, co-founded Landwell, an emerging intentional community near Sebastopol, CA. In 2010, Cassandra partnered with Green Key Real Estate to bring the values of stewardship, reverence, and cooperation into the practice of real estate.  A founding board member of CommonSpace Community Land Trust, Cassandra works on inspiring community and land related projects as a consultant and guide. http://www.cassandraferrera.net

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Crystal is a North Carolina native active in the cohousing and polyamorous communities. An engineer turned educator, she speaks and writes about ways communities can be more welcoming to people of all kinds of backgrounds. Crystal is the website editor for Black & Poly, an organization promoting healthy polyamorous relationships for people of color. She also serves on the Editorial Review Board of Communities Magazine published by the Global Ecovillage Network-United States. Her book The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization will be published in late 2020.

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Harvey is a cofounder (1974) of Dunmire Hollow Community, and helped reinvigorate the FIC in the mid-80s, serving on FIC’s board over 30 years, as well as on several committees. He is past president of the Communal Studies Association. He owns a custom woodworking business, and serves the Waynesboro community as high school soccer coach. He and his wife Dorie grow organic fruits and vegetables in their garden. He enjoys soccer, bicycling, and playing harmonica. He hosts community visitors, touring bicyclists, and SERVAS travelers, giving them a glimpse of a more community based lifestyle.

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Kaison Tanabe resides in an intentional community in Oakland, CA. He currently works on the growth team at IDEO’s online school, IDEO U, where he focuses on acquiring, retaining, and engaging new and existing learners. Kaison takes a human-centered approach to support organizations committed to environmental + social impact and believes diverse intentional communities can teach us how to better live, work, and create with one another. He is incessantly curious, an avid cook, and enjoys wrestling, roller hockey, and spending as much time as he can outdoors.

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Marty has lived most of his adult life (35 years) in intentional community. He is a co-founder of Network for New Culture, a bi-coastal organization which has promoted personal growth, personal empowerment and social change since 1995. He has been a leader in the business world, acting as a corporate and classroom trainer, and project manager, including being a founding partner of Abacus, Inc., an early Apple distributor that was key in Apple getting a foothold in the business world. Marty has brought his considerable experience to FIC for the past 13 years.

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Neha is committed to tapping into collective insight & foresight in order to restore & regenerate our relationship with the planet, primarily through strategy and partnerships. Currently, she focuses on returning to the  commons, decolonizing impact lenses and repairing our relationship with land.  In past chapters, she explored diverse & equitable clean energy economies, energy efficiency & intelligence in the built environment, facilitation for group alignment, and bridge building between disparate networks & nodes. Consistent inquiries include: What will allow beings to cooperate harmoniously across scales? In conversations about creating the future, how do we ensure all voices and stakeholders are in the room?

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Sky Blue (they/them) has spent 20+ years living in a variety of intentional communities. Their parents met in Twin Oaks Community in the late 70’s, where Sky moved as an adult and raised a child. Sky has visited over 130 different communities, worked with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, Global Ecovillage Network of North America, organized numerous communities conferences, and served as the Executive Director of the FIC. They are currently seeking a group of people to start a new community, and contribute to a variety of community-oriented projects as an organizer, consultant, and speaker.

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Yana Ludwig is a cooperative culture and intentional communities advocate, and an anti-oppression activist. She serves on the Foundation for Intentional Community board, and is a trainer and consultant for communities, worker owned cooperatives and nonprofits. Her book, Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption, was the Communal Studies Association 2017 Book of the Year. She’s a host on the Solidarity House podcast (focusing on climate, socialism and culture change) and a co-founder of Solidarity Collective (an income sharing community in Wyoming). Yana is also a Democratic candidate for US Senate in 2020. Her website is www.yanaludwig.net

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