Staff
Edie Farwell
Program Director: Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program
Edie directs the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program which aims to accelerate the shift to global sustainability by increasing the impact of well-positioned sustainability leaders. Fellows learn to address social, economic and environmental issues at their root causes while benefiting from a national and international network of sustainability champions from business, government, non-governmental organizations and philanthropy. Systems thinking, organizational learning and the discipline of vision are the suite of tools Edie and her team use to enhance Fellows' individual and collective ability to design and implement the systems needed to bring forth a life-sustaining society. Edie has a M.A. in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies; and a B.A. in anthropology and environmental studies from Dartmouth College. Previously she was director of the Association for Progressive Communications (www.apc.org) and co-led the APC multi-cultural team at the 1992 United Nations (UN) Earth Summit, Brazil; led the communications installation at the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, Austria; and managed a team of 40 women from 24 countries to provide Internet installation, training on strategic use, and information dissemination at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women, China.
Nancy Gabriel
Project Leader
Nancy Gabriel is a co-leader of the Meadowlark Project Leadership Laboratory a partnership with the nonprofit organization Northern Great Plains. Meadowlark is using the U-Process methodology to bring together a group of committed, influential leaders who care deeply about the economic, social and environmental future of the northern Great Plains and who want to work together to cause long term systemic change in the region.
Nancy is also initiative manager for the Sustainable Food Lab. Her responsibilities include supporting the work of the Innovation Teams and program documentation. Prior to working at the Sustainability Institute, Nancy was director of community partnerships at Tufts University College of Citizenship and Public Service where she was responsible for developing and maintaining community partnerships, and supporting community-based learning initiatives for Public Service Scholars and Faculty Fellows.
Prior to Tufts, Nancy spent seven years working at Second Nature, a nonprofit focused on higher education transformation in the area of sustainability. While there, she was director of education and training, and developed innovative programs for faculty, staff and students at institutions of higher education. As a member of senior management, she also had responsibility for setting strategic direction and designed Second Nature’s community involvement program.
Previously Nancy was director of operations for SatelLife, a nonprofit dedicated to improving global communications in health and the environment in the developing world, with a focus on increasing access to healthcare information in Africa. She also worked for several years in the high tech industry. Nancy holds a master’s degree in urban and environmental policy from Tufts University and a B.S. in business administration from the University of Vermont.
Nancy lives with her husband and two sons at Cobb Hill Co-housing in Hartland, VT.
Hal Hamilton
Senior Program Director
Hal is leading the Sustainable Food Laboratory (with Adam Kahane of Generon Consulting) and a new Meadowlark Leadership Laboratory (with Jerry Nagel of Northern Great Plains). During the 1980s and 1990s he led farm organizations, helped create an alliance among tobacco farmers and public health leaders, and pioneered a number of farm diversification and rural development initiatives. Hal was also founding co-chairman of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, and he has organized and led delegations of U.S. agricultural leaders all over the world. From 1973 until 1988 he was a dairy farmer in Kentucky, won a "Master Conservationist" award, and served on farm boards. He has written numerous columns and journal articles and three chapters in books on agricultural policy and change. Hal's education was at Stanford University and the State University of New York, Buffalo. His passion for sustainability is connected to his passion for the four children and three grandchildren he has with his wife Susan Sweitzer.
Andrew P. Jones (Drew)
Program Director
Andrew Jones consults with organizations, teaches system dynamics modeling and systems thinking, coaches leaders in organizational learning through the Donella Meadows Fellows Program, delivers public addresses, and writes columns and articles. Currently his primary efforts are creating system dynamics simulations on climate change strategy and with the CDC on chronic disease strategy.
Trained in Environmental Engineering and System Dynamics modeling through a B.A. at Dartmouth College and a M.S. at MIT, he worked as a research assistant in the System Dynamics Group at MIT and at Rocky Mountain Institute. Since 1996, he has focused his practice on helping individuals and teams solve problems by applying systems approaches, most recently in the areas of corporate sustainability, global climate change, land use policy, and public health.
He works out of SI's southeast office, in Asheville, North Carolina and teaches system dynamics at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and at the University of North Carolina - Asheville.
Christopher Landry
Director of Development and Communications - Sustainable Food Lab
Chris Landry serves as Director of Development & Communications for the Sustainable Food Lab. He brings twenty years experience in NGOs to the work. Most recently, he spent six years as Director of Development for The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, which is part of the America’s Second Harvest network of food banks. There, he directed a $4 million capital campaign to fund a building expansion that featured a photovoltaic system and other Green design elements.
Chris holds a B.A. in American Studies from Colby College and an M.Ed from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to his work in fundraising and communications, he has worked as a developer of interactive museum exhibits for children. He lives in rural western Massachusetts with his two sons.
Daniella Malin
Development and Communications
Daniella Malin has recently returned to the field of sustainability after a 10-year career as a software engineer. She now facilitates cross-sector communication and collaboration on challenges of economic, social and environmental sustainability and helps with research, writing and project management in these topic areas.
Daniella brings a background in cultural communications, journalism, environmental education and computer science to her work at the Sustainability Institute. Currently she serves on the facilitation team for the Sustainable Food Lab and helps manage the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program. She designs and administers web-based technologies that promote multi-sector, multi-national project collaboration, provides adminstrative support, helps with grant-writing, reporting, project evaluation, research and external communications.
Prior to her work at the Sustainability Institute Daniella wrote software on a three person team to monitor and control the world’s largest millimeter-wavelength radio telescope currently under construction in Mexico.
Daniella received her B.A. in Literature and Society from Brown University and lives with her husband and baby girl on a cooperatively owned farm where she also milks cows and keeps bees.
Philip Rice
Our Climate Ourselves Program Co-Director
Workshops and Consulting
Phil develops materials and leads trainings for the Our Climate Ourselves program with a particular focus developing tools and approaches that allow leaders to communicate the complex and sometimes counter-intuitive dynamics of climate change and the breadth of possibility for solutions. He offers briefings on emerging climate science, the range of solutions available to climate change, and the many opportunities for building a better world while addressing climate change. He has lead trainings for leaders on climate change for community groups, grassroots groups, educators, and faith communities.
Phil also conducts trainings and workshops on applying the tools of systems thinking to the challenges of sustainability. He co-developed a train-the-trainer workshop on systems thinking for sustainable development practitioners, and often leads workshops on the subject for clients that range from colleges and universities, to NGOs, to businesses. Phil works with clients on applying systems thinking to strategic analysis for change. In the past he has worked on topics ranging from forest issues, to marine hypoxia, to healthcare outcomes.
Phil has a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, and lives in Hartland, Vermont with Beth Sawin and their two daughters.
Elizabeth Sawin
Program Director Our Climate Ourselves
Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program
Writing, Teaching and Coaching
Beth is a scientist, writer, teacher, and public speaker who brings systems analysis together with an attention to vision, values, and human purpose.
In the Our Climate Ourselves program, Beth creates trainings and tools for effective leadership on climate change. Her work includes translating the most recent climate science into non-technical terms, sharing solutions for creating vibrant lives and communities with less reliance on fossil fuel, and tools for community conversation and action.
Beth is a writer who focuses on the systemic leverage points for a sustainable society. Her writing is focused on climate change in the Our Climate Ourselves Essay series which focuses on the ways in which the act of facing the reality of climate change can open us to understand our place in the Earth community and orient us towards life-giving choices.
Beth's writing is available here and has appeared in a variety of publications including, Utne Reader, Timeline, Population Press, Grist, and Annals of Earth. She was also a lead writer of Sustainability Institute’s report on Commodity Systems.
Beth teaches the tools of systems thinking, reflective conversation, and visioning within the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program, and in other workshops and trainings. She is an experienced coach of leaders in environmental sustainability. Her coaching emphasizes systems analysis, attention to personal effectiveness, and orientation towards one’s vision of a sustainable world. Most of her coaching occurs within the context of the Fellows Program but she is also available for personalized coaching in these areas.
She is a biologist with a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and learned much of what she knows about systems dynamics and sustainability from her mentor and SI’s founder, Donella Meadows. Beth lives at Cobb Hill Co-housing with her husband, Phil Rice, and their two daughters.
Don Seville
Co-Director, Sustainable Food Laboratory
Don Seville is a facilitator and systems modeler with the Sustainability Institute, which provides systems-based research and consulting on challenges of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. For the past 10 years, Don has worked in a number of public policy and corporate strategy arenas, including sustainable agriculture, diabetes and obesity, energy utility strategy, and forestry. His approach uses the analytical power of systems thinking to help organizations understand the drivers of persistent problems and to shape strategic options.
Don is the co-director for the Sustainable Food Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system. He is leading the Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, which is developing partnerships between companies and NGOs to pilot innovations that improve the competitiveness and sustainability of small-scale farming systems. Within the food lab Don is also managing the “New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships” project, a 4 year project with NGO and corporate partners to improve market access and livelihoods of small scale producers in Africa in crops including cocoa, dried beans, bananas, and fresh vegetables.
Don received his M.S. in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and has worked extensively with the Society for Organizational Learning. In 1997, he helped found the Sustainability Institute and Cobb Hill Co-housing, a farm based “eco-village” in Hartland, Vermont where he currently lives with his wife and son and is learning to raise sheep.
Susan Sweitzer
Project Leader, Learning Historian
Susan is a Learning Historian and project leader for the Sustainable Food Laboratory, and Meadowlark projects. She is currently on the facilitation team for the Food Lab, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system.
For six years following the loss of Dana Meadows, Susan authored SI’s monthly Dear Folks letter. She was also the Construction Liaison for the development of Cobb Hill Co-Housing and compiled the green building lessons from that project. She has authored two learning histories, numerous meeting and event reports.
From 1980 until 1988 she was a dairy farmer in Kentucky, organized farm women and led delegations of U.S. agricultural leaders meeting with their European counterparts. Susan was a public health professional in Kentucky, developing clinics in schools targeting underserved populations. She has served on the boards and executive committees of the American Friends Service Committee and Farm & Wilderness Camps. Susan currently lives with her husband on the farm-based Cobb Hill co-housing in Hartland, Vermont. B.S., Earlham College, A.D.N., Eastern Kentucky University.
Diana Wright
Researcher
Diana conducts research on topics of current interest at Sustainability Institute, including commodity systems, poverty alleviation, energy and climate change. She honed her research skills during more than a decade of collaboration with Donella Meadows and was a contributor of much of the research incorporated in the writing of Donella Meadows including Beyond the Limits, and The Limits to Growth: Thirty Year Update.
Diana manages the Donella Meadows archives at Sustainability Institute, and is editing Donella Meadows' uncompleted manuscript on systems thinking. She also handles permissions requests for re-printing Donella Meadows' published work, and orders for books, games and models.
Diana is a contributor to both the Food Lab and Sustainability Institute’s climate change educational program, Our Climate Ourselves.
Diana is a board member and advisor to a number of groups working on issues of sustainability at levels ranging from the local to the international. She lives with her husband and two children on their hill farm in Thetford, Vermont. M.S. Forest Ecology, University of Michigan.
Board
William Bittinger, Community Developer, Bittinger Associates, Hanover, NH.
Jay Bragdon, General Partner, Conservest Management, Woodstock, VT.
Jeanne Veatch Bragdon, Attorney, Land Use and General Practice, Bragdon Law Office, Woodstock, VT.
Jim Lyneis, Professor of Practice, WPI, Worcester, MA.
David Peart, Professor of Biology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
Kit Perkins, Executive Director, Intervale Center, Burlington, VT.
Vicki Smith, Town Planner, Hanover, NH