Guest Educators
Aviva Luz ARgote
Aviva Luz Argote grew up navigating the streets of New York City making sense of her surroundings through the lens of her bilingual and bicultural family. Her passions center on inspiring professional and personal resilience, modeling authentic leadership, and developing cross-cultural competency.
As the Faculty Director for the Institute for Nonprofit Practice and an independent consultant to NGOs and global philanthropies, Aviva draws from her practice creating generative workplace cultures, facilitating group processes, and building relationships among diverse stakeholders.
Previously, Aviva directed Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations where she managed global civil society research teams, and taught courses on transformational leadership, collaborative team design, nonprofit finance and fundraising. Aviva’s prior professional experience has focused on higher education administration, social sector leadership and bringing voice to historically marginalized communities, including work with the RAND Corporation, Los Angeles County, and Coro leadership centers.
Mandana Boushee
Mandana (ماندانا) is an Iranian-American herbalist, writer, and gardener. She currently lives on unceded Haudenosauneega territory also known as the Catskill Mountains, in the same valley she was raised.
Her exploration of plant medicine began in her childhood kitchen, where she first encountered the sound of the mortar and pestle finding rhythm, the smell of rue and angelica smoke curling up from the sofreh and the stories of her ancestors carried forward by her mother, Mina.
She weaves her Iranian ancestry, culture, and plant tradition into all facets of her work as an herbalist and is dedicated to re-centering the voices, stories, rituals, and histories of the BIPOC community, particularly around health, healing and food.
Abrah Dresdale
Abrah Dresdale, M.A., is an educator, curriculum designer, and a culture-shift consultant in the fields of social permaculture, prison food justice, and Jewish earth-based traditions. She is founding Coordinator of the Jail-to-Farm-to-College & Employment Program at the Franklin County Jail and serves on faculty in the Sustainable Food and Farming program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and at Omega Institute. As Director of Regenerate Change, she offers trainings and consulting services for change makers, organizations, and institutions, and educational materials such as her new book, Regenerative Design for Change Makers: A Social Permaculture Guidebook. More at www.abrahdresdale.com and www.regeneratechange.com
Karine Dutiel - KAN Landscape
Karine Duteil (she/her/hers) has a background in Landscape Architecture (BA Landscape Architecture – City College) and the Fine Arts (Print Making, Sculpting) at the Art Students League in NYC. Karine Duteil was previously involved with the Hudson and Pacific Designs- Landscape Architecture firm, in upstate NY, as Principal Designer creating the master plan for Bear Mountain, in NY, Depew Park in Peekskill, and Central Park in Prague. As a multi-disciplinary social artist Karine Duteil ran an art gallery in the Bronx and in the Financial District in New York City, she worked with the Woodstock Land Conservancy as Community Outreach and recently obtained her Permaculture Design Certificate with the Edge Project, a local permaculture organization. Karine Duteil is a member of the local Transition movement and the “Drawdown” solutions to address climate change.
Lauren Giambrone
Lauren is a Community Herbalist and the founder of Good Fight Herb Co., a Hudson Valley herbal business growing, gathering and locally sourcing bioregional plants for making and offering plant medicines and magic. In the Summer of 2017, Lauren opened a brick + mortar herb shop in Hudson, NY, and is committed to teaching and offering Herbalism to her communities from a source of passion, experience, commitment to social and environmental justice, and ever growing exploration into her ancestry and lineage.
Faith Gilbert
Faith Gilbert serves as a partner and administrative lead for Letterbox Farm. She is a farmer, researcher, and organizer that also serves as a farm business educator and consultant. Faith is the author of Cooperative Farming, a how-to handbook on forming collaborative farm ventures. She has been embedded in the Hudson Valley’s farm community and non-profit network through years of multi-faceted work. Outside the workday, you'll find her volunteer-organizing community initiatives with the Hudson Valley Community Wealth Fund, HV CSA Coalition, or the Hudson Time Bank - or making chicken dinners.
Maya Greene
Maya Greene is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Columbia-Greene Community College. Certified in both the Myers Briggs and Enneagram personality assessments, she is the author of the foundational communication textbook Through the Screen: Analog Communication in a Digital Age. She specializes in the intersections of human experience, personal perception, and interpersonal communication. When not teaching, find Maya raising heritage chickens and American Guinea Hogs on her farm or in the woods foraging edible and medicinal fungus.
Sandrine Harris
Sandrine Harris is a movement teacher, mindfulness meditation facilitator, trauma educator, and dancer. She is passionate about the connection between embodied practices, the health of the nervous system, and how relational consciousness shapes our lives and experiences. Sandrine holds a private practice in the Berkshires and CT, and facilitates international retreats and workshops. She earned a BA in Art History and Philosophy (Hunter College), and holds several certifications in mind-body modalities, including the Feldenkrais Method®. She has offered workshops at NYU, The Hotchkiss School, and Indian Mountain School.
Dr. Mindy S. Kole
Dr. Mindy S. Kole (she/her/hers) lives in Kingston, NY and is an Associate Professor of Business and Chair of the Business Department at SUNY Ulster, teaching and developing curriculum in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Management, Leadership and Business Ethics. Mindy has worked with faculty and staff to implement SUNY Ulster’s microcredential program with the support of SUNY guidelines. Recently Mindy was part of a team that developed SUNY Ulster’s New Start for Women program, designed to help women in Ulster County with economic challenges to come back to school, earn a one-year business certificate, as well as skills and a professional network needed for living wage employment and economic mobility.
Claudia Knab-Vispo: Farmscape Ecology
Claudia Knab-Vispo, PhD Land Resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Diploma (MS) in Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, Munich Germany. Claudia is a field botanist. After working on plant-animal interactions in Borneo and on ethnobotany in Venezuela, she has spent more than a decade documenting and teaching about plants in and around Columbia County. Her research and educational work are guided by questions such as: How has the flora of Columbia County changed since it was first documented in the 1930s? Which are the rare and vulnerable native plants that currently share the landscape with us, where are they found, and how can we protect them? What importance did/do the wild plants have for people? Which resources do they provide to animals? How can we make our farms and backyards more friendly for pollinators and other beneficial insects?
Paul Rix
Paul loves to build, move, and make music. Paul builds tiny houses, musical instruments, greenhouses, dances, and more. Paul holds a Masters of Education and has worked as an educator for 15 years teaching everything from high school English in inner city San Diego, woodworking, ESOL Environmental Science at a boarding school, to farm-based education at Hawthorne Valley. No matter the setting, he seeks to unleash the transformative power of direct experience for connecting with purpose and creating a better world.
Jessica Jane Russell
Jessica Jane Russel is passionate about nurturing creativity. Deeply rooted in community, Jessica is a mother, artist, writer, coach, educator and activist. In addition to dual degrees in Visual Art, English Literature, and a Masters in Architecture, she is certified in trauma-informed therapeutic guided drawing, 200 hours RYT yoga, and trained as an IFS (Internal Family Systems) informed coach. Jess founded Artroom Atelier, whose mission is to offer shared co-creative space focused on fostering flow states and design thinking.
Jessica is deeply committed to the power and importance of creative engagement — for both individual development and the wellbeing of our society as a whole.
Rachel Schneider
Rachel is Director of the Hawthorne Valley Farm Place Based Learning Center which focuses on farm based educational programming for children and families and professional training in the vocation of agriculture. Rachel holds a masters degree in Waldorf education.
Steffen Schneider
Steffen has over three decades of experience as a biodynamic farmer and herdsman. He is the former Director of Farming Operations at Hawthorne Valley Farm. Steffen holds a masters degree in agriculture from the Justus Von Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.
MARTHA SNOW
Martha is a facilitator, dancer, maker, and designer. In her day job, she facilitates collaborative groups of designers, planners, artists, and advocates to shape community-created public spaces across the five boroughs of New York City. In her dance work, she explores themes of home, embodiment, and wholeness through place-based improvisations that often interact with the natural world. Martha was the Experiential Learning + Regenerative Design Fellow during the pilot year of PlaceCorps, and is thrilled to witness the rebirth of the newest iteration of the program.
Connor Stedman
Connor Stedman is an agroforester, ecological designer, and wilderness educator. Connor is a lead educator at the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL)'s Ecological Literacy Immersion Program (ELIP). Connor has spent over a decade supporting students of all ages to build deep connections with the natural world as their ecological home. He leads the design firm AppleSeed Permaculture, working to envision and design new patterns of regenerative land stewardship.
Mike Pewtherer
Michael Pewtherer founded Woodland Ways in the summer of 2000 to offer young people a chance to experience living closely with nature. After graduating from the Hawthorne Valley School, he was the head instructor at Hawk Circle programs for a number of years. He also trained at locations around the world while perfecting his wilderness skills in full survival situations.
Michael worked for the National Park Service in the Smokey Mountains monitoring bear births, reintroducing the red wolf and tracking Russian wild hogs for relocation. He also spent a year in the Australian outback discovering how desert dwelling cultures differ from those of more lush environs. He is the author of Wilderness Survival Handbook: Primitive Skills for Short-Term Survival and Long-Term Comfort (McGraw Hill 2010), a comprehensive guide to wilderness survival and primitive living techniques for North America. He is also co-author of Wilderness Survival: Living Off the Land with the Clothes on Your Back and the Knife on Your Belt, (McGraw Hill and Ragged Mountain Press 2006). He has both written and been featured in articles as well as consulted on programs for television. He currently lives in Philmont NY.
Suzanne Snider
Suzanne Snider is a writer, documentarian and educator whose work is deeply influenced by oral history theory and practice. Her most recent projects include sound installation, essays and archive design. In 2012, she founded Oral History Summer School in Hudson, New York to explore nontraditional applications for--and experimental outcomes of--life history, audio narratives and collaborative speech acts. Her writing/audio work can be found in The Guardian, The Believer, The Washington Post, BOMB and Guernica among other publications and is also included in several anthologies and artist catalogues. She is the co-founder (with journalist Allison Lichter) of the Trauma and Journalism Workgroup, which seeks to support journalists and documentarians reporting on trauma and violence-centered stories. Currently, she teaches at the New School University and is completing a book about a divided commune in Middle America.
JORDAN ALEXANDER WILLIAMS
jordan alexander williams (they/them) is a queer Hoodoo, earth tender, and living ancestor. jordan was born and raised in the so-called Chicagoland area of Illinois, lands stewarded by many peoples and lineages including: Potawatomi, Miami, Ho-Chunk, and at least a dozen more Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island (so-called North America) since time immemorial, as well as Black Africans and Hoodoos** since before and after the Great Migration.
jordan works alongside members of Rise Up Kingston towards interweaving visions of community safety and collective liberation, and with members of the Kingston Emergency Food Collaborative to foster local, cooperative, and BIPOC-led food systems. jordan trusts that r/evolution will come by dancing in the moon and sunlight, getting our hands in the soil, caring for each other, and remembering the earth-sourced wisdom(s) of our ancestors.