Board of Directors

Marisha Auerbach

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Marisha Auerbach (she/her) is an internationally recognized permaculture educator, designer and speaker based in Olympia, WA with experience in both urban and rural environments. Since 2009, Marisha has been teaching permaculture and has taught many independent courses for people of all ages. At the university level, Marisha has been teaching permaculture with Oregon State University since 2011 and has taught at Bastyr University, Portland Community College, and the Maharishi University of Management. She has collaborated with the City Repair Project, Lost Valley Education Center, Aprovecho Education Center, and more. 

As an avid gardener and herbalist, Marisha specializes in food production, ecology and useful plants. Marisha has a permaculture plant nursery based at her farm, Permaculture Rising in SW Olympia. WA.   Marisha believes that it is possible to respond to the current environmental challenges, lower our ecological footprint and continue to live equally delightful lives through permaculture design.

Susie Martens

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Susie Martens (she/her) has a history of leadership experience. She has managed teams of people over the last three decades, most recently in senior management at a small business in Oakville.

In the community, she has been sowing seeds, working in gardens and kitchens, creating art, and connecting with people. She has a background in systems development, strategic planning, and problem solutions. Susie has studied NVC, and believes in team building and authentic communication.

Alice Rose

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I was born in Detroit in1954 and have finally grown into my “old lady name,”  Alice.  I have been a social worker by avocation virtually from the start, recruited by mother earth when I was about 10. I worked various jobs to get myself through school and later had professional jobs in public relations and sales.  My last professional gig was as a clinical social worker teaching skills and practicing Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which I consider to be an excellent system for managing and enjoying life through a synthesis of ancient wisdom and western science.  I have never enjoyed jobs much though I love good work.  I have been retired for several years and am fortunate to have the burning passion to…do my Alice Work which doesn’t have one clear simple description, but I spend much of my time on the themes of “Hey, everybody!…” and “This is a really cool thing you might like…”

My assumptions are:

* Everything is connected, we all need each other.

* We’re all doing the best we can.

My priorities are:

*  Health (ours and the planet’s +)

*  Relationships (all of them)

*  Helping you, if I can

Testimonials:

“Alice, you need to be on a board, you are never not recruiting for the cause.”                                                                                                                                                          farmer Kris

“I thought you had a lot of nerve to call me up like that but I also thought: ‘she’s not saying one thing I don’t want to hear.’”                                                                                                                                                          family farm heir

“My neighbors need you!”                                                                             recent seller of a hobby farm

“We need more people like you."                                                                                  Joel Salatin

I’m Alice and I approved this message.  Call or text as inclined: 503-789-9927

Dr. Tamsin Foucrier

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Dr. Tamsin Foucrier (she/her) is the director for the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Transformational Change at The Evergreen State College. She holds a PhD in Sustainability from Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, where her dissertation explored innovative teaching and learning spaces in higher education for sustainability entrepreneurship. Her work focuses on alternative business models such as cooperatives and social purpose corporations, and the essential support structures needed to build resilient and sustainable local and regional economies.

Dr. Foucrier is deeply passionate about transforming the way we do business in our world today in ways that empower communities and improve the ecological systems upon which we depend. She believes that the next generation of sustainability entrepreneurs can transform the world and address the most pressing sustainability issues we face today through radical, innovative business models and processes, and systemic economic change.

Chris van Daalen

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Chris van Daalen (he/him) is a lifelong environmental activist who found and loved the Fertile Ground Community Center (311 9th Ave) in 1998 as a place to ground his regional green building leadership by putting his hands in the soil. An early gardener and advisor to the Fertile Ground Board he helped write the original mission and strategic plan. At an opportune moment, Chris jumped at the opportunity to rent the house next store (911 Adams St.), which soon become "The EcoHouse" through a partnership with his other organization, the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild.  The property's yard quickly became known as "The Commons at Fertile Ground" as the team opened up the garden and led 10 years of community-placemaking that turned 1/2 of a city block into a model of sustainability at the neighborhood scale. Chris and the team worked together on many partnerships with Evergreen State College (hundreds of student interns), Komachin Middle School (over 12 hundred 8th and 9th graders), the City of Olympia, Media Island, and many others which you can read more about in the History Section of the website. As the founders' energy wound down, in 2020 Chris facilitated the purchase of the property at 911 Adams Street by the City of Olympia, and we offered our support and input in the development of Rebecca Howard Peace and Justice Park, and African-American centered park honoring Olympia's first Black Woman Entrepreneur. 

 

Meanwhile, Chris has been a regional leader in green building, sustainability and forest management over a 30 year career of coalition-building on a mission to transform the Northwest into the worlds first ecological economy.  Accomplishments and affiliations include Executive Director of Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, Shift Zero Alliance, The Code Innovations Database, Capitol Land Trust, Alliance for Sustainable Jobs in the Environment, Save America's Forests, and Student Environmental Action Coalition.  Chris now lives in Florida near his elderly father, and is pursuing a new career in sailing the Carribean, with mixed results so far.

Jenny Schlee

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Jenny earned her BSME in 'Product Design' from Stanford University, and developed many electro-mechanical projects from concept through production, including the Apple Newton, the Acer Aspire, and Frankfurt's Terminal 1 redesign for Lufthansa. Consequently she is named on several patents including the Vadem Clio, and Kohler 'Fart Fan'.

 

This century she has turned towards socio~cultural engineering, co-facilitating experiential T-Groups in Interpersonal Dynamics at the Stanford Business School, studying Watsu (aquatic bodywork and therapy), and completing an MA in 'Economics for Transition' at Schumacher College. Her thesis explored the role of our current economic system in creating stress and trauma states, wondering how we can address this individually, in relationship and in community.

 

Currently she practices as a forager, bodyworker, meditator, alchemist, and permaculturalist; assists  with Hakomi (somatic psychotherapy) trainings; and hosts inclusive movement jams. She is currently studying, stewarding, and shepherding Presence Sanctuary: 5 acres in rural Olympia, WA. In her spare time she cultivates community, sings harmonies for those at the thresholds of life, and evangelizes about the benefits of weeds, fermentation, relationships, inter~being, complexity and holistic health.