A bridge between science and myth.
Thirty years across forty-five countries and six continents taught me one thing above all: data alone does not move us. Meaning does.
Field note · Oxbow Lake, Manu Reserve · 2019
I am an American scholar, explorer, and author working at the intersection of science, ecology, and meaning. For three decades, I have pursued a single question across continents and disciplines: how do human systems evolve to survive on a finite planet?
I hold a Ph.D. in Political Ecology from the University of Cambridge, working alongside governments, scientists, and communities to understand how human systems adapt or fail. Nearly two decades ago, I founded Our COMMON Foundation to support initiatives at the intersection of people, planet, and peace.
My TEDx talk on reimagining capitalism reached one million views and confirmed something I had long suspected: people are not short on data. We are short on stories that mean something.
I now focus on narrative fiction and creative nonfiction. I am writing a novel, Vanished, and a philosophical guide, One Choice. One Act. I publish essays on Elemental focused on meaning, myth, and living well in a secular age.
I return to nature, I listen, and I write what needs to be said.
I’m always grateful when you read.
Field note · Manu Reserve, Peru · 2019
“Your simplicity and complexity breed an enlivening, enthusiastic, and exalted peace; I am so excited that I know you; I am you.”
– from My Ode to Nature, 2017
Read the full inquiry on the Writing page →Thirty years of asking the big questions in five acts.
Diplomacy and fieldwork across the Americas and Europe. I mapped the politics of natural resources, power, environmental security and governance, and learned quickly that laws on paper rarely match the muddy, contested realities on the ground – sometimes bloody.
Completed a Ph.D. in Political Ecology at the University of Cambridge while working across international and environmental contexts stretching from Cambridge to Washington to the coastal wetlands of southern Honduras. There I sharpened the questions that would define everything that followed: why institutions fail, how extractive economics destroys ecosystems and peace, and why our “separation from nature” is an illusion.
Founded in 2007. Following my cancer diagnosis in 2012, I pivoted the organization into an incubator model to empower emerging leaders in social and environmental entrepreneurship. For eighteen years, I helped build and back their visions – supporting regenerative work and helping direct $5.2 million toward people, planet, and peace.
Transformation is rarely immediate. Surviving Stage IV cancer provided existential clarity, but my transition was a deliberate, decade-long evolution. As I incubated the visions of others, I began quietly exploring my own – writing for public outlets to translate systems theory into story. Recognizing that humanity is starved for meaning rather than just more data, I completed this transition in December 2025, stepping away from institutional leadership to turn fully toward a creative life.
Now I work as a scholar, explorer, and author. I am writing the novel Vanished and the guide One Choice. One Act., publishing Elemental and translating the truths of ecology, survival, and myth into stories.