PAN

Permaculture Association of the Northeast

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PAN Board

Rev Dele; New Paltz, NY – Facilitating Director (Term: 2019-2025)

Rev Dele of Soil and Souls is opening the environmental narrative to include the voice of Mother Nature so we create JOY with our Impact. Trained as a Climate Reality Leader and spiritual director, she helps leaders to heal human crises with Nature-based solutions. As grandmother, theologian and permaculture professor Dele teaches that justice begins with inner balance and flows through a community in diverse banks of love. Dele is developing national initiatives that will calm our social and weather chaos. The Spirit of Resilience radio show raises a platform for women Earthkeepers all over the globe. We invite dialogue, offer solutions, and connect with allies who invest resources on the ground and in campaigns we lead. The emerging Soil & Souls nursery also provides leadership training and community education on resilience in communities that need it most. Her newest book “Breath of Life” is a 5 week Bible study that helps us grow closer to God and grow a secure community by loving creation. She also serves as council member of the National Congress of Black American Indians, Facilitating Director of Permaculture Association of the Northeast and the UCC Climate Council. Dele’s B.A. is from University of California-Riverside and M.Div. from Howard University School of Divinity. She serves in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ and maintains Baptist and Indigenous affiliations.

Selected Articles

Joe Nisbett; Jersey City, NJ – Board Treasurer (Term: 2022-2025)

Joe Nisbett is a landscape designer, community planner, and permaculture consultant. His work focuses on creating resilient communities, regenerative landscapes, and social justice.

Joe received his first Permaculture Design Certificate from Grow Permaculture in 2016. He holds a master’s degree in both Landscape Architecture and Community Planning from Auburn University. At Auburn, Joe was a researcher for regional green infrastructure planning. He is also the founder of the Permaculture Tigers Student Association. Joe now lives in Jersey City, New Jersey where he is the principal of Nisbett Design LLC. Joe also sits on the Board of Directors for Beyond Organic Design. He spends his free time community organizing, meditating in the garden, and cooking fantastic soups.

Stephanie Aubert; Loudon, NH – (Term: 2019-2025)

Stephanie Aubert is the founder and Creative Director of Grasshoppers Landing LLC and the company’s educational arm Grasshopper Academy. She earned a Masters in Environmental Management from Western Colorado University with a concentration in sustainable and resilient communities. She has managed a farm to food pantry program in Snohomish County, Washington, spent time working on food policy in New Orleans, and helped to coordinate the Southwest Seed Library.  She received her PDC back when PAN was PINE, while simultaneously lifting Plymouth Permaculture Project off the ground at her alma mater of Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Her passions include regenerating ecological literacy and increasing access to Permaculture education.

Linh Aven; NH – (Term: 2022-2025)

Linh Aven is a biologist, chef, and a farmer. Her love of learning has taken her from watching ladybugs as a child growing up in southern California, to a Biology degree at Whitworth in Spokane, WA, a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine at Boston University, and a biotech start-up in Boston. Feeling called to nurture those around her through food, she took off her lab coat and put on an apron stepping into non-profit catering, baking from-scratch croissants at a French bakery, product development as the Executive Chef of the healthy fast-casual restaurant B.Good…and is now full-circle back to creating a space for ladybugs to thrive. Her experience in foodservice provided a broader understanding of how we eat: large-scale agriculture, lengthy distribution chains, and a lot of waste. This led her to think there has got to be a better way! Inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, she found herself reading deeply about permaculture, agroforestry, and holistic practices all pointing back towards a return to ancient and indigenous ways of growing food. Linh started to understand that somewhere in our striving towards innovation and efficiency in food production important knowledge was lost. Things like dandelions, which we all think of as weeds, are actually edible from root to flower. She thought, what if a farm focused on growing foods that grew as well as weeds? What if that farm also focused on perennial crops that only need to be planted once yet harvested over many years? Crops like chestnuts, hazelnuts, elderberries, herbs, and so many more! 

Her farm, the Dandelion Project is a journey into the world of edible perennial crops, rebuilding soil health, and sharing abundance. Linh’s drive is to apply her systems-thinking and scientific approach to create a more natural ecosystem in which to grow food for her local community. Her focus is on exploring the culinary possibilities of edible perennials that naturally grow well in the New Hampshire Seacoast, transforming them into delicious pantry products. When you visit, you’ll likely find her in a berry patch, hands deep into the soil, marvelling at the insects and plants all around.

Dan Boynton; Campton, NH – (Term: 2020-2023)

Dan Boyton lives in Campton, NH with his family where he runs Serendipity Farm with his wife Jess, as well as Stratus Telecom, a cloud-based phone and internet provider.  Since his family purchased their farm in 2016, they have been converting the horse pasture into a productive, living landscape that allows for both annual and perennial production for the family and the community.  As the farm has grown, so has Dan’s commitment to sharing the principles of permaculture with others.  He sits on the Campton Select Board, Conservation Commission, and Zoning Board of Adjustment, where he focuses on informing community decisions through the lens of permaculture ethics and design.  Outside of work, farm, and community commitments, Dan loves to cook, mountain bike with his family, backcountry ski, and hunt/gather.  Dan holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from Colby Sawyer College.

Jessica Pelchat; Durham, ON – (Term: 2022-2025)

Jessica Pelchat is a permaculture designer and social entrepreneur that teaches, consults, and practices regenerative landscaping in order to reconnect people with nature and reverse the effects of climate change through the activation of inspiring and regenerative spaces. She is a graduate of the Social Responsibility & Sustainability Graduate program at the University of Toronto and is Permaculture Design Certified (PDC).  Her multidisciplinary work over the last two decades has been focused on creating a more sustainable future through the building of social purpose organizations and actioning climate change remediation of various forms. She served as Chief Sustainability Officer & Executive Vice President for a Canadian Profit 500 company, led the Canadian arm of a purpose-driven management consulting firm,  and currently serves as the Chairman of the CSR Advisory Council for the UofT Sustainability program and member of the Climate Action Advisory Committee for the Municipality of West Grey. She has long been an advocate for the return to more natural processes and self-sustaining systems, and regularly mentors emerging leaders in sustainability. 

As an avid gardener for the last 20 years, she stewards 50+ acres in Southern Ontario and experiments with different regenerative applications such as food forests, Hügelkultur beds and mushroom cultivation, as well as providing community programming and workshops. She enjoys nothing more than to rewild a new site and fill it with wonder through her organization, Wild Child Regeneration.

Jeff Cantara; Portsmouth, NH – (Term: 2020-2023)

Jeff Cantara has worked as a wildlife biologist, wildland firefighter, organic farmer, and solar designer– anything to be outdoors!  After studying at UVM, he headed to the Rocky Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska to work on a variety of ecological studies before returning to New England in 2001. He now splits his time between the Casco Bay region of Maine and the Lamprey River watershed of New Hampshire where he designs innovative solar arrays and serves as the Director of Groundswell Farms, a collaborative farmspace that offers affordable access to land for farmers, facilitates resource and equipment sharing, and provides mentorship. A former tillage-based organic farmer who “saw the light”, Jeff now explores the ideas of human and landscape rewilding, the practice of tending the wild, and the question of what constitutes appropriate agriculture- all through the lens of permaculture. When he’s not grafting trees or inoculating logs, you can find him paddling for waves on a wooden longboard, experimenting with wild cider fermentations, practicing ancestral skills, and exploring the remaining wild areas of the Gulf of Maine bioregion with his son. Largely self-taught in the permaculture realm, Jeff plans to continue his education through one or more of the many PDC programs available throughout New England. He is particularly interested in restoring the once highly-forageable and calorically-dense landscapes of the Northeast to begin reversing the damage wrought on humans and other beings through 400 years of extractive economic practices.

Jesse Labbe-Watson; Rockland, ME – Northeast Liaison to Permaculture Institute of North American (PINA) and Past PAN Facilitating Director (2014-2018)

Jesse of Midcoast Permaculture came to permaculture over the last decade by way of the movements for social and environmental justice.  After a brief apprenticeship at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, Jesse formally studied permaculture with Charles and Julia Yelton at the Newforest Institute and Humustacia Gardens.  He graduated from their Advanced PDC in October 2008.  He has gone on to start a permaculture landscape design/build and sustainability consultation firm in the Midcoast area.  He has consulted for private residents, market gardens, farmers and non-profit organizations.  He is the primary organizer for the Midcoast Permaculture Network which hosts workshops, meetups and potlucks.  He was also a principal logistics coordinator for the 2010 and 2014 Northeast Regional Permaculture Convergence hosted at the MOFGA fairgrounds.  He currently serves as president of the board of PAN – the Permaculture Association of the Northeast.  Jesse brings an artist’s paintbrush, a philosopher’s pedantry, a tracker’s attention to detail and a holy fool’s comedic relief to the company he keeps.  He lives with his young family in Rockland.

Bonita Ford; Perth, ON – Board Coordinator 

Bonita teaches permaculture, Nonviolent Communication (cooperative communication), Reiki (energy work), and gardening. She is the author of the book “Embers of Hope: Embracing Life in an Age of Ecological Destruction and Climate Chaos” and has led workshops around the world for over 19 years.

Bonita has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Queen’s University, a M.A. in Holistic Health Education from John F. Kennedy University in California, and a diploma in Permaculture from l’Université Populaire de Permaculture in France. The land she calls home is 1/5 of an acre in Perth, Ontario, which is unceded Algonquin Territory on Turtle Island. Bonita is grateful to the Anishinabe Grandmothers and Grandfathers in her life who have influenced her way of being on the land.

Bonita loves eating wild foods, talking to the plants, and dancing barefoot on the Earth. To learn more about her work, visit www.livinghEARTH.net and www.embersofhopebook.com.

Previous Board Members

  • Liz Kelly, Rumney, NH – (Term 2017-2021)
  • Patty Love, Rochester, NY – (Term 2018-2021)
  • Ruth Roudiez, Boston, MA – (Term 2018-2021)
  • Malene Welch, Roxbury, MA – (Term 2019-2022)
  • Jack Eaton, NH – (Term: 2018-19)
  • Maya Norton, Boston, MA – (Term: 2018-2019)
  • Brianne Merrill, NY (2018)
  • Lisa DePiano, Holyoke, MA – Clerk/Secretary (2015-2018)
  • Steve Whitman, Plymouth, NH –  (2016-2018)
  • Taylor Shuler, Ithaca, NY – (2016-2017)
  • Jono Neiger, Leverett, MA – Co-Founder (2008-2016)
  • Keith Morris, Jeffersonville, VT – (2009-2016)
  • Lisa Fernandes, Portland, ME – (2010-2016)
  • Steve Gabriel, Ithaca, NY – (2009-2015)
  • Alice Oldfather, Albany, NY – (2013-2015)
  • Laura Weiland, Kingston, NY –  (2014-2015)
  • Uma Alice Lo, Queens, NY  – (2010-2014)
  • Mark Krawczyk, Burlington, VT – (2009-2012)
  • Roxy (Finn) Laurel, Chicopee, MA – Co-Founder (2008-2011)
  • Patrick Gibbs, Co-founder (2008)
  • Rob Petito, Co-founder (2008)

We stand on the shoulders of giants:
The current board wishes to acknowledge and appreciate the work of the original organizing committee: Jono Neiger, Roxy Finn (now Roxy Laurel), Patrick Gibbs, and Rob Petito, along with the additional early board members Keith Morris, Steve Gabriel, and Lisa Fernandes.  Please read our History to learn more about the beginnings of this organization.

Interested in joining the Board? Learn more about joining or submit your application here.