The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast: Recent Episodes
Neal Collins
A show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good—conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate. Brought to you by Neal Collins and Latitude Regenerative Real Estate, the show explores topics that showcase the reciprocity of people and place to inspire the transformation of our homes and habitats. Join the Mighty Network community at https://latitude-regenerative-real-estate.mn.co or follow us on Instagram @latitude.regenerative.re
What if we could build with trees without milling them into straight, uniform boards? On this episode, Neal Collins is joined by Amelia Baxter, co-founder and CEO of WholeTrees Structures, a company reimagining timber construction by using unmilled, round timber as structural elements in buildings.
Together, they explore how WholeTrees transforms the often overlooked “cull trees,” trees that would otherwise be removed as excess byproducts, from well-managed forests into beautiful, durable building components. The conversation goes beyond architecture and design to touch on stewardship, entrepreneurship, and how to invest for sector-wide growth of bio-based and natural building materials.
From the fascinating origin story of the company, the technology and systems that they have developed that has allowed them to scale internationally, to the investment and growth path the company is on, this is a great story that invites us to reconsider how and what we build with.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
Across every continent, degraded landscapes tell a sobering story: wetlands drained, forests cleared, tidal flats diminished. The tragedy isn’t that humanity lacks the knowledge to restore them—we know how to bring these ecosystems back. The real challenge lies in how to finance restoration at scale.
In this episode we sit down with Adam Davis, co-founder of Ecosystem Investment Partners, a firm that has channeled over a billion of dollars into restoring ecosystems. The discussion dives into the world of mitigation banking, a financial mechanism that has unlocked private capital for large-scale ecological restoration. For many, it’s an unfamiliar concept, but as Adam explains, it has become a powerful tool for revitalizing degraded landscapes.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
Jasper van Brakel is on a mission to regenerate the world with the power of finance and business
As CEO of RSF Social Finance, he leads one of the most innovative financial institutions redefining how capital can serve life—not just profit.
In this episode, Jasper shares how his journey through the early days of finance and impact investing led him to the frontlines of the regenerative finance movement. He unpacks RSF’s bold embrace of the term “regenerative,” and the framework they’ve built to evaluate whether a business is truly healing people, planet, and place—by its very existence.
We dive into:
- Why the type of capital matters as much as the investment itself
- How RSF is using fixed income and Donor Advised Funds to unlock high-impact opportunities
- What medium-return, deeply regenerative investing really looks like in action
If you’ve ever asked, “How can my money do more good?”—this conversation is for you.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
Rob Avis—designer, educator, and founder of 5th World—is using cutting-edge technology to transform how we design resilient and abundant landscapes. In this episode, Rob shares how his journey from petroleum engineer to permaculture leader inspired the creation of 5th World, a company that merges data intelligence with ecological design.
After working with thousands of students and designing hundreds of properties, Rob saw a major challenge: critical site data—such as climate patterns, property timeline scans, ecosystem services, topography, soils, hydrology, solar exposure, and zoning—was expensive and difficult to access. With 5th World, that information, which once cost tens of thousands of dollars, is now available at a fraction of the price.
This conversation explores:
- Why poor site planning can lead to costly mistakes and long-term problems.
- How data-driven insights can unlock better design decisions and regenerative lifestyles.
- The path to creating landscapes that are resilient, abundant, and regenerative.
- Rob’s vision for bringing ecological design into the mainstream.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
What if the future of real estate was rooted in regeneration, not extraction?
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Neal sits down with legendary permaculture designer Penny Livingston, whose work has spanned continents and inspired a generation of land stewards, builders, and community weavers.
Penny shares her journey from conventional landscape design to studying under permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison—and how that shift redefined not just her profession, but her entire worldview.
Together, they explore:
- What it means to design human environments with nature, not against it
- How permaculture principles can inform development at every scale
- The power of whole-systems thinking in real estate, architecture, and community
- A moving story from her work with the Ketchwa people of Peru
- Why regenerative design doesn’t just sustain—it creates overflowing abundance
This is a conversation that goes far beyond gardens and green roofs. It’s a reminder that how we design our places is how we design our future.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
For years, we’ve seen the rising demand: people looking for more than just a home. They want community. They want connection. They want to live where food, farming, and stewardship are part of daily life.
But while the vision for agrihoods has gained attention, real-world examples that fully integrate regenerative agriculture, diverse housing, and a true sense of place are still few and far between.
In this episode, Neal sits down with Steve Bruere, President of Peoples Company — one of the nation’s leading agricultural brokerages — to explore both the current state of regenerative agriculture and what it actually takes to bring one of these communities to life.
Steve isn't just advising from the sidelines — he’s developing Middlebrook, a 540-acre agrihood outside of Des Moines, Iowa that blends working farmland, residential neighborhoods, and vibrant mixed-use spaces. With a 20-acre organic farm at its core, Middlebrook represents a compelling look at where agriculture and placemaking intersect.
We dive into the shifts happening across the ag industry, the unique opportunities (and challenges) of building agricultural communities, and why projects like Middlebrook may just be the blueprint for a new kind of living.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
What if the future of housing isn’t high-rises or cul-de-sacs—but homesteads, gardens, and walkable villages where food is grown just steps from your door?
In this episode Neal sits down with Judith Horvath of Fair Hill Farm—a former corporate professional turned agroecologist who’s helping reimagine how we live, grow, and build community.
Judith’s journey began humbly with a few backyard chickens and tomato plants—but after facing resistance from her suburban HOA, she chose to go all in. Trading suburban restrictions for rural freedom, she and her family embarked on a bold journey into homesteading, permaculture, and regenerative land design.
Now, more than a decade later, Judith is not just growing food—she’s part of a modern back-to-the-land movement. From backyard transformations to agri-centered community planning, her work helps people reconnect with the land and each other in deeply nourishing ways.
Tune in to hear her powerful story, lessons learned from the land, and her vision for an agrarian future that brings resilience, health, and connection back into our homes and neighborhoods.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
In this episode, Neal sits down with Micha Mikailian, CEO of Geoship, to explore a bold attempt to reimagine housing at a time when affordability, resilience, and ecological design are more urgent than ever.
Geoship is reviving Buckminster Fuller’s iconic geodesic dome—not as a nostalgic throwback, but as a scalable, bioceramic solution to today's housing and climate crises. But this episode goes deeper than domes. Neal and Micha unpack the organizational model behind Geoship, how the company is being built around community, and why its mission is resonating so strongly before a single unit has even shipped.
Whether you’re dome-curious, dome-skeptical, or somewhere in between, this is a rich conversation about architecture, systems change, and what it takes to build new models in a world that’s desperate for them.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
When we talk about housing innovation, our minds usually go to big cities buzzing with new ideas. But in this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, host Neal Collins sits down with Wendy Reid Fairhurst of Reclaim CDO to explore a groundbreaking approach taking root far from the usual hotspots—in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
An architect-turned-community-builder, Wendy shares how her own challenges as a single parent searching for co-housing led her to develop a radically different model: Community-Led Development. Together, Neal and Wendy unpack how this approach is rewriting the script on affordability, belonging, and neighborhood design.
This is a story of resilience, regeneration, and real possibility—even in the most unexpected places. Tune in and discover how a housing revolution can start with one person’s lived experience and ripple out to reshape community.
Reclaim CDO website: www.reclaim-cdo.org
Killick Ecovillage website: https://killickecovillage.ca/
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
In this episode, we explore the inspiring story of Rooted Northwest, an agrivillage in Arlington, Washington that is transforming a former dairy farm into a thriving co-housing community. With over 85% of the land conserved as pastures and forests, Rooted Northwest weaves together two villages and a collectively managed regenerative farm.
Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring a visionary project like this to life—from assembling co-founders and shaping new county codes, to creating a supportive framework for farmers stewarding the land.
We’re joined by returning guest Katie McCamant, a pioneering co-housing leader and development consultant who helped introduce the concept to the U.S., alongside Rooted NW co-founder and permaculturalist Dave Boehnlein.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
The construction industry is at a turning point. Pre-manufactured housing seeks to disrupt conventional building methods due to labor shortages, weather delays, and material waste, as a faster, more efficient alternative. But efficiency shouldn’t come at the cost of health or sustainability.
In this episode, Neal Collins sits down with Evan Ryan, a founding member of Croft, a company pioneering a new approach to homebuilding. By integrating the speed of manufacturing with the benefits of natural building, Croft is able to produce homes that are actually carbon negative. Their homes use locally sourced straw for insulation, actively sequestering carbon rather than emitting it. On average, each Croft home locks away 146 tons of carbon, while conventional homes of the same size release between 120 and 260 tons of CO2.
Join us as we dive into Evan’s journey, the company’s vision, and the challenges and opportunities in reshaping the future of housing. If you care about regenerative design, sustainable materials, and creating homes that are both high-performing and healthy, this episode is for you.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
This episode is a front-row seat at a masterclass in regenerative development. Mazyar Mortazavi, CEO ofTAS Impact, joins us to share how his Toronto-based firm is redefining urban development by weaving community, sustainability, and impact into every project.
Mazyar’s journey is deeply personal—the organization’s strategic plan is following his old master's thesis on anti-gentrification strategies. His interest in this was shaped by growing up in an immigrant family and witnessing firsthand the effects of gentrification in Canada’s largest city.
Under his leadership, TAS has evolved from a custom home builder into a trailblazing urban development company that is creating places harnessing community engagement processes most firms can’t even dare to imagine.
TAS is a great example that demonstrates how the process and approach are what truly shape remarkable, resilient places.
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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:
Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.
Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.
Tre' Cates is an entrepreneur and regenerative thought leader with over 25 years of experience. His work focuses on the importance of building healthy, regenerative organizational environments that support long-term goals without compromising the integrity of society or the environment. As the former COO of the Savory Institute, Tre' played a key role in shaping regenerative agriculture around the globe. For the past decade, he has served as director of nRhythm, which strives to bring life to the systems that connect us all. Tre' is focused now on developing a methodology and approach that brings a life-centered approach to organizations and institutions.
In this episode, Tre' and host Neal discuss the principles of regenerative design and explore how they can be applied to many aspects of work and life beyond just agriculture, including in real estate. Tre' discusses his work with nRhythm, and how modern economic systems disincentivize putting life at the center of many of our institutions and organizations. Tre' and Neal also discusses organizations that are succeeding at holding life at the center of their work. For more information about Tre' and his work, visit nRhythm.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Blake Jones is a founder of several cooperative enterprises, including Namaste Solar and Kachuwa Impact Fund. He’s a pioneer in his marrying of the cooperative model and impact investing. Kachuwa Impact Fund is democratically owned and operated by its members. They invest in companies that have a positive impact on the environment and society, and real estate that does the same—such as organic farms and affordable housing. They invest in Main Street as opposed to Wall Street, and impact is their number one priority with financial return being second.
In this episode, Blake and show host Neal discuss Blake’s journey from working in the oil and gas industry to shifting his interest to renewable energy, and eventually becoming fascinated by the cooperative enterprise model. They dive into the concept of impact cooperative investment funds, discussing how these funds differ from traditional investment models and why they are essential for supporting mission-driven enterprises and real estate. It’s a fairly new concept and Blake shares details of how the fund works in practice—how they vet potential investments and investors, how they approach liquidity and patience, and how members’ voting power is not tied to their investment amount. Blake shares valuable insights from his experience with Kachuwa and other cooperative enterprise, as well as some valuable tips for anyone interested in impact investing cooperatives. For more information about Blake and his work, visit Kachuwa Impact Fund.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Kris Maher is an architect and developer. For over 20 years, she’s worked for the Rancho Mission Viejo community in Orange County, California, where she is currently senior vice president of community development. The master planned community lies on a former cattle ranch, and currently they are developing a 23,000 acre entitlement that will have 14,000 homes in six non-contiguous villages. Almost three-quarters of that land will remain open space surrounding the villages. Kris leads urban planning and community design, with the natural, preserved landscape at the heart of her efforts. “The land is our brand,” she says.
In this episode, Kris and show host Neal explore her life journey from a mechanical drafting class in high school to becoming a pivotal figure in community development. They trace the history of Rancho Mission Viejo from the 1800s when it was a cattle ranch, to the 60s when the owning families decided to develop a master planned community, to today as it continues to grow with new homes and an emphasis on the land in the age of the agrihood. They discuss the variety of amenities at Rancho Mission Viejo, including the community farm where residents can volunteer and pick up produce, and the horses who live on site and have captured the hearts of the community. Kris shares insights into the intricacies of marketing to different generations, the challenges of dealing with rising insurance costs in light of wildfire risk, the creative solutions they’ve employed for water efficiency, and the general obstacles of greenfield development and creating affordable housing. For more information about Kris and her work, visit ranchomissionviejo.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Jenny Andersson is a regenerative strategist and educator, and the founder of the Really Regenerative Centre in the UK. With over 30 years of experience working alongside brands, organizations, and communities to inspire sustainable and regenerative initiatives, Jenny believes in "harnessing the power of the collective intelligence of organizations and communities to create visions for the future they want." She believes the world has undergone profound shifts—more billionaires than ever, microplastic pollution, ill soil health—and people are sensing it consciously and unconsciously. They are ready for change. But real change, including creating regional and regenerative economies, requires not only contemplating all dimensions of our society, it requires looking closely at oneself, one’s own relationships, and ways of thinking.
In this episode, Jenny and host Neal explore her journey from international development in Tanzania to founding the Really Regenerative Centre, from her current home in West Sussex. They discuss her experiences in brand strategy helping major businesses develop environmental initiatives, her battle with stage four lymphoma, and her deep dive into regenerative practices which she calls her “informal PhD.” Jenny shares insights into her work with the Really Regenerative Centre, which brings people together to learn about the essence of regeneration and inspire them to make the change they know is possible. It supports local resilience and transforms extractive economies into regenerative ones. Neal and Jenny highlight the importance of right relationships, community engagement, and systemic thinking in creating lasting change. They also discuss the necessity of funding for experimentation, the potential of regionalizing economics, and the challenges of “fixing the plane while it’s still flying”—i.e., making change within complex adaptive systems. For more information about Jenny and her work, visit reallyregenerative.org.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Emily Niehaus is a former mayor and a leader in both affordable housing and education. She is the founder of Community Rebuilds, a nonprofit that constructs affordable straw bale homes, and more recently, she’s also the founder of Heron School, a micro-school for gifted neurodiverse students. In between those ventures, she found the time to be the mayor of Moab, Utah, where she was able to advocate for housing policy with a larger platform. Throughout her impressive, varied career, she has been driven by purpose and a “doer” attitude, she says “if I see something that needs fixing, I just try to fix it."
Emily and show host Neal explore Emily's journey from Ohio to her “forever home” in Utah, where she started off as a park ranger at Bryce Canyon before settling down in Moab. She followed her passions, working at a community theater and as a social worker, before she became a loan officer as a pathway to getting into creating affordable housing. They talk about her innovative nonprofit, Community Rebuilds, which she founded as a way to replace outdated trailer homes with sustainable straw bale homes for families in need. They also dive into her term as the mayor of Moab, where she promoted affordable housing and learned valuable lessons about political will and community engagement. Finally, they discuss her most recent venture, Heron School, which was inspired by Emily’s son, a gifted learner on the autism spectrum. The school operates on a profit-for-purpose model, with the support of the neighboring Sunflower Hill Inn, which Emily also owns. For more information about Emily and her work, visit heronschool.com and communityrebuilds.org.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Jacob Deva Racusin is a natural building designer, builder, and educator. He is a longtime leader in the field of sustainable building and the co-founder of New Frameworks, a worker-owned cooperative committed to a “kinder sort of building.” Using natural materials such as native hardwood, clay, and stone, they are developing data-driven and scalable solutions for cost-effective, non-toxic, plant based building that can substantially impact our urgent ecological and health crises. Starting as a young person in the punk rock scene, Jacob got involved early on with forward thinking movements around sustainable agriculture and building, and he hasn’t looked back. Now, he is hopeful that the world is catching up and that healthy, natural building is poised to be a major solution to our global environmental crisis.
In this episode, Jacob and show host Neal explore Jacob’s early transition from organic agriculture to pioneering sustainable building practices, highlighting his work in natural building and his path to becoming an advocate for ecological building materials. They delve into Jacob's innovative approach to construction, his early experiences with straw bale homes, his formative experience with Yestermorrow Design School, and his contribution to the BEAM tool with Builders for Climate Action. They also discuss the challenges of integrating sustainable and natural building practices into the mainstream, as well as the potential to encourage widespread adoption, especially as the world looks for ways to cut carbon emissions. For more information about his work, visit newframeworks.com (and follow them on IG) or buildersforclimateaction.org.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Paul Rabinovitch is an impact investor, sustainable developer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Net Positive Capital, a fund that seeks to build a channel for capital to flow into net positive real estate. He has decades of experience investing in healthy vibrant places and his career is built on the principle that social benefit and profit are not mutually exclusive. He’s been on the leading edge of the impact investing movement in the United States and is hopeful that the rest of the investment community is finally ready to catch up. Recently he put his years of wisdom and knowledge into a book, Investment Opportunities in Decarbonizing Real Estate, and launched his fund to put that knowledge into action.
Paul and show host Neal trace Paul’s life journey and most formative professional and personal experiences. They discuss the influence of his mother, an architect who gave him an appreciation for the beauty of buildings and neighborhoods, as well as his early work with Nature Conservancy, where he learned about the biology of mature plant communities and how they relate to urban communities. They dive into his time as a brownfield developer and his experience managing a personal fund for an influential matriarch with a firm commitment to impact investing. Finally, they discuss Paul’s newly established fund as well as the state of impact investing the U.S. and abroad, and some of the obstacles to growth. For more information about Paul and his work, follow him on LinkedIn or download his book for free here.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Sean McLean is a visionary in the field of regenerative development. He is a managing partner of MPact Collective, an impact real estate development firm that takes an innovative, long-term approach toward place-based investing. Sean believes that the best way to build a resilient community is to spend months there full-time learning the issues and addressing them in a sustainable way, working on the scale of decades rather than years. He’s creating opportunities to support underserved and underinvested communities that offer impressive returns that can compete with and even exceed those of traditional real estate developments.
Sean and show host Neal talk about Sean’s formative years in Nassau County, “the birthplace of the American suburb;” his education, which taught him about the history and psychology of real estate; and his early years in the real estate industry. Eventually, Sean had an epiphany that the frustrating rules and regulations that prevented more meaningful development could be challenged and improved, and he set about doing that. They discuss his more recent work creating innovative zoning codes and entitlement processes, his transition into regenerative development with MPact Collective, and their efforts to promote economic resiliency and climate-smart growth through their investments. They also dive into the critical role of deep community involvement in the development process and the challenge of attracting traditional investors to buy in to their projects. For more information visit mpactcollective.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Analise Roland is an impact entrepreneur, neuroscientist, and movement leader in the field of regenerative development. She is the CEO of Anura, a real estate fund that aims to generate financial, social, and environmental returns. She has a deep belief that developments based on regenerative principles can produce substantial returns that benefit the investor, but also the local community and natural environment. With this mindset, we can foster a regenerative economy and a system of regenerative capitalism, that challenges the extractive capitalism which has dominated our era.
Analise and show host Neal explore her diverse background, from her childhood spent in the Montana countryside, to her academic pursuits studying neuroscience at Brown University, to her early entrepreneurial ventures in sustainable farming and development. They talk about her experience investing, and communicating the advantages of regenerative economies to traditional investors. They also delve into her current work, including the hospitality fund which, through its various projects will support local communities and environmental projects, through the bioregional hub model. For more information about her work, visit anura.earth.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Neal and Alissa Collins are partners in business and life, and are co-founders of Latitude Regenerative Real Estate. As Neal recently passed the milestone of publishing the 100th episode of the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, he and Alissa thought now was a great time for some reflection. Four years after starting the podcast and starting to build the field of Regenerative Real Estate, Neal and Alissa have accumulated a wealth of knowledge from guests and have enjoyed building a community of like-minded change agents. That learning has fed into their own business and profoundly influenced their efforts at feeding the “quadruple bottom line”—people, planet, profit, and purpose.
Alissa and show host Neal discuss the lessons they have learned in 100 episodes of the podcast, including the inspiring authenticity of their guests and their varied efforts. And they explain the recent evolution of their business, as they shift their focus from real estate to ambitious purpose-driven projects. They detail two of those projects, including building an agrihood near Vancouver, British Columbia, which includes a sustainable fishery, and restoring an historical oceanfront lodge and inn overlooking the Olympic Mountains in Washington. Both projects center community, connection to land, and regenerative practices—and care carry exciting challenges around raising capital. To learn more, visit chooselatitude.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Doug Davis is a conservation-based real estate developer, self-proclaimed adrenaline junky, and co-founder of The Farm at Okefenokee. It is a legacy project that Doug plans to work on for decades to come, one that combines development and conservation. The Farm is on 705 acres near Folkston, Georgia, and will ultimately have 250 sustainably-built cabins among crop fields and farm animals that will produce high-quality food for its residents. The development is based on principles of regenerative agriculture, conservation, and a belief that a vibrant community needs “body heat”—people interacting in a lively way with each other and the land.
Doug and show host Neal talk about Doug’s youth as a “hellion” obsessed with the outdoors, and they detail some of his great adventures surfing, hunting, and hiking. They trace his career path which began in construction, then progressed into engineering and finally development. Doug’s foundational love for nature has always informed his work, especially his conservation mitigation bank projects, which restore large wetlands to their pre-industrial state. They also discuss Doug’s journey launching The Farm and his and his team’s big plans for its future, which includes a restaurant, extensive regenerative farming, community events and classes, a swimming pond and dog park, and a series of small “villages,” each consisting of 25 cabins. You can follow along with Doug’s journey of living at The Farm and continuing to develop it on his Instagram and The Farm’s Instagram. You can also check out okefarm.com for more information.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Lindsay Baker is a movement leader, author, and podcast host. Currently, she is the CEO of the International Living Future Institute, and her path there has been surprising and impressive. She started her career working at the US Green Building Council developing early standards for LEED, subsequently she was a researcher at UC Berkley, global head of sustainability at WeWork, member of Google’s Real Estate Sustainability Team, and co-founder of a smart buildings company. Throughout her winding career, she has been driven not by a desire to have a particular role but by a desire to effect as much change as possible at the intersection of buildings, climate, and human health. She seeks positions where she can access “levers for disproportionate change,” where she can make a major impact.
Lindsay and show host Neal trace Lindsay’s mission-focused upbringing and professional career, including her childhood in Atlanta, formative years in college, and first job working on the LEED certification. They talk about her experience in Silicon Valley, at Google and WeWork, exploring her philosophy behind enacting change most effectively. They also touch on her current position at the International Living Future Institute, her experiences leading the organization through a period of significant change, including the pandemic and social justice movements, and the group’s future goals. For more information about her current work, visit living-future.org.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Greg Hale is an expert on high performance and carbon-neutral buildings. He is one of the developers behind the Catskill Project, a 90-acre carbon-neutral community in upstate New York with homes designed to all passive house standards. The community, which is envisioned to eventually have 25 homes, sees itself as exemplifying the “future of living.” Greg has long been a forward thinker in the area of carbon neutral construction, and the Catskills Project is the culmination of a lifetime of environmentalism and sustainable development.
Greg and show host Neal discuss Greg's path to starting a passive house community, from his formative years in the Adirondacks to his time working as a real estate lawyer. They also explore Greg’s decade-plus experience working for the government of New York State, including at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). There, he was a part of the force behind some progressive environmental policies that aim to make New York carbon neutral by 2050. Finally, they dive into Greg’s current efforts with the Catskills Project, the challenges that come with building and marketing a passive house community, and their end vision for the 90-acre site. For more information about the Catskills Project, visit thecatskillproject.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Peter Block is an author, organizational development consultant, and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. Among other books, he has written Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, Community, The Abundant Community, and An Other Kingdom. His work has centered around reclaiming our humanity in the relentless modern world. He has a deep belief in the central role that place and our relationship to it plays in our life—our happiness and our health.
Peter and show host Neal discuss Peter's career from one of his earliest and most formative sparks of inspiration, as a graduate student thinking about how groups work together. In the conversation, they explore how our spaces and dominate cultural narratives can divide us, and how they can be shifted to bring us together. Peter also shares his approach to designing effective community meetings that bring the public into the process of development in a way that is measured, inclusive, and productive. He also talks about some of the projects and developments that are giving him hope, such as dividend housing and pocket neighborhoods. To learn more about Peter Block's work, visit PeterBlock.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Nathan Helbach is a sustainable developer and the CEO of The Neutral Project. When he was in school working on a degree in sustainability, he came up with the idea to build carbon-neutral developments. Today, with The Neutral Project, he is working to make that dream a reality. Key to reducing the embodied carbon in these buildings was moving away from steel and concrete to mass timber. Currently, Nathan is behind the construction of what will be the tallest mass timber building in the world.
Nathan and show host Neal discuss Nathan’s path to starting The Neutral Project, including his childhood experience helping his father with small projects in Madison and then in his early 20s, working for a traditional developer on hundreds of traditional stick frame buildings. Once Nathan got the idea to start a business dedicated to carbon-neutral construction, he started working against the inertia of routine and tradition. He had to learn how to acquire and build with mass timber, as well as follow passive house principles. Finally, they touch on the exciting future of The Neutral Project and the many developments they have in the works. To learn more, check out theneutralproject.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Brandon Welch is the co-founder and CEO of Mad Capital, an investment fund dedicated to helping farmers transition from conventional to regenerative and organic agriculture. Brandon knew he wanted to do something to make a positive impact on society and the environment, and he found that the world of finance was the most powerful way for him to do so. Conventional practices are so deeply ingrained in the culture of agriculture and business of farms, that it takes a big leap of faith and lots of support for farmers to make the switch to adopt more regenerative practices. Welch and Mad Capital connect farmers that are willing to evolve with those that that want to invest in regeneration.
Brandon and show host Neal discuss Brandon’s love for outdoor adventure and how a cross country camping trip led him to an internship at Hunter Lovins’ Natural Capitalism Solutions. They trace his path to staring Mad Capital and raising millions of dollars to provide famers with funding to switch from conventional to organic agriculture. They touch on the obstacles to inspiring change in an old industry that’s done things the same way for generations, as well as the creative solutions that connect investors wanting to make a difference in our food system with farmers open to a change. To learn more about Brandon's work, visit MadCapital.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Mark Lakeman is an architect, placemaker, and urban planner. He is the founder and design director of Communitecture, and the co-founder of both the City Repair Project and Village Building Convergence. He believes that public spaces play a foundational role in human society. However with relatively recent colonial systems they have been subdued and replaced by a grid system that connects cars and commerce but not so much people. Now, he is working to revive them by breaking through the cultural inertia and bureaucracy that works to maintain the status quo.
Mark and show host Neal discuss the profound impact that Mark's parents had on him—one an urban planner and the other a researcher studying public spaces in ancient cities. After a few years working in traditional architecture firms, he became disillusioned with their values and traveled the world learning how contemporary indigenous villages were organized. Since then, he's been committed to turning Portland into a place full of lively communal spaces and town squares through placemaking activities—like Little Free Libraries, a concept that he helped create himself. For more on Mark's work, visit communitecture.net, cityrepair.org, and villagebuildingconvergence.com.
And check out our Latitude spotlights highlighted at the top of the episode.
Latitude Change Agent spotlight: Mark Voss
Ecosystem Directory partner spotlight: EcoNest Architecture and Paula Baker Laport's new book "Prescriptions for a Healthy House"
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
David Leon is the Co-Founder & Executive Director at Farmer's Footprint and Drew Dumsch is the President & CEO of The Ecology School. They are both inspiring leaders in the regenerative movement and have taken innovative approaches to funding their projects. Although the topics of profit and capital can make many in the regenerative world queasy, the reality is that funding is a foundational element to most ambitious initiatives. And just like how society's ideas about food production and community can be revolutionized with the ideals of regeneration, so can its ideas about capital and financing.
This is the first in a series of Capital Conversations that will dive deep into the state of capital in the regenerative space. It was recorded this summer in front of a live audience at the Regenerative Real Estate Gathering at the bucolic River Bend Farm in Saco, Maine. Show host Neal, David, and Drew discuss the formation of their respective regenerative endeavors: Farmer's Footprint, a nonprofit "creative agency" for farmers, and The Ecology School, which has hosted over 100,000 participants in programs that aim to promote an appreciate for nature and the environment. David talks about how to approach profitability and financial sustainability as a nonprofit, and Drew explains how his group raised $14 million to bring The Ecology School to River Bend Farm through a creative combination of loans and capital campaigns. For more information, visit theecologyschool.org and farmersfootprint.us.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
David Todd is a longtime designer, green living innovator, and realtor. Now he is Partner and Co-Head of Community at Latitude Regenerative Real Estate. He began practicing regenerative real estate in Portland many years before that phrase entered anyone's vocabulary and he's passionate about bringing like-minded people together to accomplish big things. Now, he lives in Kingston, New York, where he is continuing his mission to empower agents and real estate professionals to be catalysts for healing our relationship to home, place, and planet.
David and show host Neal discuss David's long and winding path to eventually working with Latitude Regenerative Real Estate. Never one to take the conventional route, David started his career as a teacher before pivoting to real estate where he created his own title: “Eco Design Consultant & REALTOR.” In Portland, he helped convene a group of regenerative minded professionals and practitioners from a variety of fields to create the Green Home Forum, which launched a sustainable planning and building movement. Now, he's inspired by the great momentum nationwide to create new living systems connected to place and community. You can learn more about his work at chooselatitude.com/davidtodd.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Mel Meagher is the founder of Unfold Development, a values-driven design and development studio specializing in regenerative thinking. After spending a decade working in a more conventional real estate setting, Mel realized just how disconnected humans have become from our environment–in particular, the harmful impact that our built environments, materials and construction practices have on the earth and on our health.
Mel and show host Neal discuss how Mel’s career led them to completely rethink real estate development, as well as their inspirations behind founding Unfold. Mel details Unfold’s current projects, and how they and their team are bringing intention to every step of the process to restore, reconnect, and reinterpret our built environment. They also discuss how to unite partners in real estate development so they feel connected to the larger project and purpose, and retain their passion for the work. For more information about Unfold Development, visit unfolddevelopment.com.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Jacob Waddell is the president of the Hemp Building Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching and promoting healthy and sustainable building practices. The way we construct our built environment has been a major cause of today’s most pressing environmental and health problems. Moving away from conventional construction materials to those that are more natural is a promising solution that’s only now starting to catch on in the U.S.
Jacob and show host Neil discuss Jacob’s path to working with hemp, including his time studying material science and working with plastics before he had a revelation that he should dedicate his life to the environment. It was at that time that he discovered hempcrete—a construction material made by mixing hemp stalks and lime as a binder. They also dive into the environmental, health, and sustainability benefits of hemp building materials, including how it can be “carbon-negative,” improve indoor air quality, and improve soil quality. Now the challenge is making hemp construction mainstream and affordable, so everyone can share in its benefits. For more information about Jacob’s work, visit hempbuildinginstitute.org.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Greg Peterson is a green-living innovator, educator, and podcast host. His life vision, which has guided him for more than 30 years, is "I am the person on the planet responsible for transforming our global food system." Greg was introduced to permaculture in the 1990s and was quickly inspired to spread its basic ideals of sustainability and working with nature. In 2001, Greg created the Urban Farm, a real world environmental showcase home in Phoenix, Arizona, where people could learn about permaculture principles and see first hand how they can be applied to homes.
Greg and show host Neal discuss Greg's fateful path into permaculture, including a confluence of events in 1991 that would change his life forever and the challenges he faced in brining permaculture to the mainstream decades before it really caught on. They also discuss the basic tenets of permaculture, how to learn about your land by observing it closely, and how you can build an abundant urban garden over years and decades with patience. Finally, they talk about Greg's move to a farm in North Carolina and how he picked the perfect stewards for his Urban Farm in Phoenix. To learn more about Greg's work and to see a schedule for regular Zoom classes on food-growing, visit urbanfarm.org. Also, to listen to Greg's podcast, search for The Urban Farm Podcast in your favorite podcast platform.
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At Latitude, we're more than a real estate firm; we're your partner in the transformation of homes, communities, and habitats towards healthy, resilient, and thriving communities.
By combining specialized real estate consulting services with a creative agency model, we work with property stewards and developers on capital and fundraising strategies, team formation, branding, marketing, and sales.
Are you a professional wanting to create transformational outcomes with your work? Join the Regenerative Real Estate Community to get access to workshops, regenerative real estate investment opportunities, and connect to other leaders and culture creators within the greater real estate industry to create the impact you seek in your work.
Scott Snodgrass is an entrepreneur, farmer, and land developer. He's started a number of businesses, including Edible Earth Resources, a productive landscapes company; Agmenity, a community farm developer; and most recently Meristem Communities, a real estate development firm focusing on "places for people." He and his business partner Clayton Garrett are working on their first big community project near Houston, called Indigo.
Scott and show host Neal discuss Scott's path to "places for people"-focused real estate, including how he first stumbled into farming after coffee growers in Nicaragua asked him for help with their crops. They touch on Scott's various business ventures, including starting one of the first big edible landscaping companies in the United States and how he was introduced to development through various projects with his community farm company. They also get into the details around his ambitious Indigo project, a 235 acre community near Houston that will have over 650 homes, a walkable "commons" area with businesses, over 40 acres of farmland with vegetables and animals, wastewater reuse irrigation, a solar-powered battery for backup power, and ecological habitats for migratory birds. To learn more about Scott's work with Agmenity, visit agmenity.com. To learn more about Meristem Communities visit meristemcommunities.com, and to learn more about Indigo, visit www.indigocommunity.com.
James Ehrlich is a technology and media entrepreneur. He's the founder of ReGen Villages, a tech-driven company that seeks to design regenerative communities focused on food, water, energy, and circular waste management. He's also the director of compassionate sustainability at Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research. James uses his lifetime of experience with video games, television story-telling, and tech to create engaging software that can help people build resilient and integrated villages that make the best use of their unique land.
James and show host Neal discuss how James background in media set the stage for his current work with regenerative villages. He was in the middle of the transition from cartridge to CD-ROM gaming, as well as the burgeoning farm-to-table and organic food scenes in the 90s and 2000s. They discuss how ReGen Villages was formed at Stanford and how it seeks to harness AI and machine learning to support the creation of regenerative communities that can provide health and abundance to people all over the world. To learn more about Jame's work, visit regenvillages.com.
Matt Morley is a Europe-based biophilic designer, entrepreneur, and podcaster. He is the founder of Biofilico and Biofit Health & Fitness, and the host of the Green Healthy Places podcast. He’s passionate about biophilic, healthy spaces and finding and bringing together other people leading innovative initiatives in the world of sustainability—which he gets to do with his podcast.
As this interview is also being published on Matt’s podcast, he and show host Neal interview each other. They both talk about their background and what led them into a life of fusing entrepreneurship and sustainability. They talk about how change on a small scale can have a domino effect and they discuss how their experiences podcasting and talking to others in the field have effected them. For more on Matt’s work, visit biofilico.com and mattmorley.net/podcastand, where you can find his podcast.
Tres Crow is a writer, artist, and designer. He's the president of Roots Down, an environmental education firm dedicated to helping governments, non-profits, and communities transform their expensive, labor-intensive green areas into productive urban landscapes. Tres and his colleagues at Roots Down argue that, with the right education, landscapers can change their practices, save money and make landscapes more sustainable.
Show host Neal and Tres discuss how the landscaping industry has largely been left out of larger conversations about sustainability and regeneration. Tres dispels the misconception that ecological landscaping costs more than traditional landscaping, and he describes how productive urban landscapes, when maintained properly, can flourish for decades. Plus, Tres explains solutions that would decrease landscaping’s negative environmental impacts, cut costs, and create beautiful, long-lasting landscapes for communities to enjoy. To learn more about Roots Down, visit rootsdownga.com or the Roots Down app.
Jay Standish is an entrepreneur and co-founder of OpenDoor Coliving. For nearly ten years with that company, he was a pioneer in the business of professionally-run community housing. OpenDoor started by leasing a single home and eventually came to operate over 400 units in three states. In December of 2022, Jay and his business partner Ben Provan closed the business after a challenging, but successful run.
Jay and show host Neal discuss Jay's first major experiences with nature and the outdoors—40 day canoe expeditions in Canada that he did as a teenager. Since then, Jay has loved the feeling of being a part of a group working together and he sought to give people that experience when he launched OpenDoor Coliving, and began renting out rooms in mansions in the Bay Area. They discuss the many benefits of communal living and the many challenges the business presented: raising capital, managing community members' relationships, and designing the ideal coliving space. For more information about Jay’s work, visit jaystandish.com.
Jo Petroni is an architect based in rural France, and she is the founder of Permarchitecture. She believes in "listening to your land," which is a way to observe the land where we live and build with curiosity and humility—and ultimately reconnect with nature. Jo is also an illustrator and climate change communicator. She is a co-creator of and contributor to the Carbon Almanac and she has an "Epistolary" of letters to imaginary friends published on Substack.
Jo and show host Neal discussed how Jo aspired to be an architect since she was a young child, the adventurous path that led her to her current home in medieval village in France, and how she built her business over Zoom meetings while living as a digital nomad. They go in depth about Jo's approach to architecture—incorporating sustainability and regenerative principles—and how to design while maintaining a deep connection to place. They also talk about the challenges of implementing regenerative and permaculture principles, and the importance of public communication about sustainability. To learn more about Jo Petroni's work, visit permarchitechture.net or check out her blog at jopetroni.substack.com.
Michael D. Ham is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and president of Wild Orchard Regenerative Teas and RePure. He sees the pandemic as culturally transformative and believes that now is the time to move beyond "sustainable" and "net-zero" to "regenerative" and "net-positive." With his tea company, he wants to make the highest quality tea available, grown on a regenerative farm and free of all the toxins that contaminate industrial produced teas. And with his new venture, RePure, he wants to provide an in-home "OS" that can monitor the air, water, and light health of our indoor spaces.
Michael and show host Neal discuss Michael’s upbringing with immigrant parents from South Korea and how he eventually found his way to starting the first company to offer regenerative organic certified teas. They also discuss the importance of creating healthy indoor environments—where we spend 90% of our time—which is the focus of Michael's newest venture RePure. They talk about the risks of EMFs, the public's current level of understanding when it comes to healthy indoor environments, and the challenges of starting a business in an emerging industry. Find out more at wildorchard.com and repure.io.
Dorn Cox is a regenerative farmer, technologist, and the research director for the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment in Freeport, Maine. He is the author of The Great Regeneration: Ecological Agriculture, Open-Source Technology, and a Radical Vision of Hope. Dorn believes that technology's incredible ability to distribute information at little to no cost holds immense power to change our relationship to the environment for the better. By harnessing the power of open source technology, regenerative solutions can spread at a global scale.
Show host Neal and Dorn talk about his family's multi-generation farming tradition and his decade-long foray into international finance and technology. Today, Dorn sees himself in the context of the long human history of sharing knowledge and wisdom about agriculture and our connection to the land. He says that the same tools of technology that have been used to extract from and damage the environment, can be used to tell a different story and create a culture shift that embraces regeneration. For more about Cox's work, check out his new book.
Hillarie Maddox is an entrepreneur, homesteader, and the creator of Black Girl Country Living—a magazine and podcast. Her work is all about helping people "return home to Mama Nature," through media, storytelling, and re-wilding experiences. Moving to the country and growing food during the pandemic was a life-changing experience for her and her family, and now she wants to give that to others.
Hillarie and show host Neal discuss their shared home of Whidbey Island in Puget Sound and how Hillarie's family adjusted to life there during the pandemic. They discuss how empowering it's been for Hillarie, as a Black woman, to claim and celebrate her family's historical connection to farming and the land, and how BIPOC people sometimes feel unsafe recreating in rural areas. For more information about Hillarie's work, visit blackgirlcountryliving.com.
For more information about Latitude Regenerative Real Estate's upcoming annual gathering, visit chooselatitude.com/gathering.
Hunter Lovins is an environmentalist and author, the co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, and managing partner of NOW Partners. For decades, she has worked with communities and companies to encourage them to implement regenerative solutions that are not only sustainable but profitable. She is the author of many books, including Factor 4: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use and Least Cost Energy, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, and A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life.
Show host Neal and Hunter discuss her family upbringing, which brought her into close and casual contact with legendary activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. They talked about her career journey, including her time in law school and extensive studies of economics, which set the stage for her influential ideas about the pitfalls of capitalism. They also discussed how citizens and government can shape our economic system into one that is better for people and the planet, today and into the future. For more information about Hunter’s work, visit the websites for NOW Partners and Natural Capitalism Solutions.
Alissa Collins is the co-founder of Latitude Regenerative Real Estate, alongside her husband, show host Neal. On this special episode of the podcast, Neal and Alissa tell their own life story, which culminates in their development of regenerative real estate: an approach to the built environment that considers health and wellness, sustainability, ecology, community, and spirit.
Alissa and Neal discuss their separate childhoods in Alaska and Louisiana, where they both developed a deep connection to nature. After they met, they embarked on a global adventure which took them to India and the Maldives where they learned about the value of culture, community, and spirit of place. Once they returned to the U.S., they pivoted from service work into real estate, hoping to find financial freedom. Within a few years, they'd built a large property management company in Portland, but felt it was lacking their deeper values. After a period of introspection, they composted much of their former business and started Latitude Regenerative Real Estate. Now, they are focused on providing affordable housing, connecting people with the planet, and bringing them into community. Find out more at chooselatitude.com.
Steve Beshara is a developer, entrepreneur, and designer. He is the founder of Vista Growth, which does place-branding, community design, and strategic planning. Beshara loves to be innovative, on the edge of the frontier, and he believes that community-planning magic can come from charettes, meetings where a diverse group of people come together to brain storm freely.
Steve and show host Neal discuss Steve's upbringing, how he learned how to see all sides of an issue from his parents and how he learned to love nature as a child. They also discuss his insights into creating ripe environments for group creativity as well his role in establishing the first net-zero energy home in Serenbe. For more information about Beshara's work, visit www.vistagrowth.com.
Jim Gale is the founder and chief storyteller of Food Forest Abundance, an organization that aims to provide people with freedom and independence through food forests. After selling his successful real estate company and retiring at 35, Jim thought he would relax for his remaining years. But after he had children, he started thinking obsessively about the future of humanity and came to a revelation: the solution to our society's biggest problems is permaculture.
Jim and show host Neal discuss how Jim started a real estate company in his mother's basement which reached over $1 billion in revenue in less than four years. And they discuss how he's more recently applied the problem-solving tenacity that made him successful in business to permaculture. A lifelong lover of nature, Jim's passion for permaculture is infectious. He sees it not only as a way to improve our health and environment, but also as a way to gain freedom and community. To learn more about Jim's work, visit foodforestabundancemn.com.
Hiroko Yamamoto is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the College of Architecture at the University of Utah and runs the DesignBuildUTAH program. The program allows students from around the world to live in the Navajo Nation in Utah to design and build affordable homes using green build techniques. The homes are designed in accordance with Navajo culture and use local materials in a way that is cost effective and harmonious with the surrounding landscape.
On this episode, show host Neal Collins is joined by Hiroko and two of her students, Maja Tacchi and Tom Mckean. They join Neal from their construction site, where they have been building a home for months. They detail how they designed the home, which includes a greenhouse and water catchment system, and they discuss the importance of immersing themselves in the Navajo community and cultural practices. They also discuss how valuable this hands-on experience is and how it has inspired their hopes for their future. To learn more about the program and to see photos of its homes visit its website . And to donate, reach out to Hiroko at hiroko@arch.utah.edu.
Katie McCamant is an author, architect, and the co-creator of the term "cohousing"—a community of private homes clustered around shared communal spaces. In the 1980s, she and Charles Durrett published the authoritative book on the subject, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. McCamant is now focused on promoting cohousing communities across the United States by working with individuals interesting in living in them and supporting professionals like developers and architects interested in building them.
Katie and show host Neal discuss how Katie discovered cohousing as a student in Denmark and became inspired to bring the concept across the Atlantic. They also discuss the benefits to living in a cohousing community—how they create a tight-knit group where everybody knows each other and are willing to help out in a moment's notice, and how they make living sustainably easier through collective action. They also discuss ways that cohousing can be promoted throughout the country, especially by educating more everyday people and developers about its benefits. To learn more about Katie's work, visit www.cohousing-solutions.com.
Daron Joffe, a.k.a. Farmer D, is a farmer, designer, and ambitious field-builder promoting the idea of agrihoods and conservation-focused land development. He is the author of Citizen Farmers: The Biodynamic Way to Grow Healthy Food, Build Thriving Communities, and Give Back to the Earth, and the leader of Farmer D, an organization that creates agrihoods by collaborating with developers, nonprofits, and governments. He believes in the "village" model, where housing development is clustered, while large swaths of surrounding land is conserved for nature and agriculture.
Farmer D and show host Neal are joined by Latitude Regenerative Real Estate change agent, Soraya Schneider. They discuss Farmer D's path to farming and agrihood-building, which included him dropping out of college twice and a surprise meeting with a monk. They also dive into how Farmer D tackles big projects, carefully studying a place's particular cultural and ecological nature and dealing with large governmental and nonprofit institutions, and they explore how he is taking on the monumental task of creating a new field of knowledge around agrihoods. To learn more about Farmer D's work, check out farmerd.com.
Julie Brunner is the housing director at OPAL, a community land trust on Orcas Island in Washington state. Julie has worked in the field of affordable housing since the mid-90s and today OPAL is responsible for housing 200 families on an island with a population of just 5,000. Over the years, both through hot and cold real estate markets, they've found innovate ways to finance and offer housing, both through home ownership and renting.
Julie and show host Neal discuss the mechanics of community land trusts, the huge benefits to those housed through the program, and the important differences between offering properties to own and to rent. A former economics major, Julie explains how America's housing crisis is not simply a supply issue and she details how OPAL has managed to offer financial security to people on an island with some of Washington's highest property values and lowest wages. To learn more about her work, check out the OPAL website as well as the Grounded Solutions Network, where she teaches courses on community land trusts.
Peter Scialla is the Chief Operating Officer and President of Delos, a company that is infusing wellness into real estate. We spend 90% of our time indoors and increasingly scientific research has shown that our indoor environment has a major impact on our health. Delos is working to make buildings healthier by improving the air, light, and drinkable water within them.
Peter and show host Neal discuss Peter's background on Wall Street, where both he and his brother Paul worked for Goldman Sachs. They realized that as a wellness revolution was taking over markets across the world, there remained an opportunity with the world's largest asset class—real estate. They've worked with top researchers at institutions like the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic to create indoor environments that can profoundly improve our health just by spending time in them. To see more of Peter's work, visit delos.com.
Ian McSweeney is the director of Agrarian Trust, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support land access for the next generation of farmers. He believes that we need to create a new story about how land ownership works in our society, innovating new and more just ways for people of all walks of life to have access to land.
Ian and show host Neal discuss their shared background working as social workers, their shared frustration by the rigid systems that can act as impediments to progress, and how big changes can come to those systems from social movements that start small but over time inspire exponentially growing numbers of people. Ian talks about how many farmers, especially those of color, have a disadvantage in accessing land and how Agrarian Trust is working to correct that injustice. See more of Ian's work at www.agrariantrust.org.
David Rust is the founder and CEO of Sagra, an agro-tourism company that works with farms across the country. He believes that a trip to a regenerative farm can be a revelation for people, inspiring them to shift the way they shop, eat, and see the environment.
David and show host Neal discuss the path that led to founding Sagra, including David’s time at Lyft during its meteoric rise. They also touch on David’s upbringing and his family’s experience with farms in Europe, where agro-tourism is common. And they dissect the Sagra business model, which is all about bringing people and farms together to promote a public appreciation for regenerative agriculture and support the farms themselves. For information about the company and the experiences they offer, visit sagrafarms.com.
Jesse Savou is the founder of the BlueBarrel Rainwater Catchment System. Her company offers people across the United States the opportunity to restore the natural hydrological cycle that modern developments and hard pavements have disrupted. They provide a kit with all the parts and instructions that anyone can use to build their own system. And, most critically, they connect customers with suppliers of recycled blue barrels used to store rainwater.
Jesse and show host Neal discuss her path to starting BlueBarrel, including a false start in the corporate world which did not share her values, a formative experience in the AmeriCorps program, and a chance encounter with surplus 55 gallon blue drums sitting on a farm in Sonoma County, California. With so much attention placed on decarbonization, electrification, and energy efficiency, Jesse's company is placing a spotlight on an essential, and sometimes forgotten aspect of sustainability—water. For more information, visit bluebarrelsystems.com.
Izumi Tanaka is a green realtor, podcast host, and change agent with Latitude Regenerative Real Estate. Izumi moved to the U.S. from Japan when she was 21 years old and for her whole life has used ikigai as a driving force—a Japanese concept that's often associated with the intersection of a four part Venn diagram: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. In her work, she combines mindful living with the build environment in an effort to create thriving communities healthy for both people and the environment.
Izumi discusses the long road that led her to working with show host Neal at Latitude—from her background in documentary film making and photography, to green real estate. Neal and Izumi put their minds together to dive deeper into the meaning of regenerative real estate and how it can make a difference in an industry largely fixated on money. Check out Izumi's podcast at homegreenhomes.com and see more of her work at izumitanaka.com.
John Kamp is an urban and landscape designer with PRAIRIEFORM and the co-author of the book Dream, Play, Build. For the sake of the environment and our own happiness, it is essential that we design urban spaces thoughtfully—and that requires honest input from community members. For this purpose, John and his colleagues have innovated new ways to do community meetings that minimize conflict and stress, and encourage creativity and play.
John and show host Neal discuss John's younger days starting a design firm in his parents' basement, his breakthrough with the idea of an irrigation-free yard, and the immense importance of using the senses to unlock joy and creativity. John has always been inspired by the visceral effect of a beautiful city or landscape and uses that experience as a guide in his work. See more of his work at prairieform.com.
Hannah Lewis is a writer interested in conservation and the intersection of sociology and sustainable agriculture. Her most recent book, Mini-Forest Revolution, is about planting dense forests that can sequester carbon, increase biodiversity, address urban heat, and bring communities together.
In this episode, Hannah and show host Neal discuss her academic background and the path that led her to discover the Miyawaki Method. This is the subject of Hannah's recent book and she explains how even small, 200 square yard forests can have huge benefits, such as linking wilderness areas together and improving water retention. See more of Hannah's work at her website, www.hannahlewis.org.
Dylan Lamar is an architect, developer, and the founder of the firm Cultivate. He believes that affordability is an essential part of sustainability and he is on a mission to address America's housing crisis. Dylan's new mantra is "form follows finance" and he is particularly interested in housing cooperatives as a way to de-commodify the housing market and provide sustainable living to more people.
In this episode, Dylan and show host Neal discuss Dylan's path to sustainable architecture and passive homes, the current challenges with the housing market, the history of housing cooperatives, and the trade offs between cost and sustainability. It also dives deep into how Dylan was able to develop a housing cooperative that allowed people to have ownership of a beautiful home in Springfield, Oregon for just $10,000 up front and $800 per month. See more of Dylan's work at www.cultivateplace.com.
Dani Baker is an author and the owner of Cross Island Farms, an idyllic edible forest in upstate New York that attracts visitors and volunteers from across the country. For most of her adult life, Dani was a clinical psychologist—but ever since she was a kid, farming was in the back of her mind. When she retired, she bought her farm on Wellesley Island, took a community class about permaculture, and became tirelessly dedicated to creating the beautiful and fruitful food forest she has today.
We talked about Dani’s long and winding path to where she is now, how she learned about permaculture proactively by reading books and trying and failing, and how writing her recent book, The Home Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant, and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape, is the fulfillment of a lifelong goal. To learn more about Dani and her work, check out CrossIslandFarms.com.
Jasmine Takanikos is an international branding specialist and principal of Brand Human. She believes that marketing should be less about words and amplifying a message, and more about providing exceptional service. Her career and life experience has led her to a deep appreciation for mindfulness and living with nature and that led her to regenerative real estate.
Jasmine and host Neal Collins spoke about how her childhood on Whidbey Island shaped her into the person she is today, how the pandemic has forced us all to re-evaluate our priorities, and how she understands land stewardship and our responsibility to our environment and community. Jasmine is a client of ours at Latitude Regenerative Real Estate and we also spoke about Saratoga House—the magical property she is selling now on Whidbey Island. I was excited to speak with Jasmine and share our conversation because her expertise in branding and personal experience being drawn to regenerative real estate lends invaluable insight into one of the most common questions I get: "What is regenerative real estate?" See more of Jasmine's work at www.brandhumanmethod.com.
Sarah Susanka is an architect, prolific author, and visionary thinker credited with starting the tiny house movement. She’s changed the way huge amounts of people see the world, but she insists the way to create change is by thinking small and attending to the everyday challenges you see in front of you.
I talked to Sarah with a co-host, returning podcast guest Ross Chaplin—creator of “pocket neighborhoods.” This was an incredible opportunity to speak with two highly influential figures in architecture and design who both see their work as being in service to humanity and wellbeing. We spoke about how they were both deeply influenced by the work of Christopher Alexander and his book A Pattern Language, the importance of building with love, the authenticity of designing for human well-being, and how to create change that truly shifts culture. To learn more about Sarah's ideas and work, visit susanka.com and watch her TEDx talk.
Alison Sant is a designer, artist, activist, and mother who is inspired by community-led initiatives to combat the climate crisis. She is the author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities.
We talked about Alison's upbringing in Washington D.C., at the heart of the environmental movement's origin, and we dove into several of her favorite examples of bottom-up climate solutions: from San Francisco's parklet program, to Baltimore's effort to recycle wood from abandoned buildings. Check out more or Alison's work and her interdisciplinary design firm, Urban Projects, at studioforurbanprojects.org.
Dr. Vincent Walsh is a designer and serial entrepreneur living and working in Manchester, England. He is inspired and fascinated by the biosphere's natural inclination toward circular systems and "upcycling"—taking components and creating from them something of equal or greater value.
In the show, we discuss Vincent's incredible life story: his experience with severe dyslexia which made school extremely difficult but allowed him to think in terms of connections and whole systems, his gonzo-style documentary of poverty in the U.S., and his three-story biosystem building project. We also discuss the three companies he operates now—RegenfarmCo, Mycoloops, and Herbalism—which work in tandem to develop regenerative farms, produce organic mushrooms from agricultural waste, and create plant-based meat alternatives.
Aaron Fairchild has leveraged his own background in finance to lead the way in deep green housing development in the Pacific Northwest. He's applied pressure to the whole market, inspiring developers to make more sustainable housing in order to keep up.
This is Aaron's second appearance on the podcast, and we dive deeper into his ideas about leadership, developing company culture, and hope. He discusses his concept of the "arc of hypocrisy" and how he believes that the kind of hope that inspires action should not be conflated with optimism. Aaron is the co-CEO of real estate development company Green Canopy NODE, see their work at greencanopynode.com.
Ben Falk is one of the most prominent figures in the world of ecological design but he didn't always see that path as his future. At a young age, he was drawn toward acts of dramatic protest, like sleeping in trees. But eventually he had an epiphany: the best way to inspire change is not to yell at or shame people, but to show them a better way to live.
In the show, we discuss how Ben became one of the biggest names in his field, how he manages his own land, what kinds of client projects tend to succeed in the long term, and how mainstream awareness of permaculture is shifting. Check out Ben's work at wholesystemsdesign.com.
Concrete, which is energy and emissions intensive, took over the world around 200 years ago. Emily Majewski thinks it's time for its reign to end. Experimenting in her backyard in Mexico, she created a new, environmentally-friendly building material made from biochar called Cast Carbon.
In the show, we hear why Emily and her husband moved to a foreign country to raise their child, how she realized that popular alternative building materials like lime and adobe are not the future, and how she set out on a mission to discover a new material that mimics nature’s strongest bones and shells. Learn more about Emily’s work and her company, PHYTOSTONE, at phytostone.com.
Agriculture is not a typical investment category that one may think about when they think of real estate investing. For Chris Rawley, he became interested in agriculture through his travels as part of his career in the Navy. He came from a real estate family and knew the mechanics of real estate, but didn’t know how to invest in local farms in his area. He decided to create Harvest Returns to help connect people wanting to invest in farms with small to medium sized farmers and producers across the US looking for capital.
This show explores why agricultural land is getting driven up in price and where the winds of the industry are blowing. It helps to present a macro-view of the industry and what kind of investments are out there to incentivize a shift away from industrial agriculture.
You can visit Harvest Returns at www.harvestreturns.com
There is a utopic vision that farmers will put down their pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical cocktails conceived and peddled to eradicate pests and weeds in order to save the planet. However the challenge is that the land can become so degraded that once you go cold turkey and stop applying chemicals, everything seems to collapse around you.
That’s exactly what happened to Jesse and Cally McDougall when they took over Studio Hill, the family’s fourth generation farm in Vermont. For decades, Cally’s aunt had farmed the land with the assistance of chemicals. That is, at least, until she passed away from brain cancer.
For Jesse and Cally this was a life-changing opportunity to take over the farm. They wanted to do the right thing—although as non-farmers they didn’t know what that looked like. The first step they decided was to not spray chemicals.
“The first year was a complete disaster,” Jesse recalled. The 250-acre farm turned to bare ground, dirt, and mud.
In a state of despair, the two found Alan Savory’s work with Holistic Management that helped to change everything. They began to rotate chickens around the farm. They started to breed sheep. And before their eyes they started to see the miracle of life return.
In a true hero’s journey story, Jesse recalls the critical help they received along the way that includes both technical help from the Savory Institute and financing from Steward, while also offering tips on how to operate a successful regenerative farming operation.
The second half of the story takes us out of the farm to the work they are now pursuing with the Regenerative Food Network. This is one of the most exciting regenerative agriculture-based projects we’ve come across, and it provides a framework that has the potential to transform food supply chains towards bio-regionalism.
Don Hall is a trainer and facilitator with TransitionUS, the US hub with the global Transition Network. He is a permaculturalist and former Executive Director of Transition Sarasota. Don recently joined us on The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast to talk about his life’s work and the Transition Network’s playbook called Five Stages of Transition.
If you’re not familiar with Transition or Transition Towns, it is a movement that has been growing since 2005 across the globe. Community-led Transition groups focus on a low-carbon, socially just future with resilient communities, and active participation in society.
In practice, they are using participatory methods to imagine the changes we need, setting up renewable energy projects, re-localizing food systems, and creating community and green spaces. They are nurturing the Inner Transition of the cultural and mindset changes that support social and environmental change. They are sparking entrepreneurship, working with municipalities, building community connection and care, repairing and re-skilling.
The community level of scale has huge potential to influence change and is a crucial part of developing and guiding social and economic systems toward sustainability, social justice and equity. There is an increasing recognition that top-down approaches are not sufficient alone to affect change and need to be combined with community-level responses.
It’s an approach that has spread now to over 48 countries, in thousands of groups: in towns, villages, cities, Universities, schools. Around the world, there are 23 Transition Hubs that support and connect Transition groups in their country/region and connect internationally.
Despite being named one of the top ten landscape designers of all time, Mary Reynolds describes herself as an ex-gardener. That’s because after years spent designing award-winning gardens and landscapes across the globe, Mary was tired of fighting nature back to fit into the mold in which she originally designed.
If you don’t know Mary Reynolds then you are in for a real treat. She is the author of “The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Lands and Ourselves” which has been endorsed by Jane Goodall, a public speaker, and the founder of the international garden rewilding movement We Are the Ark. A movie has been made about her life called Dare to be Wild, which should certainly be added to your watchlist.
Mary has been featured in Paul Hawken’s book “Regeneration” for her work launching We Are the Ark, with Ark standing for Acts of Restorative Kindness. Mary advocates that if you are fortunate enough to own a little piece of the earth, then it is your responsibility to not be a gardener, but a guardian of life. She advocates for leaving half of the land for the wild, and half for human cultivation.
On a deeply spiritual level, Mary speaks to how both humans and the land are broken and need healing. Humans, she asserts, are not good at healing themselves, but through the process of healing the land we can begin to heal ourselves.
This podcast episode is a deeply moving story of Mary’s life that should resonate with people as a classic hero’s journey. Within her story you will find grit, determination, hope, despair, struggle, and unwavering faith.
You can follow Mary and her work at marymary.ie, or on Instagram at @wildmarymary and @letsbuildanark
This podcast has been sponsored by Wise Matter, a materials consultation firm that works with homeowners, architects, designers, and developers to choose materials, furnishings, and finishes that are non-toxic and do not come at the expense of human or planetary health. Get your free 30-minute consultation by visiting their website wise-matter.com.
Biophilia was first introduced as a term in 1973 by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, which put forth that biophilia is “the passionate love of life and all this is alive.” The term was later used by legendary biologist E.O. Wilson in his 1984 work Biophilia, in which he proposed that humans tend to focus on and affiliate with nature and other life-forms because of a genetic basis.
Since then biophilia has been gaining in popularity amongst architects, designers, and even urban planners and sustainable city researches like Dr. Timothy Beatley, who is a prominent advocate of biophilic cities, with a book published by the same title.
What exactly is a biophilic city? It is a city that puts nature first in its design, planning, and management. It recognizes the essential need for daily human contact with nature as well as the many environmental and economic values provided by nature and natural systems.
Biophilic cities and green urbanism, a term Dr. Beatley coined, can be found around the world as cities are looking for ways to create more sustainable and livable urban environments for humans and wildlife. Dr. Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last twenty-five years.
Much of Dr. Beatley’s work focuses on the subject of sustainable communities, and creative strategies by which cities and towns can fundamentally reduce their ecological footprints, while at the same time becoming more livable and equitable places.
Dr. Beatley believes that sustainable and resilient cities represent our best hope for addressing today’s environmental challenges. He is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books on these subjects, including Green Urbanism, Native to Nowhere, Blue Urbanism, and his latest, The Bird Friendly City.
To learn more about his work and to get inspired by the work cities are doing around the world to embrace biophilia and green urbanism, be sure to visit BiophilicCities.org. You can find films, articles, and other resources including a way in which your city can sign up to be a partner biophilic city.
This podcast has been sponsored by Wise Matter, a materials consultation firm that works with homeowners, architects, designers, and developers to choose materials, furnishings, and finishes that are non-toxic and do not come at the expense of human or planetary health. Get your free 30-minute consultation by visiting their website wise-matter.com.
The world we design for is the world we get. That's why we are excited to share this episode with you featuring designer Ian Peterman. Ian's firm specializes more in the products that we fill our homes with than the actual design of a property, but the underlying design philosophy is one and the same: creating environmentally and socially just products, brands, and companies.
In this episode Ian introduces listeners to the "conscious design" category and gives us highlights into how both large and small companies are beginning to redesign their products, packaging, and supply chains. For some it is easy to begin from scratch, for others it is a multi-year journey to unravel a complicated, opaque global supply chain.
Be sure to visit the Peterman Design Firm, read Ian's book "Conscious Design", or tune into his podcast of the same name, "Conscious Design Podcast."
This episode was sponsored by Wise Matter: Healthy materials for people, home, and environment. Wise Matter offers free 30-minute consultations for homeowners, architects, designers, and contractors that are looking to create healthy indoor environments through materials, furnishings, and finishes.
The cutting edge of regenerative technology is aligning market incentives with regenerative land stewardship. This is an area that Gregory Landua and his colleagues with the Regen Network have been pioneering since 2017 as they began asking questions of how to scale impact and help farmers and land managers switch to regenerative practices.
By focusing on what Gregory calls a watershed view, the Regen Network was able to put the pieces together to monitor, value, and sell ecosystem services directly to buyers around the world. This may sound familiar as the carbon credit market has been gaining traction over the last decade. In fact, it has been growing 30% year over year according to Gregory and it will continue to heat up as more and more companies and organizations voluntarily pledge to offset their carbon emissions.
In this podcast episode Gregory talks about his background and the catalyzing moments that led to the genesis of the Regen Network. He covers the critical challenges that they had to overcome in order to not just create the marketplace for these credits, but also how to work with the farmers and gather data about the underlying ecology including soil health, aforestation, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and more.
This episode should give you an introduction that there are some major things in the works to help bring about a healthy, resilient, and regenerative future. While some of the technology may be complex, at the heart of the matter is the revitalization and preservation of land and nature.
The world is beginning to go through an electric revolution, and real estate is at the epicenter. Sean Armstrong, principal at Redwood Energy, happens to be one of the revolutionaries of this movement and has designed over 10,000 residences in more than 200 developments that are 100% all electric, Zero Net Energy with many of those being low-income affordable housing.
Sean is a rare combination of advocate and activist with sustainability, justice, and doing the right thing at his core. His passion for sustainability started when he had a life-changing experience at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, where he lived in the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT), a student-run demonstration house that was off-grid (solar, wind, biodiesel and batteries).
After college Sean left his imprint on organizations he worked for including a large general contracting firm begin to incorporate solar power into their projects. As a designer, Sean found a winning formula by combining all electric solar powered designs with affordable housing developments. This, he says, is because it helps developers become more profitable because electric design is cheaper to build and there are incentives for affordable housing.
For Sean, there is an environmental cost to everything, but scale is important. The cost of solar is far outweighed by the positives that it creates to decarbonize the atmosphere, increase indoor air quality and create healthier living spaces, as well as create much more safe communities without the threat that comes with combustible fuel like natural gas. He has many personal gripping narratives of how his family has been impacted by events such as gas leaks, forest fires, and toxic indoor air quality.
At the end of this Regenerative Real Estate Podcast episode, Sean mentions several resources that his firm Redwood Energy has put out for people interested in Zero Net Energy which you can find at their website here.
Passion, service, community, and curiosity are the threads that weave the story of Mark Voss. Mark is a consummate educator, farmer, and real estate professional residing in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the founder of Voss Organics and is a Latitude Change Agent.
Like many young people, curiosity and the longing for adventure first lured Mark to venture far and wide from his humble youth in the Midwest. From paradigm-shifting lessons during a Peace Corps service in Africa, a pilgrimage to Masanobu Fukuoka’s farm while teaching English in Japan, and immersion into the field of biodynamic agriculture while starting a 60-family CSA farm, it is evident from this story that Mark has embodied the experiences and lessons to become a wise teacher himself.
Mark lives and breathes community. His urban farm produces seed starts for his business Voss Organics, which serves the Madison area farmers markets. He is a recently retired public and charter schoolteacher where not only he taught French, but also left a wake of school gardening programs. During his last year of teaching in 2021, Mark and a fellow science teacher created a course for the students called “The Honorable Harvest” that they based on the literary work of “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This special course helped students learned how people and plants have an integral relationship with each other.
Mark sees tremendous potential to use real estate as the catalyst for positive social and environmental change. For him, real estate serves as an educational tool to not only impact individuals and families, but strengthen communities and networks of aligned businesses and organizations.
At the core of every real estate project is finance. That’s why we are excited to share this interview with Eve Picker, founder of the real estate crowdfunding platform Small Change.
With a focus on helping impact-driven real estate projects get funded, Small Change represents a shift towards community-based finance. This is significant as federal regulations have historically barred the majority of the American population—the 97% of people that are not accredited investors—from participating in real estate investments.
Eve, a disillusioned Australian architect that calls Pittsburg, Pennsylvania home, has a long history of spearheading challenging real estate projects. Her development career focused on projects that would help to revitalize communities where little to no investment money was readily available. She learned to piecemeal together sundry funding sources that spanned private capital, conventional funding, and public financing such as community reinvestment grants.
In a male dominated industry such as real estate development, Eve’s passion for Small Change comes from the hurdles she faced trying to secure financing. Turned down and diminished by male bankers, Eve claims her ability to push forward on projects came as a result of two female bankers that believed in what she was doing. She now is passing that spirit on and is excited about creating a platform that helps to level the playing field for female and minority developers.
We believe that Eve and her work at Small Change is at the frontier of finance and real estate. By both enabling ordinary people to invest in transformative projects in their own communities, as well as supporting local developers accomplish incremental development projects; this is where the winds of change are blowing.
Do you happen to be someone that thinks the dream of the white picket fence and the manicured lawn doesn't sound all that appealing?
Maybe you are the kind of person that would rather live closer to nature? Or in a place with multiple generations living together with shared amenities?
From off-grid and sustainable agrihoods to urban ecovillages and income sharing communes, "intentional community" is quickly growing in popularity as a housing concept.
On this podcast episode, Cynthia Tina, co-Director of the Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), talks about her initial interest in intentional communities and how that led her on a quest across the globe to visit as many communities as she could. She was then able to dove-tail her passion for deep living into a career helping to support the growing movement.
With 40,000 unique people visiting ic.org each month, Cynthia says that intentional community is on the rise. Community types vary widely across the world. Some are newer communities that may still have quite a bit of work to do to be fully established. Others have been around for decades and have been through multiple generations.
Cynthia's advice to those interested in this type of living is to first check out their directory of intentional communities and to take time to visit places of interest. While many people have the desire to found their own communities, she says that it can be a lengthy process typically spanning 4-7 years. Through the foundation you can also find resources and a host of educational opportunities to learn about all facets of intentional communities.
Do you feel like you have untapped potential to be an actor for positive change in this world? Then maybe you should consider becoming a Regenerative Practitioner.
In this evocative and insightful interview, Pamela Mang of the Regenesis Institute shares her story and how her life experiences shaped her understanding of the role that humans can have in the co-evolution of our planet where all life can thrive.
As a world renown organization that has been instrumental in the conception and spread of Regenerative development, the Regenesis Institute believes that human beings have the potential to nourish and support the myriad ecological systems that we touch–and that realizing this potential is a pathway to restoring the health and abundance of our cultures and economies. In order to make this a reality she says, we must commit ourselves to a process of inquiring into and deeply honoring the unique socio-ecological identities of our places.
This conversation with host Neal Collins explores the potential that also lies within the real estate industry and how there is a place to raise the consciousness of how we dwell. In order to realize this potential, one must first commit to first working on one's inner self in order to make an impact on the outer world. While the changes we seek to make may loom large, Pamela suggests that it can come quite rapidly once the cultural will is there.
Instead of looking for hope, look for action. That is what resonates with the story of Dan Miller, the founder of the regenerative agriculture crowdfunding platform Steward.
Combining his background in the creation of one of the world's first crowdfunding platforms for real estate, Fundrise, with his passion for regenerative agriculture, Dan Miller set his sights on helping farmers and food producers get access to necessary financing. Steward now helps to decommodify food while giving people like you the ability to invest in their local food chain while earning a healthy return.
With an emphasis on regenerative agriculture, Dan and the Steward team see themselves as providing a critical but missing piece in the regenerative agriculture movement--access to funding. The platform is now adding an even more robust suite of tools to help farmers with ancillary business services like branding, packaging, bookkeeping, and grant writing.
This episode is a testament to how there is a role for everyone in a regenerative future, and that it will take all types of people from farmers to financiers to change the culture, springboard biodiversity, nourish the people, and sequester carbon.
"It's not about the product, it's about the process."
This is the mantra that Adam Sgrenci extols when he talks about applying regenerative values and principals to the field of construction management. Adam's work as the co-founder of the Center for Infrastructure and Society often put him in project management roles to help advance large-scale regenerative projects around the globe.
Working for clients doesn't always mean you get the latitude to test out new ideas though. In January of 2021, Adam found a house in the Bay Area that showed signs of potential. The house and land were sick, however, and needed someone like Adam, as most buyers would have scraped the house and started over.
Adam and his wife decided this was going to be the site of their new home. Instead of hiring a bulldozer to first level the site, Adam called in a permaculturalist. From there he set off doing what would best be described as a Regenervention: a detailed process of looking at the whole, being mindful of the materials and resources that went into and out of the site, and integrating the community into the project.
As the real estate and construction industry is looking for ways to embrace sustainability, reduce waste, and be more equitable, Adam is helping to pioneer a new path that is surely unlike any other construction project in the world. Through this project Adam is not only addressing sustainability and building community, but also developing the capacity of everyone who is part of the process.
The infrastructure that our society is built upon is large and complex. Outside of roads, bridges, and buildings the we can see, much of the infrastructure is out of sight. We know that there is an electrical grid, sewer systems with waste water treatment plants, and hundreds of thousands of fiber optic cables, but most people don't know how it all works.
That's where Steven Baumgartner of Baumgartner Urban Systems Strategy (BUSS) sees tremendous opportunity. Steven advocates for a more community-centric model to demystify large, opaque infrastructure projects so we can have a system that is more participatory, close-looped, and equitable.
Steven has coined the term "deinfrastructure" to describe this novel approach. He believes that urban systems such as energy, water, mobility, technology and food need to be continually re-examined, re-engineered, and re-imagined, especially in today’s world as we navigate coinciding and colliding crises (a global pandemic, systemic racial injustices, economic uncertainties and our immediate climate change challenge).
He believes that there are bold, elegant solutions that bridge the built and natural environments that can strengthen our neighborhoods, build economic prosperity and ensure health and wellness- all while working in concert with (not against) our natural systems.
To read more about his deinfrastructuring work check out an Urban Land Institute article that Steven wrote in June 2021.
Imagine a deep ecological thinker that lives in the breathtaking Spanish Pyrenees in a 700 year old hand-built house that captures all of its own energy from the sun, harvests all the water it needs from the rain, and invites nature into the heart of the home.
That is Emmanuel Pauwels.
Emmanuel is a Regenerative Practitioner through and through. From the way that he designs buildings to the regenerative leadership he instills in Green Living Projects, a European-based consultancy that he founded in 2009. Emmanuel is part soothsayer, part philosopher and on this interview helps to expand our awareness of how we can evolve not just real estate design and construction of individual home sites, but the entire development process so that the built environment can enable all life on this planet to co-evolve.
By providing frameworks like the Five Capitals, Emmanuel uses his real life experience to talk about how all forms of capital (natural, social, physical, financial, and human) need a return. He lets constraints guide the creativity and showcases how capital can be interchanged to continue to propel a project forward.
If you are looking for ways to help move beyond the sustainability paradigm of doing less bad, Emmanuel Pauwels is someone that must be on your radar.
What if real estate could be used as a force for good, rather than further degradation?
It is no secret that the infrastructure our civilization is built upon is outdated, extractive, and harmful to our health and the environment. Buildings account for nearly 40% of all energy consumed globally and are notorious for wanton waste.
One person that has answered that question is Aaron Fairchild, co-founder and CEO of Green Canopy. Aaron's background seeking to do good and make an impact has roots dating to his time spent in Peace Corps and in the banking and the alternative energy sectors.
In 2008, Aaron and his co-founder Sam created Green Canopy in Seattle to see if they could create a better, healthier, greener homes. What started as deep retrofits morphed into net zero infill developments of single family and multifamily homes and communities.
Aaron and his team take a unique approach to green development and see scaling as an opportunity to drive change. With each energy efficient and healthy home they bring to the market they set a high water mark for other builders and developers to aim towards. During the company's existence they've seen 7-8% of new homes have sustainable features to now over 50% in the Seattle area.
Green Canopy brings a level of sophistication not commonly seen in the green building space. Their model has attracted investors that are seeking to do good with their funds while still returning a healthy profit. Their for-profit ventures also enable them to provide affordable housing options and work with community-based and socially justice organizations like Nehemiah Initiative Seattle and Habitat for Humanity.
This is a great podcast episode for those that are interested in the green building field and real estate professionals. Aaron has some incredible life lessons and take-aways that help to illuminate how one can make an impact in their lives, careers, and with their money.
When the Living Building Challenge was first conceived in the early 2000's many people had their doubts. Lauded as the world's most rigorous and aspirational green building standard, the challenge was deemed almost impossible. And in many places illegal.
Living Buildings have design and performance imperatives like the building needing to produce more energy than it consumes; all the water used is harvested on-site; materials come from local sources and are non-toxic; the project makes a positive and equitable contribution in the community; agriculture is cultivated; and waste is seen as a resource with no sewer connection.
But what about an entire community based on those same set of green building standards? That's where Matthew Grocoff comes in. He is a founding member of THRIVE Collaborative that is one of a few developers in the world to attempt a Living Community Challenge.
On this episode Matthew talks about how his background buying and retrofitting a turn of the century house to be Net Zero for energy and water helped lead him into his current endeavor of developing Veridian at County Farm.
Veridian is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the US and will be an all-electric, mixed-income, integrated community with trails, gardens, woods, and playgrounds. Multiple building types are slated to be developed that meshes several different progressive urban forms that will definitely help put this community on the map.
In an ever changing and complex world, the real estate industry must change. The change needs to come from all levels: from designers and architects, builders and developers, planners and policy makers. This is especially true for real estate agents.
The residential real estate industry has been pushing out repetitive platitudes for a long time. Agents tout that they can help a buyer find their dream home; or they promise a homeowner that they can help sell a property for the most amount of money in the least amount of time.
But how many real estate agents talk about lowering operating costs? Or creating comfortable, resilient, and healthy home environments?
Craig Foley, the Chief Sustainability Officer for LAER Realty Partners and the team leader at REthink 39 of Boston, Massachusetts, has been working at the forefront of this change for more than a decade. What he first saw as an opportunity to work with buyers and sellers that were more environmentally motivated turned into an obligation the more he saw the threat of climate change.
Craig’s team, REthink39, is devoted to lowering the 39% of U.S. energy consumption attributed to the built environment and believe they can be part of a solution with every transaction closed. Their work has helped to forge the way to how high performance homes get valued, and how buyers can help update properties to be more energy efficient.
Through his work, Craig has been active with the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) through its Sustainability Advisory Group and currently serves on Fannie Mae's Energy Advisory Council and Freddie Mac's Energy Efficiency Task Force.
For twenty-two years The Ecology School has been teaching people how to tune into and read the pattern language of nature. The school aims to transform how people think about science, food, the environment, and themselves through joyful, hands-on learning for all ages. They approach the science of ecology through wide-eyed, hands-on exploration of the ecosystems outside their doors, making nature’s lessons memorable with play, humor, and games, and applicable with real life models of sustainable farming and living.
Co-founder Drew Dumsch is a leading environmental educator that is passionate about addressing the large, complex issues we face today through ecological education. He has led an entrepreneurial career that has exposed him to not just outdoor education, but also green building, agroforestry, organizational management, and development.
Set in a pristine location on the Saco River in Southern Maine, The Ecology School’s innovative River Bend Farm campus lives and breathes a sustainable culture. The campus is one of the first sites in the world to become Living Community Challenge certified through the International Living Future Institute, and they are showcasing groundbreaking ways of growing food and conserving energy to lead by example that humans can thrive while nourishing the ecosystems we inhabit.
River Bend Farm’s forest, fields, and streams allows people to explore specific plants, animals, organisms and their habitats, providing a rich understanding of how living and non-living factors affect one another over time in every ecosystem. River Bend Farm opens our eyes to what’s possible while reimagining the future in real time.
On this tiny spec we call home in the universe, matter is neither created nor destroyed. Every living thing is created from the Earth. Death and life are the two sides of the same coin. They are both constant and infinite, yet we experience them as finite.
For the entirely of our species and those that we evolved from, our bodies have been nourished from the earth, and then returned to the earth. An eloquent quote from the Christian bible in the book of Genesis 3:19 sums this up with the passage, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Yet, by a cultural practice in the West, we are not returning to the earth any longer. We are pumped full of toxic preservatives, put into a resource-intensive casket made of wood, metal, plastic, and chemicals, lowered into a cement-lined grave, and then covered with soil in a field marked by tombstones for time-memorial. This practice is neither sustainable, nor natural.
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Jodie Buller from The White Eagle Memorial Preserve at Ekone Ranch talks about natural burials and how it enables the stewardship of both land and souls. It is one of only a few wilderness cemeteries in the U.S. and is designated a conservation burial ground by the Green Burial Council.
This is a moving and beautiful conversation that will help us all remember what is means to be alive; to be human; and how we can remember our role in the evolutionary process of Life even when we have passed on.
As life has drastically changed for many of us in the past year, we begin to look at our spaces differently. We not only spend the majority of time within our homes, but also in the spaces between our homes. For most of us, however, these spaces were not designed in order to promote health and wellbeing.
On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, we take a deep dive into the life and work of architect Kate Hamblet. Kate's firm, Balanced Architecture, emerged from the intersecting passions for sustainability, wellness, and experiential design. These three areas of design have shaped the way Kate creates and views architecture.
From a very early age Kate's love of nature sparked a deep chord and helped filter how she saw the built environment. There is balance and harmony in a building that listens to its occupants and the surrounding environment. For her, nature is an amazing learning lab and provides an abundance of inspiration for my designs.
Tune into this episode to learn about Kate's work and the movement of healthy homes.
Permaculture is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking informed by ethics and design principles. This approach seeks to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature and can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to ecological building, from appropriate technology to education and even metropolises.
Andrew Faust is one of the premiere permaculture teachers and designers in North America. In this podcast episode, Andrew talks about his backstory from gaining experience building permaculture sites and off-grid natural buildings to then applying those same principals to a different setting: New York City.
It is becoming abundantly apparent that homes and cities have been built upon a faulty foundation. As progress into the 21st century we are collectively realizing that we need to change the way that we build and change the way that we interact with our outer (and inner) worlds. In other words, we have to redesign how we design.
That's where Andrew's teachings step in. His innovative approach to using permaculture design to rethink urban metropolises is making an impacts large and small. He argues that we need to see cities as "urban metabolisms" and focus on energy nodes, and water and nutrients flows. From his work, thousands of students have gone on to apply this philosophy into their work and communities.
This episode is deeply insightful and one that you'll likely want to listen to several times. To learn more about Andrew Faust's work you can visit his website at the Center for Bioregional Living.
Across the globe we have witnessed mass environmental degradation take place. Along with the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide, desertification has also proliferated. Local economies, ecosystems, and populations are impacted by these shifting landscapes that turn fertile grasslands into barren wastelands.
As we all collectively search for solutions to address the large, complex problems we are facing in the 21st century, The Savory Institute is taking a bold lead with a land management framework that is helping to regenerate land, sequester carbon, reconnect the hydrological cycle, and springboard biodiversity across continents.
On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Bobby Gill of The Savory Institute recounts his story of how he began to tune into the message of holistic management when he began to make the link between human health and planetary health. Bobby is a phenomenal storyteller and passionate about the work that The Savory Institute is doing around the globe.
We explore fascinating topics that range from how holistic management is helping struggling farmers and ranchers get out of debt and steward their local environments, to applying holistic management as a framework for businesses and organizations to thrive.
Living in Costa Rica close to the beach in a tropical paradise is a dream many people have, but seldom pursue. That's not the case for Justin Dolan, the visionary and developer behind St. Michael's Sustainable Community.
Justin's story is nothing short of incredible. After sustaining a debilitating injury while on the job as a police officer, Justin turned to real estate as a path forward. First it was buying a cheap property he could afford in order to build a wheelchair ramp and fix up the rest of the place, to then repeating the process of buy-renovate-live-sell in order to build up a nest egg.
From there he bought a 100-acre defunct golf course property in Costa Rica. The transformation that has happened personally and to the property is nothing short of amazing. Justin found a deep love for permaculture, green building, and ecology and began to build houses and the soil while cultivating an impressive range of edible and medicinal plant species.
The golf course had to go since they are notorious sites of ecological disaster. Justin instead opted for a less destructive recreational sport, disc golf, which he found integrated in nicely with the overall property.
A permaculture country club with a pool, nurseries and gardens, food forests, and an eco-village is truly a one-of-a-kind real estate projects in the world. Tune in for this fascinating episode and check out Justin's work!
In a world with millions of rental properties, very few landlords are thinking beyond the single bottom line. The mainstream dogma of the industry teaches new investors to just focus on the numbers, yet ignores the potential impact that an investor can make by infusing sustainability into their properties and portfolios.
Seth Nowak is a real estate investor that has a long history in the environmental movement. He is aligning his investing business with his values and his expertise to blaze a trail that is sorely needed in the real estate industry. His approach is not only rooted in sound real estate investing fundamentals, but is also providing a template and a philosophy that is practical and easy to follow.
On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast Seth talks about his background in environmental policy, how he approaches real estate investing, and the things that he does to look multidimensionally at real estate investing through social, environmental, and economic lenses.
For anyone interested in real estate investing to do well and to do good, this is a must listen.
“Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.” - Susan Statham
Ashley Colby Fitzgerlad’s life is one in which passion meets purpose. She dared to take the road less traveled; the road that many of us only glimpse in bleary-eyed daydreams. To venture into the unknown, guided by a burning question of “What could be?” takes a leap of faith. It is an act that tests your resolve, questions your motives, grades on your patience, and thus, builds your resilience.
With the burning desire to learn through the experience of living a life of sustainability and subsistence farming, Ashley and her husband purchased land in Uruguay while a trip volunteering with WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) with the intention of creating a life there.
Ashley’s academic background in subsistence food production in the US fanned her desire to immerse herself in a community that practiced this lifestyle at large. It is through this lens that she examines how lifestyle choices can address social and environmental problems.
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Ashley tells a gripping narrative of what led her to Uruguay, the hardships encountered, and the endeavors she has taken on. From raising a family to starting the Rizoma Field School, Ashley’s story is nothing short of extraordinary. Through her lived experience of regeneration, Ashley helps to put the pieces together on how sustainability is couched within social systems that can be drivers for positive change and transformation.
To learn more about Ashley’s work you can visit her new site SuLoFair or pickup her book Subsistence Agriculture in the US: Reconnecting Work, Nature, and Community.
When we stop viewing nature as something we dominate, yet instead work with, transformation will happen. The land manager becomes a steward that is in partnership with nature to build soil biology so that life can flourish.
This episode the The Regenerative Real Estate is a captivating life story full of passion and purpose by the enigmatic Hobbs Magaret, founder of Sisters Cattle Co. Once a professional musician living in Los Angels, Hobbs became inspired by a TED talk by Allan Savory on the ability to sequester carbon and rehabilitate grasslands by mimicking nature with prey/predator effect to graze cows. From then on it was off to the races.
The title of this episode “The Regenerative Hustle” aptly wraps up the essence of Hobbs who shows a dazzling brilliance of driven entrepreneur. He peppers in advice based on his life on how to set ambitious goals and then achieve them without compromise or financial resources.
Equal parts philosopher, preacher, historian, and entrepreneur, Hobbs delivers a gripping narrative of how he and his wife changed their entire lives to pursue the calling of land regeneration. Be sure to turn up the volume and carve out an hour to tune in, because this is one interview that delivers entertainment, insights, and life lessons that won’t disappointment.
Place is unique. It defines and shapes culture, food, architecture, and communities. On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Ryan Wallace, the founder and CEO of The Solar Village Company, talks about how the places we've lived shapes our lives.
This is a fascinating episode that gets into climate change adaptation, migration, building triple-bottom-line companies, net-zero and off-grid properties, modular construction, and so much more.
Ryan discusses lessons learned and offers a unique perspective about building Net Zero homes. For instance, he talks about the vastly increased zoning challenges he faces when going to develop a sustainable community of Net Zero homes versus a "conventional" subdivision that gives little regard to self-reliance or natural ecosystems.
The Solar Village Companydevelops residential homes for sale and rent in sustainable communities that produces their own energy, food and water. They also build semi-custom Net Zero modular homes for clients wanting off-grid housing options.
Well into our way into the era of the Anthropocene, the defining work of the 21st century will be on revitalizing and regenerating land and habitat. Humans have altered, sculpted, and impacted every ecosystem on the planet.
What once was will no longer be. That's why the work of revitalizing ecosystems is harder than rocket science. There is no mechanical solution to working with systems that are evolving. Looking to the past can only give so many clues as we struggle with the concepts of native species, novel ecosystems, and baseline metrics.
Keith Bowers of Biohabitats joins us on this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast to talk about his background and insights that he has gleaned over thirty years regenerating ecosystems and landscapes. His work can best be defined as a blend of sound science, place-based design, and ecological democracy.
The construction industry does not have a sterling reputation when it comes to sustainability. In fact, some studies show that the construction sector contributes to 23% of air pollution, 50% of climate change, 40% of drink water pollution, and 50% of landfill waste.
There is an organization, however, that is pushing the industry forward to meet pressing 21st century challenges by adopting regenerative practices into their work. The Center for Infrastructure and Society (CIS) brings together construction industry resources to ensure a regenerative future for our planet.
In Episode 28 of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, the Executive Director of CIS, Adam Sgrenci, came onto the show and talk about his mission to help educate, inspire, and develop the capacity of the industry and the tradespeople in it.
Did you ever have fantasies about living in a tree house when you were a kid? If so, you're not alone. Meet Django Kroner, the founder of the company Canopy Crew out of the Red River Gorge in Kentucky.
Django had a dream to be a professional rock climber, and to make it work financially he worked in the construction industry for a timber frame builder. He was living out of a tent at the time, and it wasn't until he looked up at the tree canopy did he realize that it appeared to be a much better place to sleep.
Combining the skills he picked up in construction and his climbing experience, Django built a treehouse that would become his home for the next three years. What happened next was anything short of amazing. Django found that people loved the treehouse he built and wanted more.
At first he did custom treehouses for clients, but then he set his sights onto finding a way to build the places he wanted to see come to life. Django went on to buy small properties located in the Daniel Boone National Forest and has built treehouse vacation rentals. They have built everything from rustic, pack-it-in type of treehouse accommodations, to treehouses that offer all the "creature comforts" one could ask for on a weekend glamping trip.
When possible, the materials The Canopy Crew uses for the treehouses are sourced from the other side of the business--an arbor service in Cincinnati. When an urban tree needs to come down, his crew mills it and turns it into a new treehouse, millwork, or furniture.
Be sure to check out The Canopy Crew's website and Instagram page (@canopycrew) for inspiration and to book your next vacation.
Matt Daigle is the founder of Rise, an online authority in sustainable home improvement. It all started when Matt and his wife decided to renovate their home. After spending six figures remodeling the property, he had failed to lower the property's utility bills. That's when he set his sights on learning what it really takes to build with sustainability in mind.
Along the way Matt saw the need to demystify this information and help other homeowners make better decisions. With his background in tech, he founded the Rise, which provides homeowners and industry professionals with know-how and connections to build durable, resilient, long-lasting, healthy, and energy-efficient homes.
Through their work at Rise, Matt and his team are finding that the more we invest in a healthy, efficient, and durable homes, the more benefits we get out of it—from a financial perspective (lower operating costs, higher resale value) as well as a from a comfort and health perspective. For him, it comes down to health, wealth, and helping the planet.
On this episode, Amira Ayoub, an architect out of Cairo, Egypt talks about her passion to change the world and create a resilient future for her kids and future generations. She is an architect that specializes in biophilic and regenerative design.
Amira is USGBC® LEED & WELL Faculty™, a Living Future and Fitwel Ambassador, and has designed the first Fitwel and Living Building Challenge projects in North Africa and the Middle East.
She is the founder of the Living Future Cairo Collaborative and was also awarded as a Living Future Hero for 2019. In 2019 she was nominated by the UNFCCC with other 100 visionary thinkers and interdisciplinary thought leaders from around the world to join the Resilience Frontier Initiative and co-create visions of desirable climate-resilience futures beyond 2030.
Sheila Alston is part wellness professional, part real estate agent. She deeply cares about people's health and well-being and sees an emerging trend of people infusing wellness into their personal spaces. For Sheila, she knows that the environments that we live and work in are critical for our success and well-being.
Through her work with clients in San Diego as both a designer and an agent, she realized that there is a tremendous need to demystify wellness and help give people actionable advice to create healthy habitats.
By focusing on this mission she has created Wellness RE Magazine, a new publication that helps real estate agents serve their clients by providing them with actionable content in a beautiful, easy-to-digest format.
Be sure to check out the December issue where Neal and Alissa Collins from Latitude Realty are featured!
In this episode, host Neal Collins interviews Natalia Szyk-Trocha, the creator behind popular YouTube channel Savagaya. Natalia talks about how she overcame her fear of putting herself out there and her lack of video editing skills to go on to produce beautiful videos that showcase sustainable properties around the world.
Natalia is an architect by training, however after working in the industry for a few years she became disenchanted with the work. She decided to take a bold leap to quit her job, pick up a camera, and then begin making videos of properties she visited.
Her mission is to show people that we can all be building much more sustainably without having to break the bank.
Bill Reed is an internationally recognized planning consultant, design process facilitator, lecturer, teacher, and author in sustainability and regeneration. He has been a leading figure in the green building movement as a founding Board of Director of the US Green Building Council and one of the co-founders of the LEED Green Building Rating System.
His work and that of Regenesis has been to pioneer regenerative development—an approach to land use, community development, and the built environment that has defined the leading edge of sustainability--across the globe.
Bill has been an outspoken advocate that is committed to proving that human activity can be a source of health and regeneration, rather than destruction and degradation. Living up to this promise will require humans to step up and develop a firm grasp of the complex working of natural systems in order to harmonize and evolve with nature.
Many people dream of creating a new kind of community. One that is both sustainable and beautiful. A place where they can raise their kids, connect with neighbors, yet still rejuvenate in nature. Most of these dreams remain just that.
On this episode Steven Nygren, the visionary and developer, shares his story about creating the community of his dreams. A place outside of Atlanta called Serenbe.
There are not many people in the world like Steve. His creation is truly a feat that many would deem too large to even attempt. From rural hamlets run on geothermal energy, to world-class schools, integrated farms and edible landscapes, by the time you finish listening you'll be ready to see it for yourself.
Oliver Ogden has set out to tell stories. His medium was through film and photography. That is until he found that stories about sustainability, resilience, and stewardship were being told in different ways. He became enamored with natural building and is now founder of Placecraft Design & Build.
Oliver sees natural building as a building method that can provide sustainable solutions in a world predicated upon extraction and destruction.
On this episode learn how he and his company are combining the efficiency of the conventional building world with the elements of the natural building world to tell a story that needs to be told.
Will and Terry Kosloski had made a home on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They had a garden, were active in the outdoors, and involved in the community. But they had a dream. A dream to get closer to the land—to connect, to listen, and to restore and regenerate,
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Will recounts the story of selling their belongings and heading out on a road trip in search of a farm. They drove a month to the opposite side of the continent to a little place called Cape Breton in Nova Scotia that is almost to the tip of where the land meets the Atlantic Ocean.
They found a 74-acre parcel, which had no infrastructure or buildings—just trees and a stream. They lived out of their travel trailer while they cleared a spot to build a cabin.
They bought highland cows, with pigs soon to follow.
They created a vegetable bed, with a farm stand no long after.
They are now three years into the making of Twisted Roots Farm. For them sharing the gifts of the land and teaching self-reliance that comes from working it is a passion they share with other people. They have a 3-month internships where you can live on the farm, and work and learn alongside of them.
If you are interested in farming, permaculture, homesteading, or living closer to nature, you are going to want to tune into this beautiful episode.
Jason McLennan calls himself a "professional troublemaker." For his entire career Jason has been pushing the boundaries on what is possible in the built environment.
To him, sustainable and regenerative design shouldn't be something we need to have a label for--it should just be the way.
Jason is the principal of McLennan Design and is considered one of the world’s most influential individuals in the field of architecture and the green building movement today. He is the founder of the International Living Future Institute, which launched the Living Building Challenge to the world in 2006.
Jason shares his story on this podcast from growing up in a coal mining town to getting started as an architect. He talks about how the Living Building Challenge came about and his process of conceptualizing the impact he wanted to have on the built environment.
He is one of those visionaries that will forever be hailed as a pioneer and catalyst for the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.
Water is one of life's most precious resources, yet abuse and mismanage it. That's not surprising because we have created a system and society that divorces ourselves from where we get our water. We take for granted the potable water in our sinks, and are ignorant about where it goes after it flows into our drains.
On this episode, Laura Allen of Greywater Action helps to demystify greywater and how we can take practical steps to integrate water systems into our lives, our homes, and our yards. She provides low cost and low tech solutions that everyone can partake in.
Laura is the author of The Water-Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture, and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape,a phenomenal resource that should be on every Change Agent's book shelf.
Martin Brown is a sustainability provocateur and regenerative practitioner that combines decades worth of construction background to help advance the built environment by looking holistically at practices that restore, revitalize, and offers hope.
Martin is a Living Future Ambassador out of the U.K. and is the founder of Fairsnape. His company does consultancy and advocacy work for regenerative sustainability, built environment improvement, social responsibility and social media.
Carol Sanford is consistently recognized thought leader that works side by side with Fortune 500 and new economy executives to design and lead systemic business change and design. She is a leading voice in the Regenerative movement and has authored many award-winning books on the subject.
On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Carol goes in depth about how to develop awareness and a mindset that goes beyond "doing less bad" and into one of regeneration.
This is a fascinating listen from a leading authority in the business world that has worked closely with many leading business leaders to create change agents and world-class organizations.
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Al Tozer of Tozer Design comes on to talk about his experience of blending ecology with architecture.
Al and his firm are credited as designing the world's first Living Building Certified residence, which is an incredible feat as the first mover and shaker to take on such a rigorous challenge.
We talk about Al's experience in the regenerative design space as well as his experience working with the International Living Future Institute. His firm has gone on to win architectural design awards and they are now recognized as a firm that delivers stunning buildings that are healthy, sustainable, and honor the place in which they are built.
Mark Shepard is widely known as an agroforestry and permaculture expert that is the CEO of Agriculture Restoration Development and the owner of New Forest Farm, a commercial-scale perennial agricultural system that uses the oak savanna as an ecological model.
In this fascinating talk, Mark gets into the real estate side of things and how he has been successful at improving degraded real estate through restorative practices that mimic nature, and then stacking synergistic businesses that will increase the value of the property so that he can refinance his capital out and get infinite returns.
This is a show that is certainly thought-provoking, inspiring, and actionable!
Austin Tunnell is an emerging developer that designs and builds stunning, community-oriented, and masonry framed homes. His work extends from pocket neighborhoods to custom homes with his sights on more urban infill guided by a new urbanism philosophy.
Austin decided at an early age that being a CPA at a big four accounting firm was not the path for him. He quit his job and began getting immersed into sustainable building/living in Panama before joining the Peace Corps in Uganda. He then teamed up with Clay Chapman to learn how to be a builder in Oklahoma and has never left.
This is someone that we will certainly want to keep on our radar to see the great work that he will continue to inspire with his design-build firm Building Culture.
Sonja Bochart is an inspirational thought-leader with 20 years of experience creating meaningful and healthy spaces in the built environment. She is an avid speaker, facilitator, leader, and writer. Her design work promotes thoughtfulness and leading-edge innovations of holistic design with a focus on human health and wellness. This is an incredibly moving episode that will make you walk away feeling inspired and hopeful for the future of our world.
Amanda Sturgeon is an award-winning architect, author, speaker, and thought-leader in the regenerative design space. She is an expert in biophilic design and her work helps to connect the thought that people are nature are part of one living system. She is now setting her sights on to how to make regenerative design mainstream with large-scale project integration.
Paula Baker-Laporte is an author, architect, and visionary. She has been named one of the top 10 green architects in the US and is a principal at EcoNest Architecture.
When Paula found herself getting chronically ill she discovered that it was her home that was the cause. She then went on to integrate non-toxic building materials into her work in order to help her and others with chemical sensitivities live in healthy atmospheres.
She and her partner Robert Laporte founded EcoNest Architecture, which goes beyond just non-toxic materials but integrates design and nature to help people rejuvenate.
This is one podcast episode that you do not want to miss and you will be glad that you tuned in.
Eli Spevak has been developing affordable housing communities in Oregon for over 20 years, starting as a volunteer construction supervisor with Habitat for Humanity. In 2006, he launched Orange Splot, LLC to build new models of community-oriented, affordable, green housing development – ideally within an easy bike ride of his house. Eli was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard GSD, co-founded www.accessorydwellings.org, co-founded Portland for Everyone, and now serves on Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission.
In this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Eli gets into his evolution of his career and his developments. This is a must listen for anyone wanting to live or development community-oriented projects!
In 2005 Jake Fry left his carpentry job building luxury homes in Vancouver BC to chase a dream of building small structures tucked away in people’s backyards and on alleys. Since then Jake and his firm Smallworks Studios has gone on to build over 300 laneway houses (also known as accessory dwelling units) and is arguably one of the most prolific design/builders of beautifully designed and meticulously built small houses in North America. Jake is a builder, change maker, and progressive housing policy advocate.
Dr. Michael Mehaffy is an urbanist, architectural theorist, urban philosopher, researcher, educator, and executive director of Sustasis Foundation.
He is a prolific figure that is working to promote regenerative communities by looking at how planning and development work can connect suburbs and cities to work together.
Listen to the transformative story of Stephen Aiguier on how he became one of the leaders of the sustainability movement in real estate. His company, Green Hammer, is an award-winning design/build firm that has completed projects that range from LEED homes to Living Building Challenges.
In this insightful interview on The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, Neal talks with environmental wellness expert Michelle Bexelius about the not-so-well-known things about our homes and lifestyles that impact our health. Michelle is the founder of designWell Studios, which helps people test their homes for toxicities, mold, and electromagnetic frequencies. This is a very eye opening conversation that is a must-listen to help people become aware of the issues we are collectively facing, as well as get insightful suggestions we can do to help keep our families healthy and thriving.
In this stimulating interview, we talk to Ross Chapin, the world renown architect that popularized pocket neighborhoods, about his life experiences that led to his concept of community-oriented and nourishing housing. Learn Ross' take on what the future of housing will look like in a post COVID-19 world.
In this exciting interview with visionary leader and regenerative agriculture practitioner, Ann Forsthoefel talks about the evolution of her life and how she created her urban farm to promote beauty, bounty, and biodiversity.
Alex Joyce is the managing principal at Cascadia Partners, a Portland-based urban planning and real estate services firm. He works with municipalities and developers from across the country create urban environments for the future.
Learn about our new show, The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast. Ultimately, the show is designed to explore our built environment and sets out to inspire impactful ideas, change, wellness, and prosperity through easy to digest conversations with well-known industry leaders and iconoclasts guests to everyday people. This is a show for people that are looking for ideas, insights, and hope during unprecedented times of change. For more, listen...