Kat Steele is a permaculture activist, designer, educator and founder of the Urban Permaculture Guild in Oakland, CA. She facilitates workshops on ecological design, sustainability and permaculture as well as publicly speaks about eco-social design, city repair and the power of placemaking. Trained in Ecovillage Design with the Findhorn Foundation of Scotland, Natural Building with Kleiwerks International, and Permaculture Design with the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, she also holds an MA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University. She presently serves on the board of a Bay Area nonprofit organization devoted to peace, justice and sustainablity, the NorCal Chapter of Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR). In 2006 she became one of a 1,000 Climate Project trainees empowered to present a version of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth slide presentation. Kat recently moved to Big Sur, CA to lead sustainability initiatives at the Esalen Institute. She is devoted to localization and community resiliency, believing it to be a key strategy towards sustainability and "thriveability.”