Carolyne Stayton is the Executive Director of Transition US. She is adept at aligning community activities towards unified goals, a skill honed from over thirty years of working with nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. She has successfully galvanized communities around various social issues and has particular expertise in program development, participative leadership and “learning” organizations. Her background includes serving as Director of New College’s North Bay Campus for Sustainable Living, an innovative educational institution that promoted advanced studies in leadership, community-building and developed the nation’s first “green” MBA program. Carolyne has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Administration, resides in Sebastopol, California and is passionate about stewardship and protection of the natural world.

Shelby Tay began working with Post Carbon Institute in 2005 coordinating the Relocalization Network, an international network of citizen-driven initiatives working to address peak oil and climate change. Her background lies in environmental sciences and interdisciplinary learning at the University of British Columbia. Shelby is a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council and an active Board Member of Village Vancouver Transition Initiative. She is interested the use of social media and social enterprise to strengthen communities and has helped launch programs and events for Vancouver's 30 Days of Sustainability, Salmonberry Days Festival, A Loving Spoonful and Global Habitat Festival. Between meetings, events and when her hands aren't glued to the computer, she is taking the time to cultivate her urban homestead, and can often be found cycling the streets of Vancouver, BC, where she currently resides.
 

Carl Shuller is excited to be supporting a movement that is so closely aligned with his vision and hope for our collective future.  His formal education culminated with a Master Degree in Human Environment Relations from Cornell University.   He is a trained facilitator of the Pachamama Alliance's Awakening The Dreamer Symposium and maintains that “together we can bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet as a guiding principle of our times."  Carl has participated in numerous programs at the the Regenerative Design Institute including the Permiculture Design Course and Ecology of Leadership program.   He currently resides in Petaluma, CA where he is involved in the local Homegrown Guild and is eternally grateful to be a part of such an amazing, evolving, and resilient community.

Scott McKeown is the founder and a continual core team member of Transition Sebastopol which in 2008 became the 9th official Transition initiative in the US and which continues to grow with now twelve active working groups. Scott has been a professional trainer and instructional designer for over fourteen years in both corporate high-tech environments such as Advance Fibre Communications (now Tellabs, Inc.) and also with non-profit organizations such as The Buckminster Fuller Institute. Scott has been a certified Training for Transition instructor since 2008 and has co-taught the "T4T" course in the California communities of San Rafael, Oakland, Los Angeles, Monterey, Willits, Lake County, and Sonoma, all which helped toward the formation of other Transition initiatives in California. For thirty-five years Scott has been deeply involved in movement building and social action issues. Scott founded several social action-focused organizations as diverse as the Mystic Beat Lounge art collective and the Los Angeles Guardian Angels volunteer safety patrol. Scott was Marketing Director for three high-tech companies including Surround Sound Inc. which produced the first Dolby-licensed home Surround Sound decoder, and mother.com, an Internet Service Provider (now Websoft Developers, Inc.). Scott has been an event producer for over three decades and has produced hundreds of events including conferences, speaking tours, eco fairs and music festivals. Scott has been a production consultant and technical director for many other events and organizations such as for the last five bi-annual conferences of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. From 2003 through 2007 Scott was the Executive Director and chief executive of the thirty-thousand person attended Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California, which during Scott's tenure more than doubled its attendance and revenue and has become one of the largest music and camping festivals on the West Coast.

Asher Miller is the Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute and was the former Manager of the organization's Relocalization Network. He has thirteen years of nonprofit management experience, including as founder of Climate Changers, an organization that inspires people to reduce their impact on the climate by focusing on simple and achievable actions anyone can take. Previously, he was Partnership Director at Plugged In; International Production Coordinator at Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation; Youth Manager at the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County; a ghostwriter; and a consultant for a number of other nonprofit groups. Asher also serves on the board of Listening for a Change, and on the Advisory Board of ErthNxt. He also recently served as a member of Senator John Edwards' Cleantech / Green Business Advisory Committee. Asher received his B.A. in English, Creative Writing from The Colorado College.
 

Vicki Robin is well-known as the co-author with Joe Dominguez of the international best-seller, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence. The Wall Street Journal, Money, Woman's Day, Newsweek, Utne Magazine and the New York Times, and newspapers around the world have reported on her work on lowering consumption in North America. Vicki served on the President's Council on Sustainable Development's Task Force on Population and Consumption. She is also co-founder of the New Road Map Foundation, the Center for a New American Dream, Sustainable Seattle, Conversation Cafes, the Simplicity Forum, the Turning Tide Coalition, Let’s Talk America, and currently Transition Whidbey which is seeking to catalyze the community on Whidbey Island to greater food, fuel, energy and economic self-reliance in light of predicted impacts of oil depletion and climate change.
 

Patricia Benson has been engaged in different aspects of environmental sustainability for over 20 years. Her experience includes market gardening, environmental education, curriculum/media development, and advocacy for environmental justice. She has lived on a family dairy farm in Minnesota, on national forest land in the wilderness, and in urban and rural communities. Benson works with congregations to raise awareness, network, and to engage people of faith in congregational and community work for sustainability, and provide opportunities for advocacy for effective and just public policy. She is a member of the leadership teams with Lutherans Restoring Creation and with the Minnesota Episcopal Environmental Stewardship Commission. Benson received a B.S. in education with the College of St. Catherine and graduate training through the Center for Global Environmental Education at Hamline University. Patricia is a member of the initiating group of Transition Northfield, and has made presentations across Minnesota to introduce Transition Initiatives.

Dave Room is black man of mixed origin born raised in Berkeley and living in Oakland. He has connected to several communities: the Bay Area, people of color, and eco-sustainability.  His daughter is his inspiration, and the reason he is here.  Dave was a founding board member and helped build Post Carbon Institute from its infancy.  Dave went on to co-found Bay Localize, a public benefit organization focused on localization in the Bay Area and coordinates the Local Clean Energy Alliance. He founded the Hubbert Tribute, which educates policy makers about peak oil and researches energy policy history. Dave does solo performance theater (The Monkey Trap) and Green Pill Workshops to awaken and activate mainstream audiences, people of color, and youth.  He coined "Energy Preparedness" and was on the Oil Independent Oakland by 2020 task force.

Karen Lanphear is a co-founder of the Sandpoint Transition Initiative. She believes that the power of education and the strength of building strong community coalitions can really change the world. She has worked the entire spectrum of education from setting up early childhood education programs to helping design a community college system in the Middle East. Karen has worked to develop and coordinate community coalitions, co-authored 3 travel books and had the good fortune to travel most of the world. She knows there are many ways to do things and that each community has an enormous pool of talent and power that can be unleashed when people start working together on a common vision, and start harnessing their resources to move in a new direction. 

Alastair Lough, and Patricia Proulx-Lough, were the first two official Transition Trainers in the US, and are pioneers of the Transition Movement in the US. Early in his career, Alastair served as a professional facilitator for Corning, assisting small workgroups in problem solving problems of their choosing. In 2008, Alastair completed a doctorate in Natural Resources, in which he addressed issues of long-term water-resource conservation for the benefit of future populations. Keenly aware of climate change, peak oil and the possibility of economic crisis, he has since chosen to promote the Transition Model in the US and abroad as an innovative approach for communities to directly tackle these issues. Alastair is a permaculturist, a facilitator for the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and cofounder of the Transition Training Center in Portland ME.

Mark Lancaster Mark is currently the president of the Heberden Telemedicine Foundation. He has served as the Chief Executive Officer for the Palm Drive Health Care Foundation in Sebastopol, Ca; a post he has held since April 2010. Prior to coming to the foundation, Mr. Lancaster was the director of strategic relationships for the Global Footprint Network in Oakland, Ca; the Executive Director for the Seva Foundation in Berkeley, Ca; the director of the Presbyterian Hunger Program in Louisville, Ky; the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the American Friends Service Committee in Baltimore, MD and the Executive Director for Ministry of Money in Washington, DC. Mark is an ordained United Methodist clergy person and has served three different parishes, been the chaplain at the American University in Washington, DC and McDaniel College in Westminster Maryland, where he also served as a faculty member and the director of the annual fund.Mr. Lancaster has worked throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe on issues of food security, sustainable development, education, housing, gender equity and health care. Mark has twice chaired the board of directors for Heifer International and served as a consultant for Habitat for Humanity and Interaction. He is married to Barbara Sayler and father to Joel and Emma Lancaster. The family resides on a small farm outside Santa Rosa and is working to create a fully sustainable farmstead, with the help of 4 year old Emma

Advisors

Raven Gray is the co-founder and past President of Transition US. She is a pioneer of the Transition Towns movement in the UK, having set up the world’s 2nd Transition Initiative after Totnes. Her professional background is diverse, ranging from ecovillage educator in India, to organic dairy farmer and community arts organizer in the UK, to software entrepreneur in California. Fundamentally, she is a permaculture educator and activist, with a strong commitment to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Jennifer has dedicated her life to restoring the earth’s balance, and is a frequent speaker and writer on this topic and the urgent need for transition. She received a BA in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community from New College, California, and an MSc in Holistic Science: Ecological Education from Schumacher College in the UK.

Richard Heinberg is author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the soon-to-be-released The End of Growth, Richard Heinberg is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. With a wry, unflinching approach based on facts and realism, Richard exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life and offers a vision for a truly sustainable future. Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute, Richard is best known as a leading educator on Peak Oil—the point at which we reach maximum global oil production—and the resulting, devastating impact it will have on our economic, food, and transportation systems. But his expertise is far ranging, covering critical issues including the current economic crisis, food and agriculture, community resilience, and global climate change. Richard’s latest book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality makes a compelling argument that the global economy has reached a fateful, fundamental turning point. As energy and food prices escalate and debt levels explode, paths that formerly led to economic expansion now go nowhere. The “recession” will not end in a “recovery,” yet in the coming years we can still thrive—if we maximize happiness rather than the futile pursuit of growth at any cost. Richard is a much sought-after speaker and has presented in dozens of countries and across the United States. He’s featured in many documentaries, including End of Suburbia and Leonardo DiCaprio’s film 11th Hour. Richard has appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, Canadian Broadcasting Television, BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs (national NPR) and print publications (Time magazine). He lives in northern California with his wife and is an avid violin player.

Rob Hopkins is the originator of the Transition concepts and co-founder of the Transition Network. He spent many years teaching permaculture and cob building, mostly when living in Ireland. Now based in Totnes, he is a member of Transition Town Totnes, works part time for Transition Network, publishes www.transitionculture.org, is author of the ‘Transition Handbook’ and generally spends far too much time thinking about Transition stuff. He is also a Trustee of the Soil Association. Rob is a family man with 4 sons, Rowan, Finn, Cian and Arlo, and is deeply in love with the raised beds he just finished building.

Peter Lipman  is policy director at sustainable transport charity Sustrans and is particularly proud of their DIY Streets project. He’s also a part time lawyer and chair of trustees of the Centre for Sustainable Energy.