About Our Presenters

Grace Gershuny is co-author of USDA National Organic Standards, author
of Soul of Soil, and upcoming history of the organic movement. Grace is nationally known in the alternative agriculture movement, having worked for more than twenty years as an organizer, Institute for Social Ecology faculty member, author and consultant, as well as a small-scale market gardener.She has written several books and numerous articles on soil management and composting.

Brian Tokar, long-time faculty member and director of the Biotechnology Project at the Insitute for Social Ecology (ISE), received a Project Censored award for his investigative history of Monsanto Corporation (published in The Ecologist). He is the author of several books on green politics, environmental movements and biotechnology and was an organizer of the annual "Biodevastation" protests against the biotechnology industry.

Daniel Chodorkoff, Ph.D., anthropology, New School for Social Research, is cofounder and former executive director of the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE). He is an urban anthropologist and activist with special interests in community development and utopian studies, and has authored numerous articles on both subjects. Dr. Chodorkoff has been very active in the Green movement and was a longtime faculty member at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and worked with the Loisaida (Puerto Rican) community in the Lower East Side in NYC in the 1970s to develop the first urban use of solar energy.

Bill Aal is a longtime political activist, organizer and trainer who uses popular education, Applied Meditation and other tools to help unleash the imagination for change.

Margo Adair has been a diversity trainer and social justice activist for many years, and is the author of "Meditations on Everything Under the Sun" and "Working Inside Out". Together Margo Adair and Bill Aal are the founders of Tools for Change, and co-authors of "Practical Meditation for Busy Souls.”

Annie Brulé is a practicing artist and place-based activist, with a background in geography and social anthropology. She earned her bachelor's of fine art at Lewis & Clark College and is the owner of Brulé Illustration & Design, specializing in map design and hand-drawn geographic imagery.

Jenn Coe has been growing food and helping others to grow food for nearly 20 years. Currently, she is working to strengthen local food systems through community gardens and back yard farms, including an organic garden at the Vashon Food Bank.

Emet Degirmenci is an activist, permaculture consultant and researcher in gender and development and co-founder of Turkish social ecology. She has lived and developed community projects in Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, Emet was acknowledged as a Peace Ambassador by the Universal Peace Federation for initiating the Innermost Gardens project for refugee and migrant women in Wellington.

Bill Moyer is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Backbone Campaign, which works to “awaken and inspire Americans to build a progressive movement, reclaim our government and secure a future worthy of our children.” The Backbone Campaign was a key sponsor of the recent Localize This! Action Camp on Vashon, which taught creative tactics for resistence and social change activism (see under John Sellers, below).

Mark Musick, a sustainable food systems consultant, is a founder of Seattle Tilth in 1974, founder of Vashon Cohousing in 1989, and Farm Program Manager at Pike Place Market from 1997 to 2002. More recently, he has been working with Seattle Public Utilities to divert good, edible food from the waste bins of restaurants and hotels into the city's food banks. The film “Good Food” features Musick’s work in articulating a vision of a better agriculture in the Pacific Northwest.

Beverly Naidus, internationally known artist and scholar, has taught art for social change for about three decades. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Her book on teaching art for social change will be coming out with New Village Press this fall.

John Sellers was the executive director of the Ruckus Society for eight years, through the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, the creation of the International People’s Power Project (IP3), and the Not Your Soldier (NYS) project, which works to create alternatives to militarism in schools and communities. Most recently, John Sellers of Ruckus, Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign and others organized the Localize This! Action Camp on Vashon to teach creative tactics for resistence and social change work.

Bob Spivey, a long-time activist and SEEDS co-founder, earned a masters degree in social ecology from the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) in 1991. He has taught sociology and social ecology at a number of colleges, and also taught during the ISE summer program for ten years.

Caleb Summers is the owner of Soil and Life Solutions, which provides educational, consultative, and analytical services that aim to change the face of agriculture as we know it to a healthy, economically superior, socially just, environmentally sustainable system.

Marguerite Tingkhye is a researcher and activist rooted in Himalayan ecology, agriculture and cultural, and examines the effects of political and economic development policies. Marguerite is an alumni of the Evergreen State College, and The Institute for Social Ecology with Goddard College.

Amoshaun Toft has taught workshops and college courses on communication, media activism, community media, information networks, and social movements. He earned his BA from the ISE, and has an MA in Communications from the University of Washington, where he is currently working on his Ph.D.