David Bartecchi, M.A.
Dave received his M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Colorado State University and has worked with Village Earth since 1998. He is now the executive director of Village Earth. Since 2000 he has been working with grassroots groups on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to recover lands for community-based bison restoration. He has also worked with the indigenous groups in Peru and Ecuador and trained and consulted on community-based development projects in in Azerbaijan, Armenia, India as well as with Native American tribes in California and Oklahoma. He has been an instrumental part of several research projects with CSU’s Department of Anthropology including a 6 year longitudinal study of the informal economy on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota funded by the National Science Foundation, a survey of farmers and ranchers participating in the National Conservation Reserve Program conducted by CSU’s Natural Resource Ecology Lab and funded by the USDA, and community-based censuses on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations in South Dakota.
Dave teaches online courses in Approaches to Community Development, Community Mobilization and Organization, Community Capacity Building and Community-based Mapping.
Renee Ciulla, M.A.
Renee Ciulla, originally from New Hampshire, first became interested in community-based conservation while living and studying in Kenya (where migratory species co-exist with nomadic pastoralists) and Tanzania. Renee’s educational experiences include an undergraduate degree from Saint Lawrence University in Environmental Studies, Geology and Psychology. After running her own sustainable gardening business in the Rocky Mountains, she attended graduate school in Europe for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. Traveling and learning experiences include Africa, Indonesia, South America, Australia, many remote and rural corners of Europe and the USA. Teaching experiences range from outdoor education in Bozeman, Montana to agricultural and sustainability issues at the University of Kassel in Germany. She currently lives in Torino, Italy conducting research for an institute related to the local food system of the Piemonte region and how EU and Italian policies can better assist local producers.
Heather Day, M.A.
Heather Day is co-founder and Executive Director of Community Alliance for Global Justice, a Seattle-based, grassroots nonprofit that arose out of the historic 1999 protests of the World Trade Organization. CAGJ’s organizing is directed through three programs: Food Justice Project, Trade Justice and AGRA Watch, a campaign to monitor and evaluate the role of the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Heather sits on the recently formed Puget Sound Regional Food Policy Council, representing the non-profit social justice sector. Heather received her B.A. in Political Economy from The Evergreen State College in 1992 and her M.A. in Geography from the University of Washington in 2007. Heather’s research and activist interests include sustainable food systems, international development regimes, transnational activist alliances and Latin American social movements. Heather lived in France, studied Spanish in El Salvador and Mexico, and has travelled throughout Latin America.
Christy Eylar, M.A.
Christy Eylar is the International Sponsored Student Coordinator for the Office of International Programs at Colorado State University. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Colorado State University. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer working on nutrition and health projects in Bolivia from 2001-2003 and worked as the Colorado State University Peace Corps Representative while earning her Master’s degree. In 2004, she participated in a field school on health and participatory research at the Center for Social Well Being in Peru. Her Master’s thesis focused on health issues related to mining in the Altiplano of Bolivia. Christy teaches an online course in Community Health.
Summer Harlow, M.A.
A journalist with 10-plus years of reporting experience, Summer Harlow is a Journalism doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). She received her master’s degree in Latin American Studies from UT, and she has bachelors degrees in Journalism and Spanish from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her academic work has focused on the intersections of activism/social movements and the media, with particular attention on the role of digital technologies and alternative media. Currently she is the blog editor for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
Prakash Kamtam
Prakash Kamtam is a civil servant with over fifteen years of experience in governance and development administration and with over a decade of hands on experience in the disaster management department in India. He worked as one of the key officials during the Tsunami relief and rehabilitation operations in Southern India. He is a qualified mechanical engineer with executive management qualifications from the Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, India.
Mr. Kamtam is passionate and committed to working toward the greater good of society. He recently cofounded a not-for-profit NGO that is working towards building a global sustainable development resource center. Other areas of interest include promoting green and sustainable development, working towards holistic and inclusive growth, advocating governance reforms, and working towards building corruption free and transparent institutions.
Tanya Kerssen, M.A.
Tanya Kerssen is a researcher at Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, CA. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies, Spanish and Women’s Studies from the University of Minnesota and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley she focused on the political economy of food and agriculture by examining food sovereignty in traditional coca-growing communities in Bolivia. With Food First, she has led several educational “food sovereignty tours” (to Bolivia, Mexico and West Africa) and edited the newsletter African Agroecological Alternatives to the Green Revolution for over two years. She recently co-led a rural accompaniment delegation to Honduras with Alliance for Global Justice. She is also active in Occupy Oakland and participated in the creation of the “Occupy the Food System” working group.
Cynthia Ord, M.S.
Cynthia Ord holds a Masters of Tourism and Environmental Economics degree from the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca, Spain and a B.A. in Spanish and Philosophy from Colorado State University. Her M.S. program focused on the socio-cultural, environmental and economic impacts of global tourism. Ord’s research focused on non-commercial volunteer tourism networks. She currently works in media and communications for WHL Group, a global online travel-booking network that focuses on e-market access for small and medium sized tourism enterprises in the Global South. She has also worked on ecotourism projects in Central America and worked with a local tour operator in Albania. In her spare time, she is a travel blogger.
Kyle Overly, M.S.
Kyle Overly studied Fire & Emergency Management at Oklahoma State University. Kyle received his B.A. in Political Science & Emergency Management from Millersville University of Pennsylvania in 2008. His research focus is on disaster mitigation, sustainable development, and the social aspects of disaster response. Kyle has worked on several studies including an examination of wildfire management policy in the U.S., the social effects of floodplain management policies, and emergency medical services response to large-scale disasters. In addition to his academic background, Kyle has over eight years experience in the volunteer fire service. He has also worked as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in Pennsylvania. Kyle currently teaches an online course in Community-based Disaster Mitigation.
Kamala Parekh, M.S.
Kamala has a Master’s in Economics from the University of Allahabad, India. Radio Journalism with a BBC affiliated International Broadcasting Company. Community Development Training: Institute of Cultural Affairs-International, Chicago, USA. Currently she coordinates village and community based activities in Maharashtra, teaches English language to non-English speaking European women in Maharashtra, trains village women and craftsmen in making and marketing local handicrafts in Zambia and India, trains government and private sector multinational organizations and NGOs in the techniques of community development through participative methods, and has coordinated an entrepreneurial development program for village youth in Maharashtra in collaboration with Village Earth. She also conducts Personality Development Courses for college and university students in India, conducts finishing school courses/women’s empowerment workshops (‘Stree Shakti’) for rural and urban women in India, and holds summer camps for children through non-academic activities to develop their overall personality and build confidence. Kamala teaches an online course in Microfinance and the Role of Women in Sustainable Community Development.
Raul O. Paz Pastrana
Raul Paz Pastrana has been an organizer for over eight years and has given many workshops around the country and Latin America. These workshops have focused on diverse topics such as theater of the oppressed, popular education, participatory filmmaking, strategic organizing and base building.
He has worked as the Organizing Director for Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores, a non-profit that works to empower immigrant workers in the Denver, Colorado area. He is a consultant for Village Earth who facilitates vision and storyboard/film workshops at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and the North Amazon strip in Peru and Ecuador. He is currently completing his masters in film and is completing his thesis film project with the Huaoroni of Ecuador. Raul teaches an online course in Community-based Organizing.
Kristina Pearson, M.A.
Kristina Pearson has over 7 years practical international development experience in strategic planning, capacity building, program development, gender mainstreaming, monitoring and evaluation, all across a broad range of development sectors including health, business/economic development, conservation, education, water and natural resources management. Kristina received her M.A. in international development from Colorado State University. She has field experience in Peru, Guatemala, Fiji, Samoa, and US native communities. Some of her specialties include Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation, Strategic Planning Methods, Group Facilitation and Consensus-building, Community-based mapping, Ethnographic and Survey Research – Qualitative and Quantitative, Participatory Action Research and Learning Methods, Gender Equity Approaches and Gender Mainstreaming, Training in Integrated Community Development, and Community-based Natural Resources Management and Conservation. She currently teaches online courses in Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation, Gender Equity in Development, and Participatory Research and Development.
V. Lee Scharf, M.A., J.D.
Lee Scharf has worked as a mediator in community mediation, peer mediation in public school systems, court-ordered mediation within tribal, federal and community mediation contexts, has conducted large national facilitations and worked in environmental conflict resolution in all media. She has a Masters’ degree in Environmental Conflict Resolution and over twenty years’ experience as a mediator working with tribal nations. Ms. Scharf’s environmental conflict resolution taxonomy and annotated bibliography was published by the American Bar Association in 2002. She worked for the Environmental Protection Agency from 1991 until 2006, first in the Superfund Enforcement program and then in the Office of General Counsel in Washington, DC. From 2000 until 2006 Ms. Scharf was the National Tribal Mediation Lead for EPA through EPA’s Conflict and Prevention and Resolution Center. She is a Coordination Committee member of the Native Dispute Resolution program for the United States Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Ms Scharf is currently an Associate Fellow at Colorado State University’s Center for Collaborative Conservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is a member of the Executive Advisory Committee for this Center.
Ms Scharf lived on the Navajo Nation from 1956-1959 and this experience shaped her professional life and her view of the world. She has mediated with many tribal nations in the United States, and is currently working with the Northern Arapaho on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming and with traditional Navajo people living on Hopi Partitioned Lands in Arizona. Ms. Scharf is also leading a national project through Colorado State University to explore the use of dispute resolution practices within tribal governments as part of tribal self- determination efforts, knowing that each tribal world view is unique and valuable and that power and colonialism is always an issue when dispute resolution processes are used or proposed. Ms Scharf is the mother of three children and the grandmother of two. Lee teaches a course in Community-Driven Dispute Resolution.
Vanitha Sivarajan, M.S.
Vanitha Sivarajan received her master’s degree in Environmental Management at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies specializing in water science, policy and management. She has over 9 years of experience as an environmental professional managing and developing science-based conservation and sustainability related projects in over 10 countries within the U.S., Latin America, and South Asia.
Vanitha currently works at blissmo, forging strategic partnerships with the private, public and nonprofit sectors to promote sustainable consumption patterns in the United States as a strategy to address climate change and global conservation issues. Vanitha’s areas of programmatic knowledge and expertise include: Participatory Water Resource Management, Climate Change Adaptation, International Development, Fair Trade and Social Enterprise. She is proficient in Spanish and Tamil.
George Stetson, Ph.D.
George received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Colorado State University, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of the Andes (Mérida, Venezuela), and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arizona. George has worked as the Director of Educational Community Center at Fe y Alegría in Loma de los Maitines squatter village, Mérida, Venezuela, at the National Housing Council, and as a researcher at the University of the Andes (Regional Integration Group) on subjects such as poverty, social policy, and democracy. His areas of expertise include sustainable development, Latin American politics, participatory development methodologies in Venezuelan squatter villages, and grassroots ecosystem management. He has also worked extensively in the Peruvian Amazon looking at the politics of oil development. He also has taught short courses for a Ph.D. program for Trisakti University in Indonesia.
Richard Tinsley, Ph.D.
Dick Tinsley is an emeritus professor of Colorado State University Department of Soil and Crop Science. He has spent his entire career as a technical advisor to smallholder development projects. He worked on long term assignments in Viet Nam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Malawi, Thailand, and Tanzania. He also participated in short-term assignments to Pakistan, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, he contributed to a farming systems research and development guidebook.
In all of these assignments he was deeply involved with smallholder farming communities, extensive informal interviewing of farmers, and facilitating off and on-farm research programs. He currently teaches a class in agricultural development at Colorado State University and does short-term consulting. Dick is the author of the book “Developing Smallholder Agriculture: A Global Perspective”, and manages the website: www.smallholderagriculture.com.
Jamie Way, M.A.
Jamie received her M.A. in Political Science from Colorado State University. Her academic work focused on Latin America, international development, political theory and indigenous rights. She has worked with Village Earth since 2008 and now holds the position of Training Director for Village Earth/Colorado State University’s online certificate program in Community-Based Development. She has also been involved with Village Earth’s work on the Pine Ridge Reservation and in the Peruvian Amazon for the past three years. Her specialties include advocacy campaigns, strategic planning, issue framing and training for social justice.
Jamie speaks Spanish and Portuguese and is studying Chinese in Beijing. She is also currently working as Media and Communications Coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, a Latin America solidarity organization. Jamie teaches online courses on Approaches to Community Development, Development and the Politics of Empowerment and Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation.
