Margaret Critchlow

Margaret Critchlow, PhD, taught anthropology at York University in Toronto, Canada for 25 years before retiring to Vancouver Island. She loved learning from villagers in the south Pacific islands of Vanuatu and from residents of Canadian housing co-ops. She has written or co-authored more than 50 academic article and 7 books.

She was a founding member of the first senior cohousing community in western Canada, Harbourside Cohousing, where she has lived with her husband since it opened in Jan 2016. Margaret enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for cohousing with people of all ages, independently and as a Community Building Facilitator with Cohousing Development Consulting. Her courses, “Aging well in community” and “Is cohousing for you?” have supported people to better understand what they are getting into when they join a cohousing community.

Laird Schaub

Laird’s specialty is up-tempo inclusive meetings that engage the full range of human input, teaching groups to work creatively with conflict and diversity—all the while being ruthless about capturing as much product as possible.

Laird lived for four decades at Sandhill Farm, an income-sharing rural community that he helped found. He also helped found the Foundation for Intentional Community, where he served as the main administrator for 28 years.

In 1987, he created a self-insurance fund for healthcare among income-sharing communities called PEACH (Preservation of Equity Accessible for Community Health) that he ran for 22 years. In addition to his expertise in community living, he’s parlayed his passion for good process into a consulting business focused on cooperative group dynamics, styled CANBRIDGE (Consensus And Network Building for Resolving Impasse and Developing Group Effectiveness), since 1987.

Danielle Williams

Danielle Williams moved to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in 2012 after living and tasting the flavors at multiple other intentional communities in different countries. In 2016 she became the Executive Director for the nonprofit there, which shares Dancing Rabbit’s unique flavor of hope and sustainable living inspiration with the world. She delights in living in a 213 sq-ft naturally built round house called the Hermitage. Danielle originally hails from the state of Colorado, and her skills are as diverse and varied as the places she’s lived since then (hypnotherapy, breathwork, facilitation, marketing, spreadsheets…). Her degree in Peace & Global Studies informs her vision of how ecovillages are part of a global movement towards curing the social pandemic of loneliness and meaninglessness, and creating a better world for everyone. She passionately cultivates the world she wants to pass on to future generations, and living in community (amidst all the highs & lows) is an integral part of that cultivation.

Alline Anderson

Alline Anderson is a native Californian transplanted to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in the rural Midwest, where she is constantly astonished by fireflies, wide open spaces, and remarkable clouds. As the creator/owner of the Milkweed Mercantile, she has welcomed hundreds of visitors to Dancing Rabbit.

Alline was profoundly moved by the death of a beloved young community member in 2010, and the empowerment that came from burying her together with the rest of her Dancing Rabbit community. Equally as transformative were the last days and deaths of close friends and relatives.

As she enters year 23 at Dancing Rabbit, Alline has become an advocate of thoughtful conversations about aging, hospice, death, and natural burial, and is passionate about exploring the empowerment of individuals in choosing how they want to live and to die. She is currently working on ideas to make Dancing Rabbit and other intentional communities more elder-friendly, and on ways to enable herself to become more adaptable and of service to her community as her skills and abilities change.

Lee Warren

Lee is a devoted community builder. She is delighted by community of all kinds, shapes, sizes, and intentions. Her life purpose is to provide leadership in the building of community in accessible, natural, and blissful ways. To that end, she is committed to reweaving the cosmologies as well as regenerating the cultural wisdom that allows for us ALL to “return to the village.” The village is a metaphor for the collaborative approach to life that will repair historical damage and create a sense of coherence and unity. Cultural repair looks like conscious relating to self, to land, to dying, to living, and to other. As we return to the village, we create cohesive, supportive, inclusive, and life-giving systems that tend to the whole, most especially to the “more than human world”. In the midst of this deep reverence, we will come to see the divine in all things. All aspects of life are sacred opportunities for presence and soulful engagement. sustainable economics, conscious dying, and community of all kinds.