Yana Ludwig

Yana has 25 years of cooperative living experience, including four community start-ups. She serves on the Board of the Foundation for Intentional Community, and as a trainer and consultant for progressive projects. Yana is co-author of The Cooperative Culture Handbook: A Social Change Manual to Dismantle Toxic Culture and Build Connection and author of Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption. She is the former Executive Director of both the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and Commonomics USA. Her 2013 TEDx talk, Sustainable is Possible! kicked off an era for her as a public speaker and advocate for communities.

Learn more at yanaludwig.net.

Ted Rau

Ted is part of Sociocracy For All (SoFa), an international organization he co-founded with his colleague Jerry Koch-Gonzalez in 2016. SoFa is now a growing, international movement service organization that provides resources, training and networking for sociocracy practitioners. Ted co-authored the sociocracy handbook, Many Voices One Song and has taught sociocracy workshops in several countries including the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Italy. Ted is transgender, and his experience of seeing gender dynamics from both sides has influenced his thinking and perception. Ted has 5 children and has been a resident of Pioneer Valley Cohousing in Massachusetts since 2012.

Jerry Koch-Gonzalez

At 69 years old, Jerry has lived in community all of his adult life, with the last 27 years in Pioneer Valley cohousing. Inspired by him, his community implemented Dynamic Governance in 2012. He has been committed to nonviolent social change, and has received training in anti-oppression with a focus on classism, Nonviolent Communication/NVC, facilitation, Consensus and Sociocracy.

Previously involved with The Sociocracy Consulting Group, Jerry is currently co-founder of Sociocracy For All, where he works full time. He has shared Sociocracy and NVC with dozens of communities in North America and abroad.

Crystal Byrd Farmer

Crystal is an engineer turned educator from Gastonia, North Carolina. She is an organizer and speaker in the intentional communities movement. She serves as a board member with the Foundation for Intentional Communities and is on the Editorial Review Board of Communities Magazine published by the Global Ecovillage Network-United States. She also serves as Co-President for the BIPOC Intentional Community Council. In 2020 she published The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization. Crystal is passionate about encouraging people to change their perspectives on diversity, relationships, and the world.

Learn more at cyrstalbyrdfarmer.com.

Diana Leafe Christian

Diana Leafe Christian is author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community. She speaks at ecovillage and cohousing conferences, offers consultations, and leads workshops and online trainings internationally. With the ability to make things simple and clear, and drawing on a deep and broad understanding of intentional community dynamics, Diana encourages effective and harmonious ways for groups to become healthy and thriving, and to resolve the typical interpersonal challenges that can arise in any community. Diana lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina

Chris Roth

Chris first encountered Communities magazine in his high school library in the late 1970s. Seeds planted then blossomed in his 20s, when he joined one community somewhat by accident (his main aim had been to study gardening) and then others more deliberately. With the exception of a few years on small organic family farms and a few years taking care of an aging parent, he has lived in intentional community ever since. He has also edited a series of community-based periodicals: News from Aprovecho for five years in the late ’80s and early and mid-’90s, Talking Leaves magazine from 1998-2006, and Communities since 2008, first with FIC and since Fall 2019 with Global Ecovillage Network-United States (GEN-US). He also edited the Best of Communities series (15 booklets) published in 2013, and the four volumes of Wisdom of Communities published in 2018. He continues to find community in the process of helping create Communities, even when he is far from his home community.

Diane Rothbard Margolis

Diane is a founding member of Cambridge Cohousing where she has lived for more than twenty years. She is a former member of the Coho/US Board of Directors and co-founder and Director Emeritus of the Cohousing Research Network. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study 1980-1981. She has published many research articles, and her books include The Fabric of Self, which won Honorable Mention at the First Annual Book Award of the Eastern Sociological Society. She is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut.