My Journey
My professional journey wasn't "linear" by traditional standards. As a young person I paid my way through college. To do it, I worked overnights in a little bar on Miami Beach, and taught young people in the evenings. After 4 years of juggling grueling work and school schedules, I graduated. I was itching for an adventurous and educational experience- something different. I took the first adventurous job I could find crewing on a solar powered sailboat on the other side of the world (New Zealand). I learned how to sail and cook on the open sea, while learning about the alternative power of sun and wind that moved us through the water. I was inspired, but also quite sea sick.
After a few months on the open ocean I decided to return my feet and my hands to the soil. I worked as an environmental and arts educator in emergent Agroecology projects across the the US. Throughout this journey I found myself called to the Northeast, where my own ancestors once migrated, so I could pursue the next phase of my career and root into a journey of personal understanding.
Beginning in Boston in 2010, I studied collaborative educational praxis under the mentorship of the powerful educators and activists at Mission Hill School in Boston.
My journey with honeybees began at the same time. While attending graduate school and completing my work at Mission Hill, I volunteered with a small collective of beekeepers. Together we started the Boston Area Beekeeper Association and the Boston Tour de Hives, a bicycle powered apiary tour of the greater Boston area.
I've since set roots in so-called Western Massachusetts. Here, I've taken all of the organizational, agricultural and apicultural skills I cultivated as a young person and created my own small business built upon the practices of reciprocity modeled by the social structures of the bees themselves.
My work with bees includes cultivating queen bees who are adaptive to ever changing climates, and my consulting work supports organizations in making lasting change by shifting power structures & creating effective collaboration. In both of these roles I seek to build resilient collaborations designed to stand the test of these transitional and transformative times.
