TALATERRA

Today, we get to learn from Matthew Paneitz, founder and executive director of Long Way Home. This organization built Hero School, a student-built and community-built campus in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala. Built from recycled tires and trash, the campus took 16 years to build and serves 178 students enrolled in PreK through High School. The school campus is almost complete. Matthew is also the re...

Today my guest is fundraiser and impact growth leader, Alexandra Dumitrescu. In this episode, we discuss nonprofit funding. Alexandra highlights the potential of technology to enhance fundraising efforts and presents ways nonprofits can diversify income streams. We discuss e-commerce models, leveraging SaaS platforms, improving donor relations, and lost funding opportunities. We also discuss initi...

Rob Law  is a musician and composer with decades of experience in the music industry. He has composed music for films and advertising campaigns. Rob is also a podcaster, a storyteller, and an advocate for outdoor learning. In this episode, Rob and I talk about The Creek Kids, his podcast for children inspired by the radio plays from the Golden Age of Radio. The Creek Kids on Podbean Rob Law (websi...

Dinah Awino Kawino is the founder and director of Akadi Eco and Mentorship Ventures. Akadi Eco is a consulting firm based in Kenya. It focuses on bringing environmental mentorship and sustainability solutions to educational and community spaces. This year, Akadi Eco is leading an initiative called  Pendo Mazingira. Pendo Mazingira is Swahili for "Love Environment." Awino describes this program as...

Christina Carter is the author, illustrator, and founder of Gumnut Trails —a unique collection of Outdoor Adventure Guides that help families rediscover the joy of exploring nature together. In this episode, we dive into how Christina’s own nature-rich childhood inspired her to create the “Lonely Planet of childhood adventures” —starting with four beautifully illustrated Guides across Melbourne. E...

We are all in the attention economy. Louise Karch (pronounced CARSH) makes sure good people like us break out not blend in. Louise is delighted to speak us. She has a special fondness for environmental educators having been an Outward Bound Instructor. For over a decade, she also was a career management professional, She was honoured to study with and support Richard Bolles, the author of the best...

Episode description: Join us as we dive into the world of innovation with Vanessa Thompson, Managing Director of The Sustainability Experts. Vanessa shares bold strategies for sparking disruptive ideas, seizing new opportunities, and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform businesses and careers. A renowned keynote speaker and consultant, Vanessa partners with startups, VCs, and global c...

Last week I launched the new newsletter. It’s called Transferable Solutions and the theme of the newsletter is “Environmental Skills, Reimagined.” When I started The Freelance Project, I wanted to explore what freelancing looked like in environmental education. The people we've had the opportunity to meet through the podcast have shown us there are dozens of ways to approach working as an environm...

Today we get to learn from Kalliopi Monoyios, visual science communicator and lead author of "Visuals as a Catalyst for Climate Science Communication," a chapter in the book "Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions" (Springer Nature, 2024). In this episode, Kalliopi and I discuss the value of visuals in climate change communication. We discuss what effective visuals look like and also talk ab...

A conversation with Emily Coren and Hua (Helen) Wang, editors of Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions (Springer Nature, 2024). They collaborated with 44 authors to create a resource addressing many forms of climate communication. Each of the book chapters addresses a specific type of storytelling. You’ll find chapters about entertainment education, locally-driven narratives, youth engageme...

Introducing a new feature to the podcast. This new feature is called INSIGHT. With each episode we’ll explore some aspect of freelancing and how it intersects with the environmental awareness work being done by independent professionals worldwide. In this first episode, we consider seven types of freelancing as described by Nikita Tambe, a contributor to Forbes magazine. Which type of freelancing...

Maria Coryell-Martin is an expeditionary artist. That’s right. Expeditionary, as in expeditions. What type of imagery does this bring up? If you imagine an artist traveling with a scientist or an explorer, you are imagining things correctly. This episode originally aired in 2019. Back then, Maria took a few moments to speak with me while she was packing for her trip to meet a scientist in Alaska....

Wendy Nadherny Fachon is an author, journalist, podcast host and environmental educator. Her work is published by Natural Awakenings Magazine, Sustainable Living News, and Dreamvisions 7 Radio. After working many years in the healthcare industry, Wendy left her position to focus on children's health and wellness issues. She developed an afterschool walking program, which gave rise to her radio sho...

Today, we get to learn from Gloria Desanker, geospatial storyteller, founder, and Principal Consultant at Map Nerd Consulting. More About Gloria My name is Gloria Desanker, and I founded Map Nerd Consulting so that I could work as a Geospatial Storyteller to help others unlock the power of location-based insights. My services are designed to uplift community stories, especially communities of colo...

In this episode, we get to learn from Dr. Tom Rhoads, an economist and professor at Towson University. Dr. Rhoads shares his transition from sports economics to environmental economics and his research integrating economics into environmental education. Dr. Rhoads explains that his interest in environmental education began about five years ago when he noticed a shift in the demographics of his cla...

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bill Reynolds, Lars Wohlers, and Mike Mayer, co-founders of Experiential Interpretive Design, a coaching company they founded to help individuals, organizations, and sites develop the interpretive experiences they provide. In this episode, we learned about the founders, their respective specialties, and why they founded EID. Today is part 2 of this conversat...

In this episode, we meet the co-founders of Experiential Interpretive Design (EID) -- Bill Reynolds, Lars Wohlers, and Mike Mayer. Collectively, they have many years of experience in interpretation and experience design and bring to EID the experience they gained from various roles in tourism, planning, heritage interpretation, environmental education, and coaching. We learn about the founders, wh...

Janice Kelley is the founder and program director for Nature Detectives, where children in kindergarten through third grade discover the mysteries of the outdoor world on their school campus, at home, at a park, and in their neighborhood. She is the author of several publications, and when she was here before, we spoke about her book "Mornings on Fair Oaks Bridge: Watching Wildlife at the Lower Am...

Roots of Success (RoS) is an empowering environmental literacy and job training program that prepares youth and adults with significant barriers to employment to access jobs and career pathways in environmental fields and to improve environmental and social conditions in their communities. The program is centered around a federally registered Department of Labor Apprenticeship and Pre-Apprenticesh...

Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to Jerry Willenbring. Jerry is a community organizer, teacher, and guide. He is also a physicist and an electrical engineer who has taken on electrifying California. Literally. In 2020, Jerry formed Electrify California, a nonprofit committed to providing education and resources to guide the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. When Jerry and I met...

Erin Majeske is a mother, wife, dreamer, kitchen experimenter, wannabe gardener, nature explorer, and founder of Barefeet Farm School. When she's not in the outdoor classroom with preschoolers, she loves to enjoy the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her family and make as much music as possible. In this episode, Erin shares how the need for a summer job led to her opening Barefeet Farm School. She...

Today we get to learn again from Dr. Brad McLain. You might remember my conversation with Dr. McLain about identity theory and the professional identities of informal science educators. In this episode, we pick up the conversation where we left it and talk about Dr. McLain’s new book called Designing Transformative Experiences. In his book, Dr. McLain leads experience designers through the  method...

Saurabh Mithal is a teacher, independent professional, and the founder of Passionately Curious, a community for solopreneurs. I invited Saurabh to talk about his experience working with freelancers. In this episode, Saurabh shares how he helps independent professionals establish their businesses, and how he helps them manage self-doubt, procrastination, and distractions.    LINKS PassionatelyCurio...

My guest today is Jeffrey H. Ryan. Jeffrey is the author of Appalachian Odyssey and Blazing Ahead in his latest book, This Land Was Saved for You and Me . Jeffrey introduces us to seven people who were key to forming and preserving America's public lands. Jeffrey tells how these individuals influenced and worked with each other and who they met during their careers. He writes about the contributio...

Today my guests are Dan Kriesberg and Camille Simone Edwards, founders of Diversity Education in Nature. Dan and Camille’s unique approach to diversity education occur through the lens of ecological concepts and pairs outdoor experiences with conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. They reach beyond the field of environmental education and lead workshops for students, educators, pare...