Philip Ackerman-Leist Email & Phone Number

I'm a free-range educator, researcher, author, farmer and off-grid homesteader with decades of experience in food systems, higher education, environmental conservation, cultural exchange, and hybridized education. Based at UpTunket Farm in Pawlet, Vermont (USA), my current work is focused on models of food systems transformation at regional, national, and international scales. In my most recent work on special projects at The Lexicon, I relished the opportunity to leverage my academic backgrounds in philosophy and conservation biology with my pragmatic farming experience to engage in a series of "activators" focused on new models and markets for food systems transformation and climate solutions.I've written three books, with another project underway: including A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement; Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems; and Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader.  My hands-on experience in farming and food systems is supported and complemented by my graduate studies in Environmental Biology, along with other academic forays into philosophy, religion, and literature.I'm deeply grateful for my twenty-two years at Green Mountain College, where I was Professor of Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems. I established the college's 23-acre organic farm, designed and launched the undergraduate program in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems, and founded and directed the nation’s first online graduate program in food systems. I then served as Dean of Professional Studies at Sterling College in Vermont, where I established the college’s first online educational initiatives and oversaw the School of the New American Farmstead.I've been privileged to spend much of the past four decades years exploring sustainable agricultural practices, generally in the company of students and family, framing my teaching and academic research with farming experiences in the Alps, North Carolina, and Vermont. I find great joy and inspiration in working with people of all ages and cultures, while also appreciating the solace of working in approximately 150 acres of pasture and woodland with my family and our heritage-breed cattle on our remote, solar-powered farm in Vermont. At home and as an educator, I try to combine a farmer’s pragmatism with a teacher’s collaborative quest for the future. Sometimes it works.More details available at www.philipackermanleist.com

Listed skills include Public Speaking, Community Outreach, Sustainability, Research, and 16 others.