I've worked for over 3 decades in critical place-based education, sustainable communities, international NGO networking, locally owned renewable energy, and urgent issues of the public interest. My goal, through scholarship, life-long learning, and critical practice, is to help better the human condition.I am interested in working with change makers to transition communities, organizations and people away from insecurity and ecological overshoot that the failures of “development” and “progress” have produced, and toward real “sustainment.” Imagining the latter is urgent work– we have a long way to go in a very short period of time. This is where “what ought to be” meets “what is” in the words of the late, great Frank Adams. My core experiences are in the spaces between theorizing, implementing, experimenting and learning. The hard work of implementation covers a lot of ground from bureaucracy to culture. I don’t consider myself an “expert” because that identity can produce exclusion, commodification, and cooptation. All people who inhabit their world consciously have knowledge. I have interdisciplinary knowledge in the dynamic field of sustainability and apply it as a co-creator, collaborator, and normative questioner to help communities (of place and practice) tap their own knowledges and resources in making their own equitable and durable modes of living.I have had a longstanding interest in energy and society, working for the past decade on experiments in community-owned renewable energy. My other broad areas of interest currently include sustainable communities, education, health, and livelihoods, with a particularly keen curiosity about the relationships among them.I’m interested in project engagements, if energy related, through my organization, Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy (AIRE), and on other sustainability issues through individual employment or consulting arrangements depending on the nature and needs of the project.