Meet Our Team
Staff
Jen Myers, PhD (she/her)
Email: contact@thriveithaca.org
Jen is Thrive’s new Interim Project Director. She is a sustainability educator, with a passion for place-based learning. She is particularly interested in the ways people develop and maintain resilience in the face of systemic injustice and climate change. Prior to joining Thrive’s leadership team, Jen was a Visiting Assistant Professor and chair of the Sustainability program at Wells College. Jen’s experience includes work in the non-profit sector building local food systems, serving on the board of Power Up for Climate Solutions and Tenderfoot Learning Lab and leading backpacking trips for Big City Mountaineers. She moved to the Ecovillage at Ithaca with her daughter in 2022 and previously served on Thrive’s Advisory Board.
Board of Advisors
Heather Sullivan-Catlin
Heather Sullivan-Catlin is Professor of Sociology at SUNY Potsdam. Her primary areas of interest are family, environment, and qualitative research – all of which intersect in her work on community food security and sustainable communities (especially cohousing neighborhoods and ecovillages). She serves as co-chair of the President's Sustainability Team at SUNY Potsdam, as a lead organizer with the North County Partnership for Environmental Action, Community and Sustainability (NoCoPEACS), and is also active with the New York Coalition for Sustainability in Higher Education (NYCSHE). In between teaching and activism her favorite pastimes include paddling and hiking in the Adirondacks, seeing live music, travel & exploring local food and drinks, and down time with family, friends, and pets.
Julia Ellis
Julia Ellis is a licensed Psychotherapist and Expressive Arts Therapist who is passionate about the intersection of healing, community, and creative expression. Julia spent many years involved in multi-generational intentional communities in the California Bay Area, as both a resident and community leader, before moving to Ecovillage in July 2021. She currently lives in the SONG neighborhood with her partner and young daughter, and her mother-in-law lives right nearby in TREE. You can often find Julia singing, telling stories, tending to children, hosting an "Ecoboogie", or walking the land at EVI.
Michele Belot
Michele is a Professor of Economics at Cornell University. She moved to EcoVillage with her family in 2020. She is originally from Belgium, but has spent a large part of her life in other countries (7 years in the Netherlands, 12 years in the UK and 4 years in Italy). She has spent the last decade designing and evaluating interventions aimed at encouraging healthy behaviors among poorer communities. She is passionate about understanding what makes societies work well.
Wren Anjali
Wren is the founder and director of OneFire Forest School based at Ecovillage at Ithaca. They previously served as Program Director for Primitive Pursuits, a non-profit affiliate of Cornell Cooperative Extension and 4-H New York. They have held numerous administrative and teaching roles in educational organizations. “I feel blessed to be able to devote myself to what I value the most: ever-deepening my relationship with nature; living as gently as possible in relationship to the Earth in an ecovillage community; serving in the world as a nature-connection mentor; and helping to develop and support programs to encourage people of all ages to learn more about, grow in appreciation of, and be present with the natural world.”
Steve Gaarder
Steve is a founding member of the first Ecovillage at Ithaca neighborhood - FRoG. His involvement with environmentalism started way back on the first Earth Day, marching against pollution. He has a strong interest in renewable energy and sustainable communities. Having a lot of knowledge about sustainable technology, community dynamics, and permaculture & site design, Steve is good at figuring things out and at finding win-win solutions, and has been an integral member of setting up and maintaining systems, infrastructure, and social events at EVI.
Steve and his wife Suzanne now live in Burlington, Vermont at Burlington Cohousing East Village.