Thea is Stewardship Manager with the Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance, where she facilitates the implementation of TERA's Indigenous-led stewardship projects through grant management, coordinating with Tribal partners, contributing to CEQA and NEPA processes, and supporting on the ground work in restoration, forest thinning, fuels reduction, and prescribed and cultural fire. Thea also coordinates TERA's EcoCultural Fire Program and Lake County TREX including landowner outreach, site visits, writing burn plans, organizing and implementing prescribed and cultural burns, and designing and co-teaching ecocultural fire trainings.

Thea is Associate Faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, where she has worked in the Wildfire Resilience Program co-leading hands-on student internships in ecological restoration, forestry, and prescribed burning, and teaching Fire Resilient Landscaping in Spanish and English.

Thea is a current Fire Forward Fellow and a member of the Good Fire Alliance, building fireline leadership and working toward California Prescribed Burn Boss Certification in order to help return good fire to the millions of acres that desperately need to be intentionally burned to support ecological health and community resilience, and to contribute to a revitalization of good fire that honors and centers the traditions, knowledge, leadership, and sovereignty of the original stewards of this land.

Thea is on the leadership circle of Celebrating Womxn’s Leadership in Food, where since 2016 she has been co-creating and facilitating spaces for leaders who are women-identified, trans, queer, Black, Indigenous and People of Color to build trust and create community to shift paradigms of power and meaningfully address ecological crises and social inequity.

Thea lives and tends land at Monan’s Rill, an intergenerational consensus-based intentional community in the Mayacamas Mountains of Northern California, within the ancestral territory of the indigenous Wappo people. At Monan’s Rill, Thea co-stewards 414 acres of land, incorporating organic and biodynamic farming and gardening, animal husbandry, beekeeping, sustainable forestry, prescribed burning, and wildfire recovery and restoration. Since the severe burning of Monan’s Rill in the 2020 Glass Fire, Thea has been engaged in daily action research on regenerating land, reimagining community, and embodying justice in the face of the global climate crisis.

Thea is an advisor to Dirt: the Foundation for the Regeneration of Earth, a charity founded by supermodel Arizona Muse to facilitate fashion and beauty companies in repairing harm and investing in biodynamic and regenerative farming projects. 

From 2021-2023, Thea worked with Agrarian Trust as co-facilitator, leader, and developer of the Commons Alliance, which is envisioned to be a collaborative, multi-racial and anti-racist network where organizations and individuals who are dedicated to collective and community land stewardship and/or ownership and land justice can explore questions and address challenges together, centering the needs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and the organizations that serve them.

Thea led the Biodynamic Association in the United States from 2011-2021, working to transform the practice and culture of agriculture while cultivating equity and justice, collaborative leadership, emergent strategy, and evolutionary organizational structures. As Co-Director and Executive Director, Thea significantly expanded the public presence of biodynamics and increased accessibility to information and education through online communications, webinars, conferences, and events — including six North American Biodynamic Conferences from 2012 to 2020.

Thea initiated and led efforts to significantly increase diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of the Biodynamic Association, and inspired leaders of biodynamic organizations around the world to embrace racial justice through a keynote at the 2020 International Biodynamic Conference.

Thea sparked and stewarded the Biodynamic Association’s transition from traditional hierarchy to a collaborative, democratic structure, and advised a number of other organizations undertaking similar transitions. Thea also served as the Biodynamic Association’s primary fundraiser for a $700-900K annual budget, significantly growing the number of members, donors, and institutional funders, and increasing their levels of giving.

Prior to and concurrent with her early years with the Biodynamic Association, Thea spent three years as a production farmer of organic and biodynamic vegetables, fruit, flowers, and herbs with Turtle Creek Gardens (2011-2012) and Blue House Farm (2010). Thea has also built healthy soil and grown food in many other urban and rural settings in California, the Upper Midwest, and Maine.

From 2008-2010, Thea worked with Angelic Organics Learning Center’s Urban Initiative to coalesce diverse Chicago neighborhood groups to implement local food systems projects. Thea facilitated community meetings, coached emerging leaders, taught skill-building workshops on urban gardening, composting, beekeeping and season extension, and guided groups through planning, building, and managing community gardens. In Chicago, Thea also participated in local and regional urban agriculture advocacy and events, and was a member of Advocates for Urban Agriculture steering committee and land use working group.

Thea’s diverse experience also includes two years with Spitfire Strategies and the Communications Leadership Institute (2006-2008), planning and implementing strategic communications and capacity building trainings and collaborating with philanthropic foundations to support nonprofit leaders in leveraging strategic communications to advance their missions.

Thea began her career in building healthy and just food systems with a focus on working with youth, teaching gardening and nutrition, and building school and community gardens with Project EAT (Educate, Act, Thrive) (2005-2006), Lots to Gardens (2005) and East Palo Alto Charter School (2002-2004). Thea first entered food and farming as a 17-year-old volunteer with Western Service Workers Association, helping to support basic needs of farm laborers and organize for better working and living conditions.

Thea holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University in Earth Systems, an interdisciplinary program in environmental science and policy, with a focus in sustainable agriculture and ecology. Thea has lived and studied in the Brazilian Amazon and Oaxaca, Mexico, and speaks conversational Spanish and Portuguese.

Thea has completed and continues to engage in extensive training and professional development in prescribed fire, agriculture, land stewardship, facilitation, leadership, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. She is committed to a lifelong practice of recognizing and dismantling colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and other systems of oppression within herself and the organizations and communities in which she participates, and co-creating embodied justice and collective liberation.