Thea is a community weaver who cultivates connection and collective action.
Thea brings people together across cultures, identities, and backgrounds to connect, share, learn, and work together.
Celebrating Womxn’s Leadership in Food
Thea has been a collaborator and co-creator of Celebrating Womxn’s Leadership in Food since 2016, bringing together 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 moderated panels and facilitated interactive conversations at four in-person symposia in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, and has been a member of the project's collaborative leadership team since its formation in 2018.
Thea's current work with CWLF includes co-facilitating online conversations on racial equity in the food system, building networks and community among womxn food leaders across urban and rural communities in California, and co-organizing a series of Femme Farmer Field Days to honor and uplift the work of womxn farmers.
Cultivating Land-Based Community at Monan's Rill
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.
‘It's Healing': Wildlife coming back to fire-ravaged Monan's Rill as members plan rebuild
A riot of spring wildflowers signals that the land is regenerating at Monan’s Rill, a 47-year-old community ravaged by the Glass fire in September.
And while it will be a long time before residents can reoccupy the 414 acres in the Mark West Creek watershed off St. Helena Road, the now-scattered community is holding together. Monan’s Rill is what’s known as an intentional community, where its residents collectively own the property and share in maintenance and decision-making.
They are throwing Saturday work parties that allow members to stay in touch, clean up debris and do what small repairs are permitted while they wait for FEMA to clear away the ashen remains of 10 hand-built homes, an outbuilding and a greenhouse.
Monan’s Rill, Sonoma County community burned in Glass fire, sees a safer future in fire line
Just downhill from the Narnia of Monan’s Rill, there is a place that has become a sort of a pilgrimage site for some members of this community since the fire displaced them, a sign that a future may be possible on this land in an era of increasing wildfires.
On one side of a year-old earthen scar from a dozer’s blade, the fire left blackened trees with ghostly leaves irreparably scorched.
But the fire stopped at that scar, burning all around a 6-acre area of green ferns and sedges, regrowth from an intentional fire set last year to clear overgrowth.Carlson, who lives on the property with her wife, said that photograph offered evidence there may be a way for this community to continue living safely on the land in an era of mega blazes. Standing at the site for the first time last week, she said her determination became even more clear.
Carlson moved onto the land with her wife in 2015 when the Valley fire burned from Cobb Mountain to Middletown. Though 25 miles away in Lake County, Carlson said she and others saw the potential for disaster in their own rural enclave then. Then in 2017, the Tubbs fire came within 2 miles.
They live in the one home that didn’t burn, the first house built by two of the community’s founders, Mary and Russ Jorgensen, former Freedom Riders who rode buses through the segregated South to protest racial injustice.
“Seeing that picture, that was when I was 100% sure I was going back,” Carlson said. “That picture was the evidence I needed that this theory that prescribed burns could protect us is true.”
A Rill Runs Through It
Communal Living in the Time of Climate Change
When you walk around Monan’s Rill, a 440-acre intentional community in the Mayacamas Mountains in east Santa Rosa, you are surrounded by trees—various oaks in every stage of grandeur, the rich red limbs of manzanita, and fairy-tale conifers that make it easy to see why they named their highest point (at 2,200 feet) Narnia. So it’s not surprising that the removal of some 90 firs near community homes became the fulcrum of a community conversation that took years to resolve.
“This issue ran deep,” explains community member Penny Sirota. “It brought us into conversations about patriarchy and power and revealed different facets of our relationships to trees, aesthetics, and fear.”
Monan’s Rill was established in 1973 by activist Quakers and continues to operate on consensus—which means that every member must reach agreement on issues ranging from leashed pets to meeting schedules. The fir tree debate happened in the wake of the 2015 Valley Fire in Lake County, which prompted renewed talks about fire ecology and controlled burning. Two years later, the issue became even more urgent when the Tubbs Fire came within two miles of their property.
I’m sitting in the garden area with some 10 community members, and I’m struck by the jovial, thoughtful way they bounce off each other’s ideas, gently clarifying or adding details. “The goal isn’t to find a group of people who will always agree,” explains member Amy Robinson. “It’s to find people who are willing to work on stuff together.” They explain that the consensus process is very different from voting, as the goal is to find the best decision for everyone by listening to each voice. Rarely does anyone “stand in the way” of a decision.
Weaving the Biodynamic Community in the United States and Around the World
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.
“Gentle yet strong.
Wise yet open.
Discerning yet compassionate.
Unconditionally loving.
That’s Thea.”
— Pat Frazier, Biodynamic Association member and collaborator in the biodynamic movement
Weaving a Global Fabric of Biodynamic Connection
International relationship building as leader of the Biodynamic Association in the United States
My trip to India to attend the Organic World Congress and visit biodynamic farms and projects with biodynamic practitioners from around the globe in November 2017 was an entry point to many new relationships and richer participation with the international biodynamic community. Shortly after I returned, I received two invitations to travel overseas: first to be a keynote speaker at the New Zealand Biodynamic Conference, and then to participate in a training and capacity working group at the Demeter International Members Assembly. These two events happened to be scheduled a week apart in June, and so I ended up literally circling the globe, from California to Switzerland via Iceland, from Switzerland to New Zealand via Hong Kong, and then from New Zealand back home.
Aligning and Integrating the Work of the Biodynamic Movement in the US
The biodynamic movement in the United States has had many chapters in its history since Ehrefried Pfeiffer came to New York in the 1930's. The Biodynamic Association was founded in 1938 with Pfeiffer at its helm, and initially the BDA held all the organizational functions for the movement.
As the biodynamic impulse developed in this country, a number of other organizations branched off or formed independently to meet different needs, such as certification, the making and distribution of preparations, spiritual research, finance, and holding and preserving land. Although all these organizations were founded to serve the same impulse, over time the different organizations became disconnected from each other, with some actively in conflict with each other for many years.
Over the past decade, a healing impulse has been working in our community, and these organizations have begun to reweave relationships and mend the wounds of the past. Last year, the major organizations in the US biodynamic movement came together to co-facilitate a visioning process, which we hoped would chart a path forward for the entire movement and bring us all into alignment.
Transforming the Heart of Agriculture: Soil. Justice. Regeneration
Opening the 2018 Biodynamic Conference
Take a moment to get grounded in your body, connect your feet to the ground, perhaps close your eyes. The theme of this conference is Transforming the Heart of Agriculture. So let's take a moment to sense into our own hearts. What is alive in your heart right now? What intelligence does your heart hold about the potential for this moment, and for the coming days? What transformation do you seek to co-create?
For transformation to happen, we need courage. Courage to step outside our comfort zones. Courage to keep going when we hit the rough spots. Courage to risk who we thought we were and what we thought we knew. And courage comes from the heart.
So as we begin to engage with this theme, Transforming the Heart of Agriculture, I invite you to recall a time in your life when you were courageous. What was it that led you to that courage? And what happened as a result of your courage? Now, please find someone you have never met before, and tell them about this courageous time in your life. Each of you will have one minute to share.
Nurturing Local Food Systems Leadership in Chicago
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.
Teaching about urban agriculture at a South Chicago Community Garden with Angelic Organics Learning Center
Photo by Anne Hammersky
Schreiber Community Garden, which Thea facilitated diverse community groups and neighbors in Rogers Park to advocate for and build together. Thea also designed the garden layout.
Cover photo by Bailey Chang/3amWanderings, courtesy Celebrating Womxn's Leadership in Food