I am an entrepreneur, world traveler, and day dreamer. I am passionate for learning about and experimenting with new ways of living and working in community. My current focus in this domain revolves around organizing locally-owned businesses to nourish community strength, and ecovillages as a sustainable model for community-based living.

I am blessed to partner with true visionaries and spend my days with geeks, who I love dearly. I keep saying that one day I'll write a book about the geek phenomenon. Just wait for it...

Where I come from

I was born and raised in southwest Kansas. I have a huge family - my mother is the youngest of 15 children. I have over 100 1st cousins. I have lived mostly in Colorado for the past 6 years, with a brief stint in Houston, Tx.

I quit school at 15 (and did manage to finish school in creative ways) to pursue my dream of being a missionary. I participated in a full time ministry (with a religion I no longer belong to) for 5 years.

This lead to me having an interesting, varied, and long job history. I've washed dishes, waited tables, cleaned about everything you can think of, driven a school bus, been a lunch lady, telemarketed, taught kindergarden, and danced on a beer tub. I've managed residential apartment buildings, been a bookkeeper and managed programs for a non-profit foundation. Most of my days are now filled working with Arthur Brock and other amazing people to build the Mile High Business Alliance for Denver's locally-owned businesses. The important thing to remember about my job history (for those who can't imagine it), is that I've been working since I was 14 years old, and I've usually had 3 jobs at a time.

I am Potawatomi, enrolled in the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the ninth largest federally-recognized native tribe in the US. My family is of the Thunder Clan. I am ever learning what being an American Indian means for me, and how I can contribute to this community.

What else to know about me?

I love rainshowers, especially thunderstorms with dark rolling clouds. I love girls who wear glasses. I love a good pair of jeans. I love long hot baths with a good book. I love wearing dangly earings. I love rainbows, and those fluffy clouds that look like cotton balls. I love bowling balls. I love wearing swishy skirts. I love babies. I love laughter. I love hardwood floors, and soft warm rugs to rub your feet on. I love drafty old churches with lots of burning candles. I love the spark that occurs when you look someone in the eye. I love talking to strangers, even when it makes me blush. I love public transportation. I love city lights. I love enough darkness to see the stars. I love wheat fields. I love lying in grass. I love hearing "I love you." I love my eyebrows. I love hippie boys with beards. I love the smell of books. I love my crazy cat. I love the feel of trees - the texture of the bark, the strength of the giant from the tips to the roots. I love digging in the earth to find big fat juicy earthworms. I love new fragile plants as they erupt from their seeds.

I love wearing sandals, the flicker of candlelight, and Audrey Hepburn movies. I love the spark of life that we all share, that is in the bees and the trees and the breathing of the wind.

* Eliminate internal-combustion engines and dependence on fossil fuels and ensure the deployment of clean and sustainable power sources.

* Forever alter the conversations and attitudes that allow for violence toward women and children.

* Create governance systems that promote equatability and honor individual rights inside a context of responsibility to ourselves and our communities.

* Create new tribal structures that nourish people and provide a true sense of security and belonging.

* Strengthen our sense of power and responsibility - knowing our power to create or destroy.

* Create a world where all children are wanted and cared for; where the disabled and para-normal are honored and respected; where crime and violence have no room to thrive; where fear and evil cannot reign.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa.

I like people with a sense of themselves, who've got something to say about life and what it's like and what we could do with it. I adore people with a sense of humor, who have no fear of commitment, who challenge themselves regularly, who are willing to ask the difficult questions (those with no answers) just to see what happens.

Those are the people that make me feel ashamed for being a lazy bastard, and inspire me to get out of bed.

People who like action movies are a plus.

Travel, learning new languages, expanding my thinking, reading books that make me cry and laugh and change my mind, riding my scooter, tarot, magic, ritual, dancing, love. Watching my garden grow. Babies, ice cream, pajamas. Cloudy cold days with howling wind, and a warm blanket.