Discover intentional community living and find your people.

Get access to 12 powerful interviews about how to find, join, and build intentional communities. Featuring the world's foremost experts on community living, so you can pursue your community vision with confidence.

Clifford Paulin

Attorney at Law and Specialist in Legal Issues Facing Communities

Clifford Paulin provides a full suite of legal, facilitation, and mediation services to individuals, businesses, communities, non-profits, and government entities. His extensive background in serving these organizations as well as being part of them provides him with a unique understanding of their needs and desires.

Clifford holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from the University of Arizona, a Juris Doctorate and a Masters of Study in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School, a mediation certificate from the Center for Understanding in Conflict, and advanced facilitation training from Synectics LLC.

Clifford’s legal practice has focused on transactional law, non-profit law, and community law since 2006. He also has extensive experience in mediation in both individual and group settings. He has facilitated strategic planning and other processes for groups in both the private and public sectors. Mr. Paulin is also a co-founder of The Oak Granary, a land-based environmental education non-profit in Potter Valley, California.

Trish Becker

Executive Director, Cohousing Association of the US

Trish is the Executive Director of the Cohousing Association of the United States, a national nonprofit committed to creating a more connected and sustainable future. A social worker to the core, Trish has over a decade of experience working in nonprofit and higher education with a focus on community engagement, strategic partnerships and event design. Prior to her role at CohoUS, she served as the Director of Community Engagement at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW), leading community engagement initiatives and creating gatherings that advance social justice. Her consulting group, Storyspring Consulting, provides strategy, facilitation and coaching to nonprofits, social changemakers, and intentional communities.

Trish is a founding member of Aria Cohousing and Chase Street Commons, a micro-village built upon the principles of cohousing. She is a Tedx speaker and a passionate advocate for housing solutions that address our collective crises of loneliness, environmental degradation and housing inaccessibility. Above all, she believes that humans need one another for meaning and survival, and that collective housing is poised to be among the signature movements of our time.

Lee Warren

Supporting Intimacy with All of Life, Reclaiming Wisdom

Lee Warren: Lee is a devoted community builder. She has nearly 30 years of experience envisioning, designing, and living innovative inquiries into mutually empowered relationships, land-based and community living, regenerative systems, interpersonal communication, sustainability education, and reverent culture. Her life purpose is to provide leadership in the building of community in accessible, natural, and blissful ways. To that end, she is committed to reweaving cosmologies as well as regenerating personal, collective, and transpersonal wisdom that allows for us all to “return to the village.” The village is a metaphor for an intimacy with all of life. Website bio here: https://reclaimingwisdom.com/about/

Laird Schaub

Process Consultant & Community Expert, CANBRIDGE Consulting

Laird lived for four decades (1974-2014) at Sandhill Farm, an income-sharing rural community that he helped found. He also helped found the Foundation for Intentional Community, a clearinghouse of information about North American communities of all stripes, and served as that organization's main administrator for 28 years (1987-2015). In 1987 he created a self-insurance fund for health care needs among income-sharing communities called PEACH (Preservation of Equity Accessible for Community Health) that he ran for 22 years (1987-2009), growing it from a dream to a loan fund with net assets over $500,000. In addition to his expertise in community living, he's parlayed his passion for good process into a consulting business focused on cooperative group dynamics, styled CANBRIDGE (Consensus And Network Building for Resolving Impasse and Developing Group Effectiveness), which he’s been doing since 1987. His specialty is up-tempo inclusive meetings that engage the full range of human input, teaching groups to work creatively with conflict and diversity—all the while being ruthless about capturing as much product as possible. As both a consultant and a teacher he pioneered a facilitation and leadership training program where students meet eight times in three-day weekends spread out over two years. Since launching that in 2003, he’s delivered the program 16 times in locations all across the US and Canada. Since 2007 he’s authored a blog that has more than 1200 entries, writing about group dynamics, intentional community, and his life along the way.

Sky Blue

Activist & Consultant, Foundation for Intentional Community & The Next Big Step

Hi, I’m Sky Blue! Yes, that is my real name. Yes, my parents were hippies. They met at Twin Oaks Community, a 55-year old, rural, income-sharing IC in Virginia, which I joined when I was 19 and raised a kid (who is now 21) in a poly family. I am gender-fluid/nonbinary, socialized-as-male/male-bodied, and of European heritage. My parents came from working-class families, adopted counterculture lifestyles, were the first in their families to be college-educated, and raised me non-christian, with a deep reverence for nature and opposition to consumer-capitalism.

I’m a massive intentional community nerd, and the movement has been my world for 25 years. I’ve lived in 7 different ICs and visited over 130. I’m a consultant, networker, and movement builder, most notably serving as the Executive Director of the Foundation for Intentional Community for 4 years and on the Board for 2, and serving as the primary representative of the FIC to the New Economy Coalition. I have extensive experience with cooperative business and event organizing. I’m a pragmatic visionary and love to get my hands dirty in the communities I call home.

Charlotte Fradet

Community builder, writer, event producer, shift agent to a sustainable and pro-social culture

Devoted to fostering an evolutionary coherent future, Charlotte has delved deep in the eco-village world for the past decade. Her journey led her to work for several organizations which are spearheading the regenerative movement such as numundo.org and re-build.co. In 2016, she founded unitycoliving.com, a conscious co-living space dedicated to personal development, cultural experimentation and the advancement of positive social imaginaries. She's also part of Traditional Dream Factory, a DAO-governed village aiming at regenerating land while experimenting with innovative horizontal governance models. She's a co-author of the book “How To Build A Regenerative Village" and generally loves to write about eco-villages and the evolution of culture, technology and society. Recently she launched protopianconvergence.org which produces impactful events aiming at building capacities for a thriving civilization. Through this new endeavor, she taps on her broad-based global network to connect paradigm-shifting agents and bring synergistic collaborations to life.

Paul Wheaton

The Duke of Permaculture at Permies.com

Paul Wheaton is a powerful advocate of permaculture. He was dubbed the "Duke of Permaculture'' by Geoff Lawton and Sepp Holzer, and the "Bad Boy of Permaculture" by Occupy Monsanto. Paul is the owner of permies.com, coderanch.com, richsoil.com, and Wheaton Labs. He has produced over 600 podcasts, 200 youtube videos and a dozen feature-length films. He has presented at over 100 events around the US, and has written dozens of articles and 2 books on topics ranging from luxuriant environmentalism to homesteading skills. The events he hosts at his property, Wheaton Labs, have resulted in the development of rocket stove and rocket mass heater technology, massive earthworks featuring extensive hugelkultur, solar dehydrators, lots and lots of round wood timber frame structures like a truly passive earth-bermed solar greenhouse and a mega-cheap and luxurious home design called the Wofati, as well as many, many other permaculture innovations.

Rebecca Bush

Co-Founder & Director of Experience, Exit and Build Land Summit

Rebecca Bush is the co-producer of an innovative event called the Exit & Build Land Summit which brings together industry experts sharing on the topics of permaculture, homesteading, intentional community, land ownership, real estate, farming, off-grid technology, food production, and more…. She also serves as CEO of Exit and Build Property Solutions, a land development firm connecting investors and buyers to guide them in collectively purchasing large plots of land for building homesteads and establishing communities together.

She is a tiny home specialist, ecovillage enthusiast, connoisseur of intentional community, and advocate for the “Agrihood” – residential neighborhoods integrating agriculture into their communities.

Bush is passionate about promoting permaculture, tiny home living, food forestry, net-zero energy, and self-sufficiency. She aims to build community – common unity – as a viable alternative to traditional residential development.

Gui Perdrix

President of Co-Liv, the global association of coliving professionals

Gui Perdrix is the president of Co-Liv, the global association of coliving actors, uniting 6,000 coliving professionals worldwide. He's also the author of the Art of Coliving, a practical work-book that explains how to create community-driven coliving spaces at scale. Gui has been an ardent proposant of coliving, having lived and operated coliving spaces himself. He also consults coliving operators and creators with his agency Artof.Co.

Yana Ludwig 

Facilitator, Consultant & Trainer on Building Belonging

Yana Ludwig served on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Intentional Community for over a decade. She has lived in community for 25 years, and all of her work is grounded in deep community experience. Her writing includes Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption (published under the name Maikwe Ludwig) which looks at the role of community, cooperation and social justice in addressing and surviving climate disruption, and was awarded the Communal Studies Association 2017 Book of the Year Award; The Cooperative Culture Handbook (co-authored with Karen Gimnig) focuses on articulating a vision and practical pathway for intentional culture building; and many articles in Communities magazine. Her new book, Building Belonging: Your Guide to Starting a Residential Intentional Community, due for release in May 2023.

Yana is the former Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Commonomics USA (an economic justice organization), and Leadership Eastside (which offers courses in adaptive leadership and racial equity). Yana is a dynamic, compassionate and thoughtful speaker and teacher, committed to creating a world that supports the well-being and vibrancy of all beings. Her 2013 TEDx kicked off a new era for her as public speaker and advocate for communities, and she spent 6 months on the road in 2015 in a national speaking tour.

Yana has been an eco-socialist activist for many years. She co-founded the Solidarity Collective, a socialist-anarchist commune in Laramie, WY, and worked for 2 years as a host on the community’s podcast, Solidarity House, which explores cooperative culture, policy and law. She was also a candidate for US Senate in 2020, ultimately placing 2nd in a crowded Democratic primary field. She currently serves as the Executive Director of North Coast Food Web in Astoria OR.

Douglas Stevenson

Community Activist and Resident of The Farm Community

For over 50 years, Douglas Stevenson has been on the cutting edge of alternative lifestyle and technology. Douglas is the media interface and principal spokesperson for The Farm, once the world's largest a hippie commune, now the most famous intentional community in the world, a living example and model for a sustainable lifestyle. His interviews have appeared in countless newspaper and magazine articles, documentaries and TV news programs such as CNN's Making It In America.

Douglas is also a published author with three books, including Out to Change the World, the evolution of The Farm Community, and The Farm Then and Now, a model for sustainable living, along with over 1000 articles that have appeared in a variety of national and international newsstand magazines.

Douglas was on The Farm Community's board of directors for 6 years, its membership committee 4 years, and served 8 years as its manager. Douglas was a volunteer for the committee that developed The Farm's Land Trust. He was a 12-year board member of Swan Conservation Trust, a nonprofit land trust that created the 1400 acres nature preserve that surrounds the community.

His company Village Media specialized in video production and website design.

Douglas and his wife (and two children) were volunteers for 2 years in Guatemala ('78-80) and 7 months in Belize as volunteers for The Farm's relief and development organization Plenty International.

Currently, Douglas is a leader for Dances of Universal Peace, which celebrates spiritual music and dance from around the world.

Taisa Mattos

Education & Networking Coordinator, Global Ecovillage Network

Taisa Mattos, Education & Networking Coordinator at the Global Ecovillage Network, works as an international trainer and consultant in the fields of sustainability, social innovations and community life. Taisa holds a master´s degree in Communities and Social Ecology (UFRJ), is the author of the book 'Ecovillages: building a regenerative culture', and the leader author of the GEN Regenerative Urban Communities Manual. Taisa has contributed to transition initiatives both in urban and rural areas. Co-founder of Terra Una Ecovillage (MG-Brazil) and other small urban communities in Rio. Ecovillage researcher and Board member of the International Communal Studies Association, she has coordinated and taught Gaia Education and UNESCO certified Ecovillage Design Education Programmes globally since 2009.