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Crystal Byrd Farmer is an engineer turned educator. She is the organizer of Charlotte Cohousing, supporting three forming communities. She is passionate about encouraging people to change their perspectives on diversity, relationships, and the world. She loves organizing meetups, teaching, and playing with her six-year-old daughter. As the owner of Big Sister Team Building, she leads team-building exercises and creates mobile escape room experiences.

Jonah Fertig-Burd is a Cooperative Development Specialist with the Cooperative Development Institute in the Cooperative Food Systems programs.  He works with farmers, food producers, cooks, distributors, and community members to develop democratic businesses. He is a co-founder and board member of the Maine Farm and Sea Cooperative and has served as a development coordinator for the nation’s first farm & sea-to-institution cooperative.  He also works with New American farmers, assisting them in developing cooperatives and helped Somali Bantu Farmers in Lewiston form New Roots Cooperative, the first New American owned cooperative and farm in Maine.  Previously, he co-founded Local Sprouts Cooperative in Portland, Maine and helped develop it into a successful worker-owned cafe. 

Communal Expressions is a podcast dedicated to gathering communal voices to sustain and uplift the African American community. Our focus community is Greater Birmingham, Alabama.

Chris Winters wrote this article for The Affordable Housing Issue, the Summer 2018 issue of YES! Magazine. Chris is a senior editor at YES!, where he covers economic justice and democratic reform.

Oliver Sylvester-Bradley is a co-founder of The Open Co-op and coordinated the OPEN 2017 Platform Co-ops conference in London. He wrote his thesis on Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Behaviour and works for charities and social enterprises, developing communications and marketing strategies which encourage sustainability. @defactodesign

Jenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography at the University of Sheffield, England. She has worked with many eco-communities worldwide and recently published a book, Eco-Homes: People, Place and Politics (Zed Books). Information about her work and contact details are at www.jennypickerill.info.

The Commons Strategies Group (CSG) is an activist and research driven collaboration to foster the growth of the commons and commoning projects around the world. CSG is focused on seeding new conversations to better understand the commons, convening key players in commons debates, and identifying strategic opportunities for the future. Our primary purpose is to help consolidate and extend the many existing commons initiatives around the world. We do this through our partnerships with diverse organizations, research and writing about contemporary commons developments, and public speaking and education. The CSG’s networks of influence reach across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Visit our website to find out more.

Katarzyna Gajewska is a writer and educator. She is crowdfunding to make her book “Imagine a Sane Society” available for free online. You can listen to an excerpt. For updates on her publications, check: Katarzyna Gajewska - Independent Scholar.

Alexis Zeigler was raised on a self-sufficient farm in Georgia. He has lived all of his adult life in intentional community. He has worked as a green builder, environmental activist, and author. His book Integrated Activism explores the connections between ecological change, politics, and cultural evolution.

Ted, formerly known as Jennifer Rau, is a linguist, videographer and singer-songwriter.  Ted got exposed to sociocracy when moving into a sociocratically run cohousing community. Seeing how effective decision-making was there, and enjoying the flow in sociocratic meetings, he realized that: “I am leaving the meeting even more refreshed and energized than I came.” Ted realized sociocracy, particularly in the combination with NVC, was big and potentially world-changing and started paying attention to the suffering that ineffective meetings and collaboration bring almost everywhere people collaborate – which is everywhere where people are. People and their universal need to connect and move things are at the center of attention. The training in syntax and semantics taught Ted to find patterns that work well for the human mind, work empirically and break things down so they can be understood. Being a parent had taught him to be extremely pragmatic; at the end of the day, dinner must be on the table no matter whether the new vision statement is done.

The Fellowship for Intentional Community's mission is to support and promote the development of intentional communities and the evolution of cooperative culture.