Co-Directors
Duane Elgin
Co-Director
Duane is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and visionary who grew up on a family farm and has planted prophetic seeds all his life. His portfolio of futures work includes: two years on the senior staff of a Presidential Commission on the American Future; six years working as a senior social scientist with the “futures group” at SRI International where he conducted research on the deep future for the National Science Foundation, The President’s Science Advisor, the Environmental Protection Agency.
Duane is the author of five books that look into the deep future: Awakening Earth, Promise Ahead, The Living Universe, Voluntary Simplicity and Choosing Earth. He co-authored Changing Images of Man with Joseph Campbell and a small team of scholars. He graduated with an MA in economic history from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School. In 2006, Duane received the international Goi Peace Award for promoting a new vision and lifestyle that foster a more sustainable and spiritual culture. His personal website is: duaneelgin.com
Coleen LeDrew Elgin
Co-Director
Coleen’s focus is expanding her own and other beings capacity to meet this time of unprecedented change with curiosity, humility, courage, compassion, and wisdom. As Co-director, she leads the development and facilitation of the project’s workshops, courses, and curriculum. Coleen produced, directed, and co-wrote the documentary film Facing Adversity: Choosing Earth, Choosing Life.
Previously Coleen has facilitated and led groups on the “great transition” (with Duane beginning in the 1990s), meditation, cooperative inquiry, and environmental awareness. Coleen earned an MA degree in Cultural Anthropology and Social Change with a focus on transformative learning from the California Institute of Integral Studies (2002). For over 16 years her documentary work—both short and long form—focused on pioneers of consciousness and spiritual growth. Examples are Science and Sacraments: Psychedelics Research and Mystical Experiences (2012); The Way of the Shaman; The Work of Michael and Sandra Harner (2017) both commissioned by the Betsy Gordon Foundation. Her early background is in health research and community health education. Coleen is a long-time meditation practitioner with a deep interest in the integration of healing and awakening in service of all of life.
Collaborators
Barbara Easterlin
Barbara Easterlin, PhD, is a clinician and consultant specializing in climate psychology. She teaches clinical workshops and develops educational and training materials for mental health clinics on the trajectory of the climate emergency, its psychological consequences, and how to help people to develop agency and resilience when engaging with this difficult topic. She is a Co-President of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America (CPA-NA) and co-lead of the CIIS Climate Psychology Certificate Program. Barbara has a master’s degree in Environmental Psychology from UC Irvine and, until recently, was an Assistant Clinical Professor at UC Berkeley where she specialized in neuropsychological assessment and behavioral parenting.
Roger Walsh
Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. DHL has a unique and wide background (he is an award-winning professor, a psychiatrist, a Buddhist teacher, and in other lives was a circus acrobat and record holder in high diving).
Roger graduated from Australia’s Queensland University with degrees in psychology, physiology, neuroscience, and medicine, and then came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar. He is professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as a professor in the religious studies program at the University of California at Irvine.
Roger’s research and writings span several areas. These include the nature of psychological health and wellbeing, meditation and contemplative practices, religion and spirituality, wisdom and other virtues, integral studies, and the psychological roots of our current global crises. He is deeply immersed in contemplative practices as a student, researcher, and teacher. He has been given the title of lama (meaning teacher) in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His publications include the books, Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices and Paths Beyond Ego, and his teaching has received one national and six University awards. He also cohosts the podcast Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit, with listeners in over 100 countries. His website is: https://drrogerwalsh.com/
Course Facilitators
Marianne Rowe
Marianne Rowe, MS, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and a Founding Teacher of Monterey Bay Meditation Studio. She is certified as a Nature & Forest Therapy Guide (ANFT), Eco-therapist (Earthbody Institute), California Naturalist (UC), and Authentic Relating Facilitator. Marianne also holds certifications in Climate Psychology (CIIS), Eco-psychology (Pacifica), and Climate Stewardship (UC).
Her therapeutic work, teaching, and leadership focus on bringing deeptime perspective to healing, transformation, and evolution through awareness and relationship – developing Integral consciousness through the physiological, cognitive, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects of being.
Marianne’s passions include inspiring reverence and reciprocity with Earth, spiritual activism, and conscious relationship with all beings. She is dedicated to catalyzing and cultivating eco-systemic consciousness and relationality and is currently focused on developing Impact Networks of learning, action, and cultural change. Her sense of belonging and enlivenment is sourced and deepened through walks, sits, and gazing with the Pacific Ocean, forest, night skies, and evolutionary conversations with beloved friends.
Carol Normandi
Carol Normand, LMFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, with over 30 years of experience as an individual therapist, speaker, author, and group/workshop facilitator. She is currently completing Chaplaincy Training through the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies.
Carol holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from UC San Diego and an MS in Counseling from San Francisco State University. She is founder of Amrita Eating Disorder Intensive Outpatient Program and co-founder of the nonprofit Beyond Hunger. She has authored It’s Not About Food: End Your Obsession with Food & Weight, and Over It: A Teen’s Guide to Getting Beyond Obsessions with Food & Weight. Carol received the Golden Bell Award for her work in developing the Emotional Literacy Program for middle school students.
Carol’s interest in addressing the climate emergency is inspired by a synchronistic unfolding of events including surviving breast cancer, deepening her meditation practice, engaging in trauma work with fire survivors, witnessing her three children coming to terms with the climate reality, confronting her own denial about her generation’s responsibility, increasing her understanding of white supremacy and economic and social injustice, and grieving deeply for what has already been lost.
Sandy Wiggins
Sandy is a national leader in equitable economies, environmental sustainability and the transformation of finance. He is the past Chair of BALLE, past Chair of US Green Building Council, and founding Chair of Green Business Certification Institute. He has also served as Sr. Advisor to RSF Social Finance. His skillful facilitation has helped birth impact investment strategies, city-wide sustainability plans, and sustainable master plans across the country. Drawing on a lifetime of work in support of sustainable communities and evolutionary consciousness, he now works with organizations and communities that are stepping out of the dominant paradigm to explore new possibilities for life on Earth. He is a lifelong student of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, a certified Integrative Breathworker and Psycho-Spiritual Facilitator and holds a BA in Physics and Philosophy from St. Joseph’s University.
Kathy Kelly
Kelly is dedicated to using her talents and energy to contribute to the well-being of her community and the world. She is an educator who has also held executive-level positions in government and non-profit organizations. Kelly studied Transformative Learning and Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies, earning a Ph.D. in Humanities in 2008. It was at CIIS that she met Coleen and then Duane who later created the Choosing Earth Project. Previously, Kelly studied whole systems at Antioch University (M.A. 1993) which profoundly affected her worldview. Her activism over the years has been on issues of peace and justice, most recently emphasizing racial justice and indigenous rights, in particular Seattle’s Native people. Kelly’s blessings include being able to live in a modest house with a beautiful yard with family nearby and to travel on occasion. She counts her good sense of humor as a blessing, too.
Founding Contributors
Brenda and Roger Gibson
Roger and Brenda Gibson were the primary funders that launched this work. The Choosing Earth Project would not exist without their support and participation on many levels. We are profoundly grateful for their collaboration in birthing this work into the world. And we are deeply saddened by the loss of Brenda to cancer in the summer of 2022. May both Brenda and Roger’s gift of funding ripple out and touch many lives. And so it has.
Honoring Brenda
In Memory of Brenda 1961 – 2022
Brenda Gibson was a dear friend who with her husband Roger Gibson, helped launch the Choosing Earth Project. We are so grateful for her friendship and collaboration in the first four years of this project. Brenda was an inspiring presence who lived her motto every day: “Do the most you can, with what you have, where you are, all the time.”
Brenda and Roger provided key funding that made the deep work of Choosing Earth possible. She gave of herself generously, and did so without asking for anything in return. Her legacy is one of love, beauty, leadership, family, and doing the most you can for the well-being of all life.
Brenda’s passing reminds us that we are all short timers. May we honor her precious life by finding ways to do the most we can, with what we have, wherever we are, all the time.
Goodbyes are only for those
who love with eyes.
Because for those who love with
heart and soul, there is no separation.
—Rumi