The work
Three years of building the layer that lets funding flow to the places ready to do the work — and a thirty-year pattern of arriving early.
June 2023
After nineteen years and six wildfire-impacted vintages, I finished my run at the winery I cofounded.
What I did not leave behind were the values that drove my winery business since founding: sustainability, community, relationships, soil first, and the conviction that a business is accountable to the living systems it depends upon.
The turn
That autumn I found John Fullerton's Capital Institute and joined Cohort 4 of the Regenerative Economics program, graduating in November 2023.
It gave me somewhere to put twenty years of regenerative and activist conviction that wasn't a wine bottle. And it left me with the question I've been working on ever since: why isn't funding flowing to the restoration work that's already happening?
2023 to now
Study, then design, then proof on the ground, then the people who needed the same skill pointed at their own problem.
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Jun 2023
Finished at Donkey & Goat
Nineteen years as cofounder, GM, CMO and lead winemaker. That chapter is here.
The natural wine manifesto, drawn as word art in 2018 by Lara Peso Eubank. It went on the totes and on the wall. Click to enlarge. -
Nov 2023
Capital Institute · Regenerative Economics, Cohort 4
Studied regenerative economics with John Fullerton and graduated in November 2023. Served as a Capital Institute Global Ambassador in 2024.
The reorientation -
2023–24
A year of study, and writing in public
Read deeply across the field — Fuller, Meadows, Benyus, Yunkaporta, Sanford, Schmachtenberger, Wahl, Bateson, Hawken, Savory, Barnes, Lovins. And john a. powell, whose "belonging without othering" is the phrase the whole framework rests on. I began publishing long-form thinking rather than waiting for permission to have it.
StudyWriting -
Jan 2024
Founded Circular Patterns
Independent practice: original systems and governance framework design, plus brand, product and marketing strategy for mission-driven clients.
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2024–26
Regenerism — three years of independent R&D
A care-based economic and governance framework with six interlocking components, operating at the protocol layer beneath individual financial tools. Includes a federated governance model that repeats from Neighborshed to county to watershed to bioregion, and DERR, a rubric that reads a place against planetary boundaries and social foundations.
NeighborshedsDERRFederated governance -
May 2025
Bay Delta bioregional unconferencing
Supported the unconference gatherings convening changemakers across the Bay Delta bioregion — twice intensively, and more loosely since. It's also where I met the collaborators who shaped the next two years of this work.
Weaving -
Jun 2025
Rewilding Our Way Forward
A garden tour and brunch I co-hosted, bringing together changemakers from across the bioregion, aged twelve to eighty, to explore how rewilding a landscape can rewild a mindscape. Grounded in a walking tour of two years of work on my own ground — spongy topsoil, foodscaping, and a front-yard garden built almost entirely from salvage out of Urban Ore. It became the first step toward a bioregional collaboration to trial tools and programs that let communities restore, regenerate, relate and reimagine their shared landscapes.
The 4 RsEngagement -
Aug 2025
Forestr.org · Director of Greening Projects and Programs
Through February 2026. Led expansion of participatory green-scaping across hyper-local communities in Alameda County — workforce pathways through ForestR Rangers, plus the ForestR Challenges App and ForestR University — to restore local water cycles and soil health.
ProgramsWorkforce -
Nov 2025
Storytellers' Park dedicated
A 400-square-foot front-yard pocket park in El Cerrito, a block from the high school, designed and built partly from salvaged materials on ground that had sat unused for years. The framework at parcel scale, with my own hands. forestr.org/storytellers
Storytellers' Park, El Cerrito — benches, mulch, natives and a wine barrel, on ground that had sat unused for years. Proof on the ground -
2025–26
Regenerate the Bay · Doughnut Economic Accelerator
Selected participant representing Forestr.org, in a program run in collaboration with the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, culminating in a public pitch to funders and program partners.
Pitching the theory of change — participatory greenscaping, and igniting the will of the people. Doughnut economics -
Jan 2026
Into the protocols-not-platforms community
Turned deliberately toward the open-source and decentralized-identity world — the people actually building trust infrastructure rather than writing about it. Regenerism needs that layer to exist, and it isn't going to be built by one person.
Open protocolsTrust infrastructure -
Apr 2026
Internet Identity Workshop #42
Attended and presented at IIW, at the Computer History Museum — the working gathering where proof-of-personhood and decentralized identity actually get built. Put the Neighborsheds and DERR design in front of the people whose protocols it would need to sit on.
At IIW #42 with the people building the trust layer. Presented -
May 2026
She's Geeky, AI Edition
Kaliya Young ran She's Geeky for ten years — at the Computer History Museum and in cities around the country — as an Open Space unconference for women in tech. We brought it back in 2026 to meet the moment: two hundred women in a room in North Beach, thinking hard about where AI is going. As the site puts it, AI is being shaped by whoever talks loudest and ships fastest; we're creating a different kind of space. I produced the event, ran marketing strategy and execution, designed shesgeeky.org, and presented. It ran as a partner event inside Human + Tech Week 2026, secured at zero marketing spend.
She's Geeky, AI Edition — May 2026, as a partner event inside Human + Tech Week. ProducedPresentedDesigned the site -
2026
Hawkeye · product, brand and systems strategy
Ongoing work with founder Marshall Kirkpatrick on Hawkeye — AI-enabled ecosystem listening that helps leaders see the landscape changing sooner, and act on it. My side of it is positioning, audience architecture, and the data model underneath the product: how accounts, ecosystems and segments relate, and what that makes possible for pricing and for the people using it. It's a good fit for obvious reasons — seeing the landscape change before other people do is the thing I've spent thirty years doing. Learn more at hawkeye.systems.
StrategyActive engagement -
Now
Ready to build, starting with an alpha pilot
One place, with participating humans: restore soil on real ground, field-test the rubric, and produce the participation model that lets the approach be replicated and resourced elsewhere. The ask is here.
Seeing connections before they form
Each of these became obvious long after I made the connection and took action.
Get in touch
For funders, collaborators, or anyone ready to restore and regenerate their place.
Direct
- tracey@circularpatterns.com
- 415.298.8816
- El Cerrito, California