circular patterns
Since spring 2023

The Research

The frameworks, graphics, proposals and papers behind Regenerism, Neighborsheds, the Doughnut Economic Regenerative Rubric and the rewilding work, in the order they were made.

Click any image to see it full size.

2023

  1. Jan–May

    Reuse Glass to Reduce, then R2D2

    During spring 2023, while promoting an Offering Memorandum for Donkey & Goat Winery, I designed several ecological pathways for the winery to pursue going forward. The most developed was a novel supply chain disruptor for wine glass bottles that could become foundational to circularity for food and beverage with participatory programming aimed to change behavior and improve community resilience.

    The pitch: Leap beyond return for deposit programs to drive a new model where participation also educates around the need to consider the consumable distinct from the package it arrives in. And to drive efforts to move towards packaging that is either approved for composting or built for reuse longevity. And to ban plastic! All while providing benefits to those participating in the circularity of packaging built to last and be reused.

    Somewhere between leaving Donkey & Goat in June 2023 and graduating from Regenerative Economics in November 2023 I evolved from the RG2R (Reuse Glass to Reduce) to R2D2 (Race to Deter 2.0) due to no longer believing a 1.5 degree goal was believable. I felt a more motivational strategy would be to clearly have a goal we could beat.

    • Whiteboard lettering: To save our planet must change human behavior.
      Feb 2023 white board session.
    • Supply Chain Disruption slide for RG2R, Reuse Glass to Reduce: supplier, facility and channel participation around a central community circle, with rewards for participation.
      Supply chain disruption: RG2R, Reuse Glass to Reduce.
    • Hand-drawn CC100 diagram: the New Circular Containers 100 supply chain disruptor company that launches R2D2 and the benefit economy.
      CC100, February 2023.
    • Hand-drawn QR Code Data sheet: what the supplier, manufacturer and consumer each record at each scan.
      QR code data.
    • Hand-lettered poster: Race to Deter 2, R2D2, save the planet from +2, circular containers.
      Race to Deter 2: R2D2.
  2. Jun–Dec

    Pathways to the Regenerative Era

    During Capital Institute’s Regenerative Economics course I began evolving R2D2 and the CC100 supply chain disruptor ideas into a wider boundary view that focused on the systemic roots of the polycrisis, as we called it in Cohort 4, fall 2023. I published Pathways to the Regenerative Era and shared it with the course leaders and cohort members. Several graphics were created for this effort and here are a few of my favorites.

    • Two panels: the extractive economy, led by financial and fossil fuel industries, and the regenerative economy, the beloved economy built on a living systems framework.
      The extractive economy and the regenerative economy.
    • The Greatest Migration: rivers of hope, resiliency and innovation carrying people from the land of abandonment toward flourishing, with Neighborsheds at the center as the rudder.
      Fall 2023, Regenerative Economics Cohort 4. Following a Discovery Dialogue with Alfa Demmellash I created a digital version of the sketch she drew during her presentation to our class and evolved it to include Neighborsheds as the rudder for the Greatest Migration.
    • Watercolor: dots of every size and colour scattered across white paper, some black.Watercolor: the same coloured dots gathered and sorted inside a bounded ring, the black dots outside the rim.
      Fall 2023, from chaos to clarity of purpose, unified by shared values.
    • Watercolor wheel: Stabilize, planetary boundaries.Watercolor wheel: Reconstruct, principles of vitality.Watercolor wheel: Story sharing, this moment, our future, our stories.Watercolor wheel: Our mission, stabilize, reconstruct, stories.
      Fall 2023, Framework 20 based on a mission framework organized around stabilizing planetary boundaries, reconstructing the built world to become planet positive and life affirming, and sharing stories organized around this moment, our future and our past.
    • Large watercolor poster, The Institute for the Commons Framework 20: Growing Compassion and Wisdom, our foundation for a new paradigm, with offers and needs markets, bioregion land trust accounts, and no AI bots and bad actors in the IFTC sandbox.
      Fall 2023, part of an evolution in thinking that introduced a foundational substrate in the form of a novel alliance to unify those in favor of life affirming, planet positive futures.
    • Flow diagram: eliminate plastic and single use glass, earn Gaia Coin and receive holistic wealth benefits. Gaia Glass account, Gaia Glass products, Gaia Coin, benefits.
      Fall 2023, during Regenerative Economics Cohort 4 expanding upon earlier ideas around a supply chain disruptor to specify the possibility of trialing a novel economic model.
    • Gaia Glass Earth-ise in Los Angeles, the SF Bay Area and Hudson NY, each with community hubs around a Gaia Glass warehouse.
      Fall 2023, illustrating the potential for the supply chain disruptor to provide community resilience hubs that would be easy to scale and replicate.
    • Framework 20 table: Mission 1, stabilize nine planetary boundaries; Mission 2, reconstruct the human economy on eight principles of regenerative vitality; Mission 3, story sharing and community building.
      Fall 2023, the initial Framework 20 that evolved to become the Doughnut Economic Regenerative Rubric two years later.
    • The Epic Mission to Save Humanity: a grid mapping sample member organizations against the twenty Framework 20 measures.
      Fall 2023, illustrating how the Framework 20 could provide mapping for new member organizations.
    • Ten regions, five representatives, one from each equity group.Lists of ten world regions and five diversity groups.
      Fall 2023, imagineering ideas for equity based governance frameworks.
    • Circle diagram: The Institute for Liberating Life at the center of stabilize planetary boundaries, reconstruct the human experience, and story sharing and community building.
      Fall 2023, illustrating the changemaking power of the Framework 20.

2024

  1. Mar

    Growing Possibility with a Novel Co-Creation

    My first attempt to apply the big vision to a particular place, in Richmond, California.

    • Illustration from the Richmond pilot proposal.
      From the Richmond pilot proposal.
  2. Apr

    F20 framework, illustrated

    • Three circular frameworks side by side: planetary boundaries, narrative storytelling and regenerative principles.
      F20 framework, illustrated.
  3. May

    Richmond Place Based Pilot Lollapalooza

    Evolved the March proposal to incorporate feedback and add a few collaborators to the proposal.

  4. May

    Regenerators Lollapalooza

    Presented ideas to GRC (Global Regeneration CoLab) in hopes of inspiring others to join me in a collaboration.

  5. Sep

    A New Way Forward

    Infused ideas from john a. powell’s new book Belonging Without Othering, bioregional concepts and the caste system, leveraging attention around a new film, Origin, which chronicles Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson as she researches and writes her best-selling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The presentation took a fresh approach to the same core vision.

  6. Oct

    Regen Tech and Belonging

    After attending an event showcasing new ventures in the emerging “Spirit Tech” industry I created this presentation that leaned more heavily on the technology part of the vision, incorporating several new ideas including the introduction of a Commons Bioregional Alliance and sharing the work of the Regenerative Technology Project as evidence of possible alternatives.

  7. Nov

    Enabling Pathways

2025

  1. Jan

    Neighborsheds

    Introduced the word and concept, Neighborsheds, with an essay.

  2. Feb

    Uniting Nature Based Futurists

    Created a presentation focused on how unifying around shared values with activism can drive changemaking at scale.

    • The Regenerative Framework diagram.
      The Regenerative Framework, February 2025.
  3. Apr

    From Bioneers, Bio Warriors to Infinity and Beyond

    Following the 36th Annual Bioneers Conference, I wrote a fictional futuristic essay to share core concepts and possibilities, woven with reference to speakers and events from the event.

  4. May

    A Neighborsheds session

    Supported the second production of the Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference for Regeneration and also presented ideas in a session.

    • Hand-lettered pink session sheet: Join me to imagineer Neighborsheds. Novel containers to organize neighbors to unite around emergency preparedness, food and water circularity, spongy topsoil, rewilded landscapes and foodscaping.
      Spring 2025, the session sheet at the Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference.
  5. Jun

    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.

  6. Jul

    Releasing “I” and Embracing “We”

    A proposal that aimed to provide depth to the concepts presented in the February 2025 slides called, “Uniting Nature Based Futurists.” Focused on creating a Bioregional Alliance of the Commons to enable bioregionalism to become a fundable, viable, changemaking movement based on participation in caregiving and service of local landscapes and communities, and organized based on geographical coordinates, where human populations are relatable and called “Neighborsheds”.

  7. Jul

    Miyawaki Forests: Seeding a Bioregional Movement

    After attending the “Waves of Green; Harnessing the Power of Miyawaki Forests,” July 2025, a symposium presented by Green Pocket Forest, I created a new entry to the vision, grounded in supporting the creation of Miyawaki Forests for ecological restoration and community engagement, education and participation.

  8. Aug

    Bioregional frameworks

    • Bioregional Framework for Building Bridges.
      Bioregional framework for building bridges.
    • Bioregional Based Digital Identity Framework.
      Bioregional based digital identity framework.
    • Equity-based governance framework table.
      Equity-based governance framework.
  9. Aug

    Forestr.org’s Story: Offers and Needs

    After meeting one of the founders of Forestr.org at the Miyawaki Symposium in July I joined as Director of Greening Programs and Projects, and created a presentation to highlight Forestr.org’s offerings and aspirations.

  10. Oct

    Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference, third production

    Supported the third production of the Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference for Regeneration with Forestr.org as a sponsor. Leveraged the event sponsorship as an opportunity to showcase Forestr.org offerings and aspirations.

    • A conference table: black display boards covered in program panels, a basket of apples, stickers and flyers.
      Fall 2025 Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference for Regeneration, where I leveraged my 20 years of tabling at wine festivals to showcase ideas of infusing Neighborshed ideas into the Greening Programs and Projects at Forestr.
  11. Oct

    The Doughnut Economic Regenerative Rubric

    DERR is AI-enabled by design. Most measurement systems score entities one at a time and cannot see what runs between them. DERR is designed to learn from a place’s own knowledge base — from nature, from the relationships between people and land, and from the spaces between them — to surface the patterns an entity-by-entity assessment structurally cannot.

    In fall 2025 I proposed applying the rubric to Forestr.org’s program portfolio and to the metrics for the Block x Block pilot. The place-based system is designed, socialized, and awaiting capital.

  12. Nov

    Storytellers’ Park

    Conceived, planned and executed the creation of a 400-square-foot front-yard pocket park in El Cerrito, a block from the high school, built partly from salvaged materials on ground that had sat unused for years. The framework at parcel scale, with my own hands.

    • The Storytellers' Park sign at dusk under string lights.
      Storytellers’ Park, dedicated November 2025.
  13. Nov

    Regenerate the Bay · the Doughnut Economics pitch

    Was selected to represent Forestr.org in a program run in collaboration with the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, culminating in a public pitch to funders and program partners.

2026

  1. Jan

    Movements Should Not Be Adjectives

    In response to the word regenerative becoming a ubiquitous adjective that is misused to drive purchases of things that are not aligned to the principles and practices of being circular, life affirming and planet positive I wrote an essay, “Movements Should Not Be Adjectives.”

  2. Jan

    The Rodeo pilot

    Presented the Rodeo proposal to key stakeholders.

  3. Feb

    Food Is Medicine Festival

    In the early stages of planning She’s Geeky, AI Edition, I proposed a larger Food Is Medicine Festival for San Francisco to run alongside the 2nd annual Human + Tech Week.

  4. Feb

    A Collaboration in Plain Sight

    A document intended as an educational resource that shows, in full and without editing, the conversation between a human collaborator and Claude (an AI assistant made by Anthropic) that produced the intellectual portfolio titled “From Persuasion to Manipulation” which evolved to become “Composting Modernity,” a white paper published March 2026.

  5. Mar

    Composting Modernity

    Consumer Identity, the More-Than-Human Predicament, and Architecting Conditions for Regeneration.

  6. Mar

    Growing True Humans · Community As Infrastructure

    Growing True Humans. Slides presenting the vision through the lens of learning from the white paper and connecting to place based actions with Neighborsheds.

    Community As Infrastructure. An alternative version to Growing True Humans with more focus on technology and community as infrastructure.

  7. May

    Neighborsheds and DERR design session

    Presented ideas in a session at She’s Geeky, AI Edition.

  8. May

    Neighborsheds: A Regenerative Accelerationism Pilot

    Following IIW #42, I created slides that wove ideas previously shared with far more specificity around the open source, protocol based technology stack required to enable Neighborsheds, DERR, and Regenerism.

  9. Jun

    The Paradox of How and the Federated Regenerates United Guild

    An attempt to reduce slides presented in May to a short six page proposal with defined stages. A proposal for the Federated Regenerates United Guild — a systems science approach to catalyze regenerating communities and their local ecologies.

  10. Jul

    Neighborsheds Enable Community AS Regenerative Infrastructure

    Further refinement to 14 slides with a budget for how to start, based on the stages outlined in the June proposal.

  11. Sep

    Regenerism

    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.

Get in touch

For funders, collaborators, or anyone ready to restore and regenerate their place.

Direct

Elsewhere

Pages

Circular Patterns · © 2024–2026