Instructors & Facilitators

James Stark

Co-Director - Regenerative Design Institute

James Stark, M.A., F.E.S.,  is the co-director of the Regenerative Design Institute (RDI). He co-founded and co-directs the Ecology of Leadership program and is a senior trainer in the 3-year, full-time Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness training program, preparing young global community leaders for the “Great Turning” of our era. James has committed his life to exploring how we – ourselves, our communities, and our species – might move as quickly as possible back into harmony with who we are and the natural world. He considers the programs at RDI a nursery for growing visions of the new era, and providing skills and tools to bring the visions to life. For decades, James dedicated himself to community visioning and organizing in West Marin – during which he co-founded the following organizations, among others: * West Marin Growers Group (WMGG), which was created to ensure food security in Marin County. WMGG grew into the 5013c, Marin Organic, which introduced the Marin Organic Food Label and hosts the West Marin Farmers Market.* Waste Free Now, which is committed to West Marin becoming waste free and hosts the innovative annual Recycle Circus including a "Stuff Exchange" for people to redistribute community resources.* KWMR "Watershed Radio", which is a licensed 501c3 community radio station in the tenth year of providing a voice for West Marin residences and heard around the world live through web casting. * CLAM - Community Land Trust Association of Marin, an affordable ecological housing land trust (5013c) created to provide affordable housing in the face of increasing gentrification. James’ years working with visioning led him to an interest in exploring the inner world and to earn a master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Like the natural systems and patterns that guide permaculture, his work now is to help others explore the inner patterns that affect how visions become reality.  He believes that creating a loving, peaceful inner world provides the soil for the seeds of our world visions to grow.

Christopher Kuntzsch

Christopher is co-founder and co-director of the Ecology of Leadership programs at RDI. The son of an opera singer and orchestra conductor, he was born and raised in Germany and moved to the United States at age 13. With early years as a sponsored table tennis player, rock musician, and adventurer-seeker, his passion for wild landscapes and their inhabitants led him to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he delved into the world of ecology, conservation biology, natural history, and adventure education.

He spent many subsequent seasons serving as a wildlife biologist, naturalist, and course instructor for the University of California, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, and the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School, among others. Those formative experiences led further into studies of nature awareness, spiritual practice, tracking, and permaculture and to an integration of insights from those fields into the realms of human development and leadership.

Dedicating his service path to leadership and personal development projects for the last 7 years, he supports conscious change-makers in getting in touch with, nurturing, and germinating the seeds of possibility they hold within. Through personal coaching, consulting, and facilitation he has helped hundreds of eco-social activists and entrepreneurs, sustainability professionals, non-profit leaders, managers, C-level executives, artists, and healers get in touch with their purpose, vision, and leadership potential through a synergy of self-awareness, personal practice, skill development, and engagement with the natural world.

Christopher’s background includes dual bachelors degrees – in Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies - from the University of California, Santa Cruz, 5 years of intensive coaching and facilitation as director of coaching services at Steve Dudley Associates (http://www.stevedudleyassociates.com/), certification in permaculture design from the Regenerative Design Institute (http://www.regenerativedesign.org/), trainer certification with the Center for Leadership Studies (http://www.situational.com/), the co-active coaching fundamentals from the Coaches Training Institute (http://www.thecoaches.com/), completion of the 1-year Interchange counseling development program, the residential program at Wilderness Awareness School (http://www.wildernessawareness.org/), and studies at Tom Brown, Jr.’s Tracker School http://www.trackerschool.com/).

Recently, Christopher has been consulting with sustainability stakeholders and programs at the University of California and is excited to bring the new wave of Ecology of Leadership programs and events to the Bay Area and Southern California in 2009.

Christopher also loves living in community, tending his garden and chickens, cavorting with bobcats visiting his yard on the edge of Santa Cruz, picking his mandolin at the local barn dance, and surfing one of his favorite point breaks.

His website (http://www.christopherkuntzsch.com/) has more information if you'd like to know more or contact him.

Affiliated Organizations

For Upcoming Courses, Workshops, & Events Click in Permaculture, Ecovillage Design, Sustainable Living Skills,

& More Click Here.

Courses, Workshops & Events

For Upcoming Courses, Workshops, & Events in Permaculture, Ecovillage Design, Sustainable Living Skills, & More Click Here.