Staff
Adrian Ayson, Director of Operations
Adrian has been a leader in environmental education for over twenty-five years. Before joining Center for Whole Communities, he served as Director of Education at the Massachusetts Audubon Society and at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. In those capacities he guided the over-all educational strategy, long range planning, and vision for nature centers, and school, family and adult programs. After beginning his career as Program Director for New York City’s Urban Park Rangers, he went on to work with many environmental organizations large and small. As an environmental education and interpretive planning consultant, Adrian developed master interpretive plans and curriculum materials for museums, nature centers and botanical gardens. Over the years Adrian has served as President of the New England Environmental Education Alliance, and President of the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society, and was a long-time editor of the New England Journal of Environmental Education.
Email: adrian (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Peter Forbes, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Peter Forbes is a writer, photographer, farmer and conservationist. A student of the relationship between land and people, he’s worked throughout the world to record and protect our human relationships with the land. Peter's life-long pursuit is to be a witness and storyteller of the bond between people and the land, and to translate what he has learned into a new form of leadership. Peter is recognized across North America for building bridges between sectors, coalitions and organizations and for nurturing a new land movement integrating land health, social justice, and human spirit.
Peter co-founded Center for Whole Communities after eighteen years leading conservation projects for the Trust for Public Land. Peter helped to protect threatened portions of Thoreau's Walden Woods; he launched a program to protect and revitalize urban gardens and farms across New England; he helped to add 20,000 acres of wild lands to New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest, and he created the Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, to promote the life ways of renowned land and social activists Helen and Scott Nearing. Through the success of more than one hundred conservation projects, Peter earned a national reputation as being a champion of a new brand of community-based conservation where the health of the people and the health of the land are viewed as equal.
In 1998, Peter became TPL's first national fellow and devoted himself to researching and writing about how individual and community relationships with the land can become the seeds for broader social change. In 2001, Peter founded the Center for Land and People, a program of the Trust for Public Land, to help re-define the success of the conservation movement as a force in creating a more tolerant and joyful human culture.
His photography and essays have appeared in many books and he has given hundreds of keynote addresses around the country. Others have written of Peter's thinking and storytelling that he is "a national treasure whose groundbreaking work is a stunning reminder of why land conservation is still so important." He is the editor of Our Land, Ourselves: Readings on People and Place and he is the author of The Great Remembering: Further Thoughts on Land, Soul and Society (TPL/Chelsea Green, 2001). His essays have also appeared in Coming to Land in a Troubled World (Center for Land and People/Chelsea Green) His photographs of homesteader and social activist, Bill Coperthwaite, are published in "A Handmade Life", which won first prize in 2003 from the Independent Bookseller's Association for most inspiring story.
Peter was honored in 1998 as the "Environmental Friend of New England," the highest award given to an individual by the Environmental Federation of New England, a coalition of 38 environmental groups. In 2005, Peter received the inaugural Land and People Award from Trust for Public Land. Peter has served on the board of directors of many organizations, including the Center for New American Dream, Vallecitos Mountain Refuge, and the Good Life Center. He lives and farms with his wife and two daughters in the Mad River Valley of Vermont.
Email: peter (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Libby McDonald, Program Associate
Libby is responsible for the logistics of the programs at Center for Whole Communities. Before coming to Center for Whole Communities, Libby did an internship at The Murie Center in Moose, Wyoming. Originally from Michigan, she graduated from the University of Vermont in December 2005 with a degree in environmental science. During her time in college, she studied natural and cultural history abroad in Ecuador and British Columbia.
Email: libby (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Meghan McGeary, Director of Development
Meghan is a Pennsylvania native with a degree in Philosophy. Her fundraising career started seven years ago as a TeleFund caller at her alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to work at Pitt in various development positions, from managing the phone campaign, to running the direct mail and faculty and staff campaigns, and finally managing annual leadership giving, including personal solicitation up to $100,000 and creating Pitt's first-ever young alumni giving society. Having grown up in Philadelphia and spending 9 years in Pittsburgh, she decided to leave the city for a more mountainous region. That brought her to Plymouth State University where she headed up the annual giving program. During her time in New Hampshire, she often visited Vermont and fell in love with the state. Meghan moved again and found a way to further connect with the land when she accepted the Director of Development position at the Vermont Land Trust. From there, she joined Center for Whole Communities, where she again runs the development program. When not at work, Meghan spends time hiking with her chocolate lab, gardening, foraging for wild edibles, throwing pottery, stretching and relaxing through yoga, kayaking, and attempting to learn how to snowboard.
Email: meghan (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Kevin McMillion, Office Manager
Growing up I lived in several places around the country, including Maryland, North Carolina, Hawaii and Maine before falling in love with Vermont in 1996. Growing up in a variety of places with stunning natural beauty, I’ve always had a love for nature, water and rugged landscapes.
After graduating from the University of New England, I spent several years guiding whitewater rafting trips in Northern Maine, living in a tent for five months of the year, spending hundreds of hours on the river guiding trips and fly fishing. I started coming to Vermont during the winter months in 1995 and moved here for good in 1997.
I enjoy working for small grassroots companies, making an effort to support healthy lifestyles. I love life in Vermont, truly appreciating what each season has to offer. I live in Waitsfield with my wife and two daughters.
Email: kevin (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Florence Miller, Director of Educational Programs
Flo coordinates the Whole Thinking Retreats and Workshops at Whole Communities. Before joining the Center, she worked as an education specialist at World Wildlife Fund, during which time she wrote and edited material for teachers’ guides and children’s and educators’ websites; ran a national children’s education and fundraising campaign; and led workshops with educators. Prior to WWF, Flo taught after-school and in-school environmental education programs in New Haven, worked as a research assistant at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, taught in a high school in the Solomon Islands, and worked as a field researcher on Vietnam’s Cat Ba Island. She has an undergraduate degree in geography and a master’s in environmental science.
Email: flo (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Taz Squire, Land Steward and General Contractor
Taz Squire is a...carpenter, carver, car and bike mechanic, welder, photographer, advocate for social and racial justice, race car aficionado, cyclist, skier, climber...a good old-fashioned Renaissance Man. And did we mention he has a soft spot for classic Austin Mini wagons and dingo dogs? He's one of those rare people who can fix most anything, build most anything, bike or ski most anything, and is simultaneously always on the lookout for new interests and challenges.
Taz loves working with his hands, close to the land and community. As a child growing up in Maine, he worked with is father and formed the foundation for the building and machinery skills he possesses today. He spent many years off the grid in Downeast Maine with a mentor, Bill Coperthwaite (above-mentioned social activist, educator, and author of “A Handmade Life”).
Bill forged his own path on his own land, creating a life and lifestyle based on simplicity and self-reliance, always grounded in the majesty and utility of that which is made by one’s own hands. With Bill, Taz acquired skills in experiential education, yurt building, hand tool use, carving, trail building, and an understanding of and reverence for the land. Taz has also been a student in more traditional educational settings at the University of Maine, Machias and Naropa University, Boulder, where he focused on Peace Studies.
Over time, Taz has worked as a carpenter, snow maker, cook, goldsmith, timber framer, park ranger, and bike mechanic. For many years, he spent falls and springs at the Mountain Institute, and summers at Farm & Wilderness, doing carpentry, maintenance, and program delivered experientially. He eventually committed full-time to Farm & Wilderness as Physical Plant Manager and one of the five COOs. He remained there for 15 years.
Taz has been involved with Center for Whole Communities since its inception, by taking part in the initial visioning process for its future direction. He is excited to now be an active and present participant in the work of Knoll Farm and Whole Communities.
Email: taz (at) wholecommunities (dot) org
Helen Whybrow, Co-Founder and Director of Publications
Helen Whybrow is the co-founder of Center for Whole Communities and directs the Center’s publishing program and communications. Before moving to Knoll Farm, Helen worked as a developmental editor for W. W. Norton and was for six years the publisher of an imprint of books on natural history, travel and New England called Countryman Press. Over the years she has edited hundreds of books related to land and people, including titles by Eric Freyfogle, Tom Wessels, Helen Nearing, Eliot Coleman, and many others.
Helen also hires and manages our incredible retreat staff each summer, runs our farm internship program, and takes care of the food production gardens. She co-hosts many of our retreats and teaches the farming and gardening aspects of the curriculum. A student of permaculture, organic agriculture, and holistic management, Helen works to bring these disciplines into the way we farm and live on the land at Knoll Farm and the way we teach and model for those who come here. Her interest is in continually exploring how our intersection with the land can be more profound, meaningful and healthy; and how our practices of living on the land can provide nourishment while building biodiversity and fertility.
Helen is on the board of NOFA-VT (Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont) and is a co-founder of the Vermont localvore project which promotes local, sustainable food production.
Email: helen (at) wholecommunities (dot) org