Patryk is a teacher, mentor, and farm and garden manager for Living Web Farms in Mills River, NC. He has developed agricultural systems including intensive cover cropping at Sparkling Earth Farm, Highland Lake Inn, and Mountain Air Community Organic Garden. He has written for local and national publications and has been featured on local and national radio and television. He also helped found the Organic Growers School, based in Asheville, NC.

Michelle joined the board of Cooperate WNC because she believes harnessing the power of cooperation and mutual aid offers our region a positive, practical path for meeting the needs of people in our region while addressing our pressing ecological challenges. She knew she could lend her experience in consent-based collaborative governance to support that mission.

MIchelle is from Western NC and has lived in Asheville for 31 years. Michelle is a white, straight, cis-gendered Gen X woman whose ancestry and cultural heritage come primarily from the Scots, Irish, Dutch and German who settled the Southern Appalachians and along the Catawba River Valley.

Michelle Smith is a coach, facilitator & consultant in consent-based collaborative governance. She is co-founder of Circle Forward Partners. She calls herself a Societal Transformationist working to create a world that works for all in the tradition of Dr. Shariff Abdullah. For more than two and a half decades she has worked with networks, for-profit and nonprofit businesses that are contributing to a vision of prosperity, vitality and peace for the whole community.

Debbie has joined the work of Cooperate WNC because she wants to live in a world and region based on cooperation and collaboration.

Debbie has lived at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2007 in a housing cooperative. She live with her husband and two cats. Most of her career was as a software engineer and manager and a technical writer. Currently, Debbie is Online Programs and Marketing Director at Earthaven's School of Integrated Living. She has served on the board for a WNC regional sustainable agriculture nonprofit and currently serves on the board of Culture's Edge.

Bio coming soon!