Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute covering energy and the environment. He has written for the Nation magazine, the Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, Gastronomica, Petits Propos Culinaires, Earth Island Journal, Adirondack Life, and other publications. He has been a Russia Fulbright fellow, a Middlebury fellow in environmental journalism, and the recipient of a Polk grant for investigative reporting. A former line cook, bread baker, and pastry chef, he lives in Vermont.

Ben Falk M.A.L.D, developed Whole Systems Design, LLC, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben’s integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont’s Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds master of arts in landscape design degree. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He recently served on the board of directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School, where he also teaches from time to time. He is the author of The Resilient Homestead: Innovative Permaculture Systems for the Home and Farm.

Ginny Sassaman is a co-founder, immediate past president, and advisory board member of Gross National Happiness USA, an organization working to promote the use of well-being measures in the United States. She created the Happiness Paradigm as a platform for teaching, writing about, and advocating for greater personal happiness and creating systems change for maximum well-being for all. Since 2013, she has also served as a lay preacher at Unitarian Universalist churches in Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and South Carolina. She has given speeches and made presentations on the nexus between personal well-being and systems change in Seattle, WA; Burlington, VT; Princeton, NJ; Charlotte, NC; Santa Fe, NM; and New York City. Additionally, to promote greater well-being, Sassaman teaches secular meditation classes.

Originally from Central Pennsylvania, Ginny and her husband Bob spent many years living in Washington, DC, before settling near Montpelier, Vermont, in 2001.