Working Groups of COBALT/Team Zostera

Since January 2023, six working groups have formed. The first iteration was to prepare for the international Bioregional Workshop “A Deeper Sense of Place” as part of Transformations 2023 Conference. The current working groups reformed and renamed in November 2023 are currently busy in 2024 preparing material, briefings, bioregional expeditions, underwater field work, mapping workshops, art installations etc. All the work is being developed to better see, connect and amplify transformation at a bioregional scale.

SPOTLIGHT on COBALT Inspiration and ARTIST in RESIDENCE – “Posey” aka Pamela Moulton

The COBALT Team is thrilled to spotlight the remarkable contributions of Posey who is leading Working Groups #2 with a major focus on the many expressions of art associate with seagrass conservation and restoration. We have ambitious plans ahead that will be documented on this website that brings these GENEROUS ecosystems to life in our imagination. As some background on Posey: after three decades in France, Posey returned to Maine where she is an artist, educator and environmental activist. Her multi-disciplinary, large-scale installations, built from salvaged materials, including commercial nets and ropes (“ghost gear”), are highly interactive, playful, exploratory, and thought-provoking. The immersive spaces may be crawled through, climbed upon and occupied, allowing the public to explore its environmental consciousness in a direct, material way. Her work aims to target climate issues like endangered eelgrass meadows, rising sea levels and sinking lighthouses. Posey’s work has been shown throughout the US and internationally- in such venues as the National Gallery of Art, Tirana, Albania, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum, NY, Portland Museum of Art, and Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Recent works include installations at the Arcadia Earth Museum in Las Vegas, and Toronto, Public art commissions at the University of Southern Maine, and Payson Park, Maine. She has received fellowships and grants from the Maine Arts Commission, Ellis Beauregard Foundation, Kippy Stroud Foundation, Kindling Fund, and New England Foundation for the Arts.

She holds a BA from University of Vermont, an MFA from Ecole Superieure of Art- Aix en Provence in France.

Working Group #1: Bioregional Systems Storytelling

Context

Participants will be immersed in and contribute to the story of the Casco Bay Bioregion including interconnections (policy, social, ecological, economic etc.) across of food systems ~ both terrestrial and aquatic.

Objective

This will include linkages to food waste and wastewater, gender issues, food justice and the implications of ecological health with a focus on seagrass meadows and associated coastal ecosystems in Casco Bay.

Importance

Participants will learn how to see, connect and amplify transformations systems through storytelling and how to apply lessons learned to bioregions across the globe.

Team Preparing for Working Group #1

This WG will be facilitated by Juliana Bohórquez and Glenn Page

Juliana Bohórquez

Founder of Meráki®, she works with socio-ecological transformation processes at a global level in the context of Bioregions. She leads social mobilization processes and as university professor of the Transdisciplinary Master of Sustainable Living Systems at the Externado de Colombia University. Juliana founded SysLab® (Systemic Laboratory), dedicated to research and application innovation in different social and organizational dynamics and patterns.

Milena Rojas

I am a mother who heads the family and comes from the countryside. I have been working on Fractal Regeneration projects for more than 7 years and I have learned to cultivate my leadership. I have expertise in coordinating operations, sustainability projects, and can use my experience in systems storytelling to contribute during my fellowship.

Glenn Page

For over 40 years, I have been working on creating pathways to place-based transformation of our coasts/oceans/watersheds that integrate numerous social and ecological issues, working at the interface of science, policy and practice. Learning how to “Navigate in the Anthropocene” as I’m leading a team of interdisciplinary experts who brings innovation, evaluation and systems thinking to complex, messy, cross-scale, wicked challenges of our time.

Kent Libbey

I’m based in Palo Alto, California, where worked in high-tech for over two decades. Much of my career has been in product management in the context of digital media. I’m currently managing a globally distributed team of software designers and developers in the creation of software that uses emerging Artificial Intelligence technology to make it easy to identify, search and share key segments of videos.

Hayden Libbey

I studied Environmental Sciences and Management at UC Davis, graduating recently. I found GIS and data sciences to be the most intriguing of the many disciplines I learned. I’ve spent a year and half teaching youth science and leading outdoor education in the SF Bay Area and currently I live in Berkeley, CA. I would love to learn about a bioregion entirely different from the bioregion I inhabit.

Izzy Stocks

I’ve lived in Maine for most of my life and have so much love for it here. I’m in my final year studying media and communications at the University of Roehampton London and hope to use my media and communication skills to help tell the story of Maine’s coast. I worked on the seagrass story map for Cobalt this past summer and really enjoyed the work I took part in.

PhD Student at the University of York/
Co-convenor

Sam Buckton

I consider myself an inter- or transdisciplinary researcher and systems thinker. My current PhD research focuses on how evaluation can support food system transformation towards regenerative futures. I am also a Research Associate with Global Assessment for a New Economics.

Veer Kumar

I like to think of myself as a Data Wizard. I love solving challenging problems using data as a tool. My superpowers include Data Storytelling, I love to take produce compelling visuals that give out insights from raw data and help us take adequate action.

Daniel Kwanin

I really appreciate the world of analytics and would like to work in an occupation to match my interest. I have expertise in stakeholder and community engagement. I have fallen in love with the scope of R and GIS software and am excited to continue to expand my knowledge in both.

Mark Bomster

I’m a lifelong journalist with experience as a daily news reporter and editor and a collaborative, team orientation. I’ve specialized in public education policy, national and local politics, and other issues of public interest. Superpowers: synthesizing and focusing the varied themes of a project, identifying key story lines, and bringing a generalist’s enthusiasm to something I know little about.

Kathi Hendrick

I’m an artist, engineer, designer, poet, facilitator, embodiment guide. I am dynamic and constantly evolving into deeper wholeness through curiosity and playful exploration of the “and.” I alchemize living systems principles, regenerative design, and strategy methods with art, psychology, embodiment and mindfulness practices to co-create wellbeing and positive transformation at the level of self, community and world.

Ellen Harasimowicz

I create visual stories that celebrate the strength and resilience of individuals and the places they inhabit. In an ever-growing disconnected world, I’m drawn to people who are rooted in a place and nourished by the bonds of community. Many have deep connections to the natural world and a desire to protect it. I have been a visual storyteller since 2004 when I started freelancing for the Boston Globe.

Hannah Day

I am a curator, artist and co-director of Gallery space 82Parris, in Portland Maine. I am a visual artist and curator inspired by local ecologies and climate shift in the Gulf of Maine. I often work with site-specificity to create paintings and installations. I have knowledge in several types of subject matter including sustainability, climate change, and the arts.

Cameron Cooke

I am a UK-based graduate who is passionate about sustainable place-making in the built and living environment. I’m really interested in how our relationship to buildings tells stories of our connection to local places and landscapes. I’d love to help understand what a specific bioregional building culture would look like in practice. As I grew up on a working farm and having a keen interest in sustainable food systems.

Tammy Owens

I aspire to be the glue that holds everything and everyone in a project together. I have educational background in English literature, journalism, and marketing. I have background in working with start-up and global corporate companies, as well as local government agencies, charities, and non-profits. I am driven to teaching others about nature and wildlife, as well as how to take care of it.

Working Group #2: Arts and Culture

Context

Participants will contribute to the development of and enagement with Arts and Culture of the Seagrass Meadows and wider bioregion including past, present and emerging future dimensions.

Objective

Examples of activities include finalizing a draft timeline of textiles, trends in key variables, social and economic implications and useful case examples of the Casco Bay

Importance

This WG will also have a major focus on the emerging potential for fiber/textile art as a transformations system to inspire bioregional stewardship with a focus on a potential Seagrass Art exhibit.

Working Group #2

This WG will be convened by Posey Moulton

COBALT Artist in Residence and educator and environmental activist

Posey aka Pamela Moulton

After three decades in France, Posey returned to Maine where she is an artist, educator and environmental activist. Her multi-disciplinary, large-scale installations, built from salvaged materials, including commercial nets and ropes (“ghost gear”), are highly interactive, playful, exploratory, and thought-provoking. Her work aims to target climate issues like endangered eelgrass meadows, rising sea levels and sinking lighthouses.

Kristina Loring

I’m an independent story editor, audio producer, and sound artist working across genres and forms to create media experiences that you ACTUALLY FEEL in your body. Applying design techniques that I developed during my four years as the Head of Audio for DipseaI . Most recently, I was invited to the Meeting of Independent Radio Producers, to perform a live version of my piece “Intimacy” that originally aired on BBC Radio 4’s “Short Cut” program.

Hannah Day

Peter Mellgard

Peter Mellgard is a senior editor of Noema Magazine. He was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow on the foreign desk at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest newspaper, in 2014. Before that, Mellgard was a staff writer at The American Interest and a research associate for Walter Russell Mead. He has also worked at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Matice Maino

I’m a 24-year-old musician and film maker with a deep love for the outdoors. I have gotten a close up of how arts and community can come together to create meaningful change, and I look forward to exploring that more as I mature in my chosen career. I have expertise in several types of social issues including environmental and criminal justice, employment, and education.

Maria Nieto

I am an industrial designer. I live in Villa de Leyva and I have known the territory since I was a child. My superpower is to create playful solutions to teach about different problems. I am interested in learning about the Zaquenzipa bioregion from an environmental and social point of view using my experience in art and education.

Working Group #3: Marine Operations/Dive Safety

Context

Participants will contribute to a detailed documentation of place-based regenerative projects within a nested system, including why and how tourism can more fully support people, place and prosperity .

Objective

This WG will explore concepts for bioregional sea kayaking, hiking, and biking that inspire stewardship action as a transformations system within the bioregion with case stories, principles, and indicators of progress.

Importance

To be regenerative is to be dedicated to listening and learning together with people and place. With this in mind, the core importance of this WG is to spark reflection, conversation and shared discovery for the Casco bay Bioregion.

Team Preparing for Working Group #3

This WG will be co-convened by Jon Betz and Shaun Gill both experienced Dive Safety and Marine Operations

National Geographic Pristine Seas/
Co-Convenor

Jon Betz

I am a marine conservation documentary film director and cinematographer, avid year-round Maine diver and citizen scientist. I have filmed wildlife and documentary sequences both topside and underwater for National Geographic and others in 26 countries since 2010. I specialize in mission-driven work that has a social, environmental or political message.

Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership/ Co-Convenor

Shaun Gill

Think of me a heart-centered technical resource for helping you get in, on, and under water. While I am technically minded, I am also people-oriented, meaning that I take great care to provide mindful support of people and processes in order to arrive at holistic, stakeholder-centered solutions. I love mentoring others in prototype builds and working with others to tackle novel challenges.

Northeastern University and COBALT/Team Zostera Dive Control Bard

Sydney Hay

I’m a master’s student of Marine Biology at Northeastern University with a passion for food and environmental justice. I have a basic understanding of American food systems and have experience assisting communities in combatting the aspects of food injustice that affect them. However, my academic expertise is more rooted in marine science.

An Siwinski

I love diving, learning about marine life, and fostering stray cats. I hold a BS in marine vertebrate biology from Stony Brook University in New York. I have R and GIS knowledge and like to map data. Gathering data to help the local ecosystem has always been a dream for me.

Graduate Student at the University of Southern Maine

Allison Fogg

I am a graduate student at USM, I study population dynamics and life history characteristics of the mysid, in the Damariscotta River Estuary. I am interested in many fields of marine science including foundational species such as kelp and coral, sharks, sustainable aquaculture.

Glenn Page

Working Group #4: Seagrass Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Wisdom

Context

Participants will contribute to a process of language and culture preservation and how native legends communicated through song and dance can become transformations systems.

Objective

The WG will contribute to the documentation of place names in Casco Bay and contribute to a dual language of glossary of terms associated with seagrass meadows in Algonquian/Wabanaki language.

Importance

This WG will also have a major focus on the transformations systems associated with traditional ecological knowledge & wisdom inspiring justice, reconciliation and stewardship across a bioregion.

Team Zostera – Working Group #4

This WG is convened by Glenn Page

COBALT/Team Zostera Founder Working Group Convener

Glenn Page

For over 40 years, I have been working on creating pathways to place-based transformation of our coasts/oceans/watersheds that integrate numerous social and ecological issues, working at the interface of science, policy and practice. al California and studied animal science and environmental sustainability at Cornell University. My graduate thesis is on predicting the distribution of seagrass in Casco Bay using a combination of predictive modeling in ArcGIS and remote sensing analysis.

Allison Fogg

Sydney Hay

Working Group #5: Bioregional Digital Twin

Context

Participants will learn why conservation of seagrass meadows are an ideal bioregional focus as they contribute to the development of Team Zostera, a new community-based seagrass conservation and stewardship effort across the Casco Bay Bioregion.

Objective

The WG will contribute to shaping strategy for outreach, brand identity, and transformative products and experiences that both engage and inspire stewardship action.

Importance

This WG will also have a major focus on the transformations systems associated with seagrass conservation in coastal bioregions and why this work is essential in the Anthropocene.

Team Preparing for Working Group #5: Digital Twin Development

This WG is convened by Glenn Page and Co-convened by Max Zahniser

Glenn Page

Denise Meslin

My entire professional career has been in technology. Today I work as Commercial Director in Cybersecurity for Latin America. I love the land, knowing different cultures, the spirit and that’s how I arrived in Colombia where I fell deeply in love with the territory, its culture and the spirit of this land.

Jack Hughes

I am currently studying GCSEs in the UK including geography, agriculture and computer science. I am interested in sustainable ways of living and regenerative practices. I have an interest and some experience in creating 3D interactive environments. My goal is to integrate this with learning more about bioregions and working on a bioregional digital twin.

PhD Student at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Haley Fitzpatrick

I am trained as an architect and worked at Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genova, Italy. This led to my PhD position at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway. My research is exploring how a reflexive practice of systemic design can be used to broaden awareness and participation in co-designing regenerative futures of rural mountain communities.

Tobias Fechner

I like introducing myself as a regeneration pilgrim. I’ve been travelling through various learning neighborhoods. I have previously worked in Formula 1 as a software quality assurance engineer, an early-stage renewable energy startup in London doing grid analytics, and Europe’s largest renewable energy retailer in Berlin, also doing analytics.

Tammy Owens

aspire to be the glue that holds everything and everyone in a project together. I have educational background in English literature, journalism, and marketing. I have background in working with start-up and global corporate companies, as well as local government agencies, charities, and non-profits. I am driven to teaching others about nature and wildlife, as well as how to take care of it.

Peter Stocks

I have been working with team Zostera for about 9 months. My formal training is in law and economics. In past years I practiced in the corporate bankruptcy arena and taught as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, as an adjunct lecturer. More recently I’ve been involved in creating and managing ocean-born businesses since 2009. I have also done some consulting for the World Wildlife Fund in the shellfish aquaculture space.

Max Zahniser

I’m an amateur ecologist, a recovering architect, an unplanned educator and across an arch of a career that weaves all that together, am currently working to develop innovative approaches to “re-villaging” our rampantly enclosed and fragmented society. Through new technique and technology and project development, many related to the built environment.

Lawrence Grodeska

I have always been a seeker of self-awareness and worldly knowledge, all in the service of equanimity and wisdom. Whatever the work, I bring good vibes and plenty of optimism. I’ve studied ecology, spent time at local environmental agencies and social good startups, and founded CivicMakers, a leading civic design firm. I am a seasoned executive, deft strategist, master facilitator, and trusted project manager.

Working Group #6: Friendraising/Fundraising

Context

As conservation science becomes more integrative, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary a transformation system is emerging as part of the digital revolution.

Objective

The WG will explore the potential of bioregional digital twins to better see, connect and amplify transformation across a bioregion. Our work will focus on seagrass meadows in Casco Bay and how to inspire stewardship action.

Importance

The WG will be among the first in the world to explore integration of big data, user interface, cinematic ‘Triple-A’ videogame quality, rich living 3D maps where every piece of knowledge about the place and its entities is holistically embodied or accessible to the explorer.

Team Preparing for Working Group #6

This WG will be Convened by Minot Weld

Glenn Page

Wivern Management, LLC, Working Group Convener

Minot Weld

I live and work on the coast of Maine. I have a keen interest in the revitalization of living systems, and I am eager to work with knowledgeable and experienced practitioners. I work in project finance, and I am well networked in the region. Some of my experience includes project finance consulting, and economic development related to industry and housing.

Lawrence Grodeska

Simon Divecha

My core work is around integral sustainability. That includes the perspective taking abilities and structures we can use to help ourselves generate emergent solutions and create outcomes that are not simple linear additions to our capabilities. I will be active in the on-line portion and representing a rural perspective from living in remote Scottish Island Communities.

Max Zahniser

Some “regenerates” turn reasonable cautions about technology and mechanical thinking into absolute statements that forever downgrade their importance, rather than putting these non-living (arguably) aspects of reality in their place, in service to Life, or possibly even seeing how they may reflect and/or become truly alive with our conscious effort.