Permaculture Design Course Instructors
Brian Byers
Brian is a permaculture designer, educator, and activist with over a decade of agricultural experience working in the Willamette Valley. He is passionate about building resilient local communities, reconnecting people to nature, and growing nutritious food. He has a bachelors degree in philosophy and has studied permaculture with Andrew Millison, Heiko Koester, Tom Ward, and Jude Hobbs and is certified in permaculture design, as well as holding advanced certificates in surveying, forestry, and teaching. Brian has been the lead teacher of the Lost Valley PDC since 2016.
Khyla Allis
Khyla moved from her hometown in Reno, Nevada five days after she graduated high school, to the Big Island of Hawaii, where she learned the words “intentional community” and “permaculture” for the first time. She arrived at Lost Valley in 2016 as a Holistic Sustainability Semester student, going on to receive her Permaculture Design and Ecovillage Design Education certifications. She has since traveled to Australia and New Zealand, researching community and applied permaculture land stewardship on-the-ground, working with many amazing teachers along her journey.
Khyla is inspired to focus her energy as Garden Coordinator to hold workshops and classes on different topics for children and adults alike (tree pruning, worms, soil science, compost, farm to table, preservation, edible mushrooms in your garden, etc.)
Nathaniel Nordin-Tuininga
Nathaniel Nordin-Tuininga is a long-time environmental educator. He spent much of his childhood learning directly from 1200 acres of meadows and forests and from the elders who helped him cultivate a deep reverence for the more-than-human world. His life has been an ongoing exploration of alternative educational models, including indigenous practices still used in many “developing” nations, which rely heavily on the interaction between children and the natural world. He holds an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon, two degrees in Early Childhood and Grades Education from Waldorf Teacher Education Eugene, and an Ecovillage and Permacultural Certification from Lost Valley Educational Center. He is also certified as a Somatic Movement Educator. Nathaniel brings patience, joy, and an intimate appreciation for the ecological interdependence of life.
Dan Wahpepah
Dan Wahpepah grew up immersed in American Indian Movement culture and his traditional ways. His father is a spiritual leader and his uncle founded West Coast AIM. He switched schools 18 times as he traveled extensively with his father learning about the Red Road. He eventually landed on the reservation where he participated and held an officers position in ceremony at the age of 18. Dan teaches from the indigenous perspective, focusing on decolonization, healthy thinking, and “returning to being a human being.”
David Holmgren
David Holmgren is best known as the co-originator with Bill Mollison of the permaculture concept following the publication of Permaculture One in 1978. Since then he has developed three properties, consulted and supervised in urban and rural projects and presented lectures, workshops and courses at a wide variety of events and venues in Australia and around the world. His writings over those three decades span a diversity of subjects and issues but always illuminating another aspect of permaculture thinking.
At home (Melliodora in Hepburn, Central Victoria), David is the vegetable gardener, silviculturalist and builder. Within the international and growing permaculture movement, David is respected for his commitment to presenting permaculture ideas through practical projects and teaching by personal example, that a sustainable lifestyle is a realistic, attractive and powerful alternative to dependent consumerism.
As well as constant involvement in the practical side of permaculture, David is passionate about the philosophical and conceptual foundations for sustainability, the focus of his seminal book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. This book has been significant influences on the development of Transition Initiatives around the world. More recently his Future Scenarios work has seen him recognized as a significant thinker about the “Energy Descent future.” After a decade of significant international travel, David is no longer flying but continues to do some international presentations by skype and pre-recorded video including receipt of the recent award by Italian environmental organization. *David will join our 2021 teaching staff via Zoom.
Monica Ibacache
A native of Chile, Monica is a New York City–based community organizer, sustainability educator, and ecological designer since 2007. An avid gardener as a small child with her grandparents in Chile, she rekindled her passion for growing food as an adult while living in southeast Alaska.
Monica is committed to improving food systems while advancing social and environmental justice globally. She has dedicated her life to working with diverse and marginalized communities in education and local development in the U.S. and abroad. Monica has advanced certifications in Permaculture Design and Teaching and serves on the Board of Directors for the Institute of Permaculture for Children (IPEC), Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA), the International Permaculture Convergence Committee (IPCC), the Indoor Gardening Society (IGSA), and the Permaculture Association of the Northeast (PAN).
Tao Orion
Tao Orion is a permaculture designer, teacher, homesteader, and mother living in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. She teaches permaculture design at Oregon State University and at Aprovecho, a 40-acre nonprofit sustainable-living educational organization. Tao consults on holistic farm, forest, and restoration planning through Resilience Permaculture Design, LLC. She holds a degree in agroecology and sustainable agriculture from UC Santa Cruz, and her interest in restoration was piqued when studying botany, wildcrafting, and herbalism at the Columbines School of Botanical Studies in Eugene, Oregon. She has a keen interest in integrating the disciplines of organic agriculture, sustainable land-use planning, ethnobotany, and ecosystem restoration in order to create beneficial social, economic, and ecological outcomes. When she is not writing, she is busy keeping up with her toddler and wrangling a diverse array of plants and animals on her 6.5-acre homestead, Viriditas Farm.
Abel Kloster
A fourth generation Oregonian, Abel is well acquainted with the forests and fields of the Pacific Northwest where he has been a farmer and restoration forester for many years.
He is the co-owner of Resilience Permaculture Design, a whole systems design and installation firm specializing in farm and forestry planning and ecological restoration. Abel is a consulting forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry and a Technical Service Provider with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and writes comprehensive stewardship plans for landowners seeking to develop and regenerate their properties. Together with his wife Tao Orion, he established the Permaculture program at Aprovecho and oversees the stewardship of Aprovecho’s 40 acre educational land trust. Abel has a degree in Land Stewardship for Sustainable Communities from Humboldt State University and is currently completing his Master’s degree in Agroforestry from the University of Missouri. Abel is also the Zone 4 Director for the Upper Willamette Soil and Water Conservation District.
Kara Huntermoon
Kara Huntermoon is the Southern Willamette Valley’s local expert on wetlands Permaculture. One of seven co-owners of Heart-Culture Farm Community in the Long Tom Watershed, she manages the 33-acre integrated Permaculture community farm, breeds livestock and vegetable varieties, experiments with grafting on noncommercial rootstock, and teaches WWOOFers and apprentices. Climate adaptation and mitigation are a major focus of her farm work. Since 2009, Kara has taught butchering classes at primitive skills gatherings, with a focus on hands-on skills, emotional vulnerability, and ecological resistance. Kara also founded Liberation Listening, an interpersonal healing method that focuses on building resilient relationships to resist oppression and move towards the future we want.
Andrew Millison
Andrew Millison has been studying, teaching and practicing Permaculture since he took his first design course in 1996. He started teaching Permaculture at the college level in 2001, and has been an instructor at OSU in the Horticulture Department since 2009.
Andrew first learned Permaculture in the drylands, where he studied at Prescott College for his undergraduate and Master’s degrees. In Arizona, his focus was on rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, and desert agriculture. He started a Permaculture landscape design and build company, and also worked in an ecologically-based Landscape Architecture firm. In recent years, Andrew’s focus has been more on design for climate change resilience, broad scale water management for farm and development planning, Permaculture housing developments, and Oregon water law for obtaining water rights.
Andrew has developed a successful online Permaculture program through OSU and in recent years moved into media production, traveling internationally to film and produce educational content focused on permaculture-based food and water systems. His most well known work is his YouTube video series “India’s Water Revolution”.
Alpha Lo
Alpha started the Climate Water Project which is a research and educational project about how we can restore the water cycle on our lands and in the climate. He is a physicist with a background in complex systems which he brings to the ecosystem restoration world. He co-founded the Regenerative Water Alliance which brought together people working in various aspects of the water to network, learn from each other, activate projects and to educate the public. He has worked on a variety of regenerative land projects.
Matt bibeau
Matt, MSEd, has been teaching permaculture for 15 years and is a Diploma candidate with the Permaculture Institute of North America. He runs PDX Permaculture LLC, a landscape contracting & consultation business, and enjoys hosting classes and workshops at Jean’s Farm, an education & demonstration farm where he lives and works with his partner, Kelly Brown. Matt is passionate about helping bring people’s edible landscape visions to life and has a contagious enthusiasm for making the world a better place.