The Deep Adaptation Forum has been co-created by volunteers and a small team of passionate freelancers.
Core Team (CT) members are self-employed contractors operating under MoU’s which are generally of six-month duration after an initial four-month trial period.
All CT members make these common commitments:
The CT consists of the following 4 people:
Core Team Coordinator
Kat was educated in Environmental Science and dedicated the first part of her career to environmental restoration and sustainability initiatives. Recognising the limitations of science in the current system, she transitioned to facilitation of shared decision-making around the natural environment, motivated by the building of social capital realised through these processes. Away from DAF, Kat runs a small community interest company that delivers projects in ecological restoration and the reconnection of communities with their natural environment. After joining DAF early in 2019, she quickly became an active volunteer and is involved in many DAF circles and groups. In Kat’s own words, she ‘came home’ when she found the Deep Adaption Forum. Having experienced the gift of this international community, Kat is deeply committed to supporting its development and evolution to ensure it remains available and relevant for others seeking a soft place to land as they wake up to our predicament.
Principal responsibilities:
The principal aims of these activities are to ensure the smooth operation of the Deep Adaptation Forum through effective coordination and support for all Core Team, and volunteer activities. The Coordinator is also responsible for budget forecasting and cash flow management with support from other Core Team Members and the Holding Group.
Senior Facilitator
An independent trainer, facilitator and ‘host’ of collaborative learning processes, Katie has over 15-years of experience in formal and informal/community education. Katie is a skillful facilitator of ‘un-learning’, that is, creating spaces in which it is possible to connect with ways of knowing that are broader and richer than the cognitive/evaluative paradigm. If Deep Adaptation requires responses that are effective in reducing harm, then it is essential to build awareness and bring into consciousness all of the ways that stories of separation, scarcity and addiction to progress can be manifest in our ways of relating with self and others, and create new ways of being that are characterised by love, respect, inclusivity and connection. Before joining the DAF team, Katie was the Director of a UK sustainability education charity for six years, and project manager of several European sustainability projects in the fields of formal and community education. She also has expertise in participatory and alternative evaluation approaches (measuring what’s valuable, rather than valuing what’s measurable). She has an MA in Sustainable Leadership Development, and is trained in a variety of dialogic learning methods (including circling, authentic relating, ‘philosophy for children’, and non-violent communication). In addition to Katie’s facilitation roles in DAF, she is also secretary to the Holding Group and promotes the development of communities of practice in line with DAF principles and values.
Principal responsibilities:
The overarching aim of these tasks is to promote and develop the practice of facilitation as it relates to Deep Adaptation; supporting people in enabling and embodying loving responses to our predicament.
DA Facilitators
Holding Group
Professions’ Network Curator
Dorian curates the DAF Professions’ Network on a day-to-day basis; liaises with Interest Group and Task Group leaders, including managing the process of launching either; carries out quickly-applicable research on how to design better collaborative work processes; and oversees capacity-building activities for Task Groups. Through his work and PhD research, Dorian intends to help develop the Deep Adaptation Forum into the foundation of an international mass movement, focusing on peaceful responses to the climate and ecological crises we face – and the collapses that are likely to unfold. Simultaneously, he wants to develop his skills in the field of self-organised group facilitation and contribute to scholarship on the role of mutual and social learning within such processes.
Principal Responsibilities:
The overall aim of these tasks is to support the smooth operation of all functions of the Deep Adaptation Professions’ Network and the supporting infrastructure including other DAF channels of digital communication.
Professions’ Network Curation & Coordination
DAF Project Coordination
Fundraising Coordinator
Tom is a husband and father; a resident of Brooklyn, NYC; equally as happy on his bicycle, especially on temperate days, as at home in bed with a book. He has lived in a few different U.S. states and has had two stints abroad. He once turned down a position in Mali and ended up in Oklahoma instead, but the relationship that caused this rerouting was worth it and continues to this day. He has helped raise funding for half a dozen non-profit organisations, the longest of which was the International Rescue Committee, and issues of migration and borders, politics and human decency, interest and worry him. The start of the school climate strike movement inspired a sense that a far larger contingent of people of all ages cared about how the planet was being treated. Interacting with communities of like-minded activists, especially those pondering internal, interpersonal, and practical adaptations to our predicament, has been a deeply gratifying outcome.
Principal Responsibilities:
Tom’s overarching aim is to seek diverse and ongoing funding streams to support DAF administration and activities through working with a team of volunteers with skills and expertise in the area of fundraising. Mechanisms for securing income may include (but not be limited to):
The following areas of responsibility can and will change during the course of the work, with major changes needing to be agreed with the CTC first:
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