Team - Integrative Permaculture

Our Team

Dynamic wisdom, a concern for the earth, and practical experience

Rev Michael Pergola MA, MBA, JD is a business executive, lawyer, coach, consultant, educator, organizational leader, and an ordained interfaith minister, with a wealth of in house corporate, technology, non-profit, and educational experience. Michael founded One Spirit Learning Alliance after 9/11, and was a founder of the Wave Work Institute.
After meeting John McMillin and spending 6 weeks in an Ecological Literacy Immersion Program at the Omega Institute and as his concern for the earth and the future of civilization grew he founded the Institute for Regenerative Learning and more recently Integrative Permaculture LLC. He served six years as Chief Knowledge Officer for Risk at one of the largest banks in the country, practiced law at a major firm in Washington D.C., launched a real estate development firm to renovate high quality middle income properties, designed and served as general contractor in the renovation of classic homes, and has founded both business and nonprofit organizations.
Michael has taught high school, founded two software companies, served as a community organizer, ran a petroleum products distributor, and was a member of the Society for Organizational Learning, and the National Commission to End Domestic Violence. He is well versed in integral theory, and has taught a wide variety of courses including: Vision & Culture, Communications, Leadership, Organizational Learning, Creativity and Innovation, Integral Development, the Enneagram, Spiral Dynamics and Ancient Wisdom for Modern Life.
Michael’s work includes coaching leaders in a merger, facilitating an executive team in a new enterprise, curriculum development, strategic alliances, team building, merger integration, technology implementation, communications, and marketing. He has also facilitated strategic and scenario planning, and team building sessions, as both a leader and a
consultant. He is trained in systems thinking, scenario planning, creativity & innovation, facilitation, conflict resolution business process analysis, technology assessment, emotional intelligence, counseling, meditation and biofeedback. With a strong work ethic, a commitment to excellence, a flexible approach and a focus on long term value, Michael helps evoke untapped potential for creativity, innovation, and success.

Robin Andrews has worked for close 30 years as a budget and planning consultant in the magazine publication industry serving many high-profile accounts, including the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, National Geographic, and Yankee Magazine. In 2010 she entered politics and beat tough odds by being elected the first Democratic Supervisor in thirty-five years in the rural, heavily Republican town of Claverack in Columbia County, New York. Robin has a rare ability to focus on the details without losing track of the larger purpose that motivates the various projects she oversees. Her interest in the social and economic aspects of contemporary society, and her calm manner even under demanding conditions makes her a delight to work with and an invaluable member of the team.

Andrew Faust is one of the premier Permaculture teachers and designers in North America with nearly two decades of experience in the field. http://www.permaculturenewyork.com/
A permaculture consultant, an educator, and a business owner, Andrew holds a permaculture design certification from The Farm in Summertown, TN and has studied at the School for Designing a Society at the Gesundheit! Institute with Patch Adams. He has taught permaculture design to thousands of students at The Center for Bioregional Living, the Brooklyn Permaculture Center, The Open Center, and the Yester-morrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont.
Andrew owns and operates “Edible Garden Design,” and “The Center for Bioregional Living,” which provide permaculture consultation and natural landscaping services as well as suppling vegetables to local restaurants and farmer’s markets. Andrew’s accomplishments include designing ecologically intelligent landscapes; wastewater treatment systems; sustainable forest management programs; stream corridor and wetlands restoration; natural building siting; rotational grazing areas for dairy and meat production; sustainable orchard layout; path mowing regimes; managing exotics; vegetable garden designs; composting; management of native perennial wildflowers and grasses, and setting up a water quality monitoring system along the main stem of the Greenbrier River.
Andrew lived off the grid in West Virginia for 8 years where he designed and built a Permaculture inspired homestead including a 1600 sq. ft. straw bale house. He moved to Brooklyn in 2007 and has been applying his knowledge to the urban landscape culminating in a Permaculture Design Certification course many consider life changing. He is developing The Center for Bioregional Living in Ellenville, NY with his partner Adriana Magana as a pilot campus for his students, clients and baby daughter Juniper.
Andrew has been practicing permaculture and biodynamics since receiving his Permaculture Design certificate in 1996. Some of his design clients include Ezekiel's Place Retreat Center in Hedgesville, WV, Leaveners Respite Center in Essex, NY, Yester-morrow Design/Build School in Warren, VT, and local businesses and residents in the Hudson Valley and throughout the east coast. Other clients include the Gesundheit! Institute in Hillsboro, WV and Camphill Village in Chester County, PA. Andrew has extensive experience in designing across a wide range of climates and habitats including desert, forest and mountain. He is a certified Alternative School Teacher, focusing on Bioregional Education; he instructed at Upattinas Open Community High School for ten years, was on the Board of the Regional Infrastructure for Sustaining Agriculture in Southeastern PA, the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools and holds a B.A. in comparative religions from Guilford College.

Frank LaSala has a proven ability to create strong and enduring relationships with both business and personal customers. As a company owner and Sales and Marketing Executive he built the leading energy efficiency company in central New York over 35 years, before selling to a national firm. He served four years in the transition as a division manager before seeking a new venture to use his considerable energy and expertise.
By creating enduring relationships with customers from multiple market segments who returned with additional business, based on both the quality of service and the engaging manner that offered a sense of trust, Frank established the finest reputation in the industry. With knowledge of sales, marketing, customer relationship, staff management, heating, general construction and energy efficiency he has a variety of skills well suited to the running and maintenance of a physical plant and public facing business. Paired with his welcoming manner that draws long term friends from all walks of life and his expertise in the kitchen, Frank’s capacity for creating enduring customer relationships is unquestionable. When you add to this wealth of experience his grasp of the details and his organized and through approach to management responsibility, it becomes clear that Frank is well suited to positions that call for organization, follow through and ongoing relationships with customers, staff and business associates

David Harper has 25 years of experience in land conservation and farmland preservation in rural and urbanizing regions, David has raised more than $6 million in grants for conservation planning, easement acquisition, sustainable agriculture, local food system development, and ecological restoration projects in the Mid-‐Atlantic and Southeastern US. He has worked with landowners and land trusts to preserve more than 3,500 acres of farmland, natural areas and historic sites.
His practical and graduate training in ecological planning allow him to work at a variety of scales, from regional to site-‐specific. He designed and taught a course on land conservation management and is a frequent public speaker on conservation topics. He served for 8 years as a municipal planning commission member in a fast-‐growing agricultural community near Philadelphia, with 3 years as chairperson. In 2004 David founded Land In Common as a consulting practice to assist landowners and community organizations in securing affordable land for sustainable regional production of food, fuel and fiber. His clients have included local food and farming organizations in states across the eastern US.
From 2010 – 2012, David co-‐directed the USDA-‐funded Community Food-Works program to train beginning farmers in ecological farming practices in south Florida. He serves on the board of an obesity prevention organization and is chair of the board of Unique Places to Save, a progressive land trust dedicated to long term sustainable land development http://www.permaculturenewyork.com/.
David and his wife write a blog about producers, processors, and purveyors of foods reflecting the culture and climate of the American South http://www.southernterroir.com/about-st/ . David is the Executive Director of the Pee Dee Land Trust in eastern South Carolina. He served as Principle Author for Community Land Trusts: Affordable Access to Land and Housing, published by the United Nations HABITAT Program in 2012.
He has a Master’s Degree in Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania with an emphasis on Ecological Planning. His advisor was the renowned Professor Ian McHarg and he was awarded the Narendra Juneja Award for Ecological Conscience. His BA is from the University of California at Berkeley. He has authored numerous articles including: “Partnering with Next Generation Farmers” Saving land – Land Trust Alliance magazine, Summer 2015 and “Reclaiming the Land Commons” Permaculture Activist, Autumn 2009 # 7

Ben Brownell is a design practitioner and systems thinker applying the latest p2p information technology to the challenges and opportunities of large scale economic and social transition. With a background in physics, media, ecology, philosophy, and an abiding passion for alternative models of intentional community, Ben is presently working to support VillageLab (www.villiagelab.net) in its mission to bring collective intelligence and collaborative wisdom to the movement for regenerative communities worldwide.
Recently Ben has helped to launch an open source software platform for mind mapping (Metamaps http://metamaps.cc/); a residential social enterprise incubator program anchored in the "gift economy" (http://emergingleaderlabs.org/Home); a community arts, technology, and ecology center in upstate New York (http://solaqua.org/); and an initiative in partnership with the New Economics Foundation and Transition Towns (Real Economy Lab http://realeconomylab.org/ ) to map emerging trends, models, and projects implementing a just, equitable, and environmentally sound new economic paradigm.
Ben has been steeped in Permaculture design thinking, and practice for over 15 years as a professional, teacher, and researcher, and is deeply committed to creating the conditions for thriving co-existence of people, planet, and prosperity at all scales. He has worked in natural building and landscape architecture in settings across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In the last five years, Ben has lived on land and been involved with both the design and the hands on aspects of permaculture gardening.