Sara grew up in Telluride with a deep rooted love for the natural world from her botanist mother who always had a love for science. After graduating from the Telluride Mountain School in 2013 she left Colorado to go to Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA where she graduated with a BA in Geology. During college Sara became devoted to rafting and spent most of her falls rafting the Salmon River in Idaho. After being a ski instructor for a winter in Steamboat Springs, Sara moved back to Telluride full time where she is now working for the Telluride Science Research Center.

Art retired in 2017 after serving for 20 years on the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners, the first and only Green Party county commissioner in Colorado. A co-founder of the local enviro group, the Sheep Mountain Alliance, he has won numerous environmental awards and been a member of dozens of boards and commissions on the local, regional, state and even national levels. Twice director of the local arts council in Telluride, he has also worked as a pre-school teacher/director in California, as well as a journalist, editor, and now weekly op-ed columnist for the on-line MontroseMirror.com and monthly for Cortez’s print newspaper, the Four Corners Free Press.

Former Institute president and long-time trustee, Art directed the Telluride Mushroom Festival for its first 25 years and helped spearhead the founding of three Institute initiatives: the Talking Gourds poetry program, the Ute Reconciliation program; and the Prospect Basin Fens Project.

Former poetry editor for Twin Peaks, Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth, and the Mountain Gazette, he currently serves as poetry editor for Fungi magazine and the on-line anthology Sage Green Journal. He was appointed as the first Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011-12). His latest poetry books are Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Fruita, 2019), Looking South to Lone Cone (Western Eye Press, Sedona, 2013) and As If the World Really Mattered (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2007). He performs his poetry widely in the region.

Evan recently moved to Telluride to pursue his interests in biology and environmental science, particularly high-elevation forest and wetland microbiology; plant morphogenesis; and mycology and mycoremediation. He is also starting R&D on small-scale (home and community level) renewable energy systems and environmental monitoring using wireless sensor networks. Evan is also interested in STEM education through experiential learning and is a volunteer at the Pinhead Institute. Evan holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of New Mexico, and MS and PhD degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona. He was at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 13 years where he conducted research in computational physics, computer science, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, complex systems, and artificial neural networks. In 1990 he joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) where he led R&D in computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and digital signal processing. In 1998 he became a Vice President and served as the Manager of SAIC’s Imagery Technology and Systems Division from 1998 to 2006. This was followed by a year serving as Chief Scientist of SAIC’s Reconnaissance and Surveillance Operation. In 2007 he joined Rincon Research Corporation and served as Chief Scientist and Program Manager until transitioning to Consulting Employee in 2019 and relocating to Telluride. Evan’s interests at the Telluride Institute center around the TIES Program, the Prospect Basin Fens Project, mycoremediation studies, and helping to establish new science programs to support the mission of the Telluride Institute.

Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk was born and raised in southwestern Colorado and is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Towaoc, Colorado. At an early age she advocated for the well-being of the land, air, water and animals. She attended schools in Cortez and has received degrees from Chief Dull Knife College, Lame Deer, Montana, and American InterContinental University, Hoffman Estates, Illinois. She spent ten years in the Information Technology field working for Chief Dull Knife College, the Southern Ute Indian and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribes of Colorado.

Regina has traveled extensively throughout the country presenting and sharing Ute culture through song, dance and numerous speeches. In October of 2013 she was elected to serve in leadership as a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council. She is a former member of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs and the Bears Ears Inter-tribal Coalition, among many other committees and boards.

Regina strongly believes that the inner core of healing comes from the knowledge of our land and elders. Currently she is serving as the Education Director for the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose, Colorado. She is honored to continue to protect, preserve and serve through education, creating a better understanding of our land and culture — a great foundation for a better tomorrow.

Pam is a writer and environmental educator who has a long history of projects created at the intersection of speculative fiction, environmental education, and politics. Zoline is admired for her experimental approach to both the form of the short story and the genre of science fiction, especially for using the language of science to interrogate the scientific world view. Her 1967 novel, Heat Death of the Universe, is structured in a loosely encyclopedic style, with 54 numbered paragraphs narrated in a deliberately matter-of-fact third-person voice. As the narrative veers back and forth among scientific explanations, descriptions of household events, and philosophical speculation, the cumulative effect is of a mind and a culture on the verge of collapse. Zoline has also written a children’s book (Annika and the Wolves), libretti for two operas (Harry Houdini and the False and True Occult, The Forbidden Experiment), and original science fiction radio plays for the Telluride Science Fiction Project.

Born 1944, in the UK, John Lifton has worked professionally as both an artist and a scientist, and in both the public and private sectors. Masters degree in Architecture, University College London, 1966. At the age of 24 he became the youngest licensed architect in Britain. Lifton’s computer interactive environments were exhibited throughout the UK and Europe. His work Green Music, in which music is generated algorithmically in real-time from the natural electricity in plants, was shown at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975, Muzicki Biennale Zagreb in 1977, and, installed in the conservatory in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, appeared in the 1976 movie The Secret Life of Plants. From 1974 to 1977 he taught graduate students at the Royal College of Art in London, in both the departments of Environmental Media and Design Research, and carried out a research project on computer simulation of cognition in the early stages of architectural design for the Science Research Council of the UK.In 1977 Lifton moved to Telluride, Colorado as Director of Planning for the Telluride Ski Area. As such he headed the design team for the Telluride Mountain Village, a resort development of 8,000 population. Since 1982 he has been working in private design practice and land development. In 2006 he and his wife Pamela Zoline founded Lifton Zoline International LLC, and commenced a resort development project in the town of Slavonice in the Czech Republic.

Jos completed her Bacceloreate degree at Smith in 2000 and her Masters of Music and Music Education at Columbia University in 2010. She currently lives with her husband, Ken Olsen and their two kids, Forrest and Ingram, in Norwood, Colorado. She was recently appointed to the San Miguel County Planning Commission.

Laurie Lundquist is an environmental artist with deep interests in both the natural and engineered systems at work in the landscape. Laurie’s connection to Telluride stems back to 1992 when she and Dan Collins initiated the first Deep Creek School summer session. The school ran for eight consecutive summers, bringing art students and faculty from universities far and wide to the mountains to live on site in tents. While in residence at Deep Creek Students and faculty engaged in an intense dialogue and art making process around the topics of: ecology, technology and the body. The Telluride Institute played a great support role for the Deep Creek School, in Laurie’s words “that synergy continues with the mindful ecological programming that TI has sustained for 30 years.” Laurie studied Landscape Management at Penn State University, attended the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine, received a BFA from the Maine College of Art and an MFA in Sculpture from ASU. She has been working as a public artist for over 20 years. She has collaborated with nationally acclaimed architects, engineers and planners to integrate art into the overall design of civic projects. Her public projects call attention to the site in ways that are aesthetically engaging and environmentally responsible. For further information, visit: www.laurielundquist.com

For the past 26 years, Vicki has taught middle and high school science and math, all subjects in intermediate school, and KG-8th grade visual arts. She has facilitated many outdoor environmental education and watershed studies in her district. As a botanist and landscape supervisor at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Vicki taught classes in ethnobotany, desert ecology and xeriscape gardening. She has trained at CU-Boulder’s ICEE (Inspiring Climate Education Excellence), funded by NASA, ran a middle school River Watch water quality monitoring program, and was an Adopt-a-Watershed program teacher. She has facilitated two “bioblitz” surveys of flora and fauna on a riparian restoration project on the Dolores River with local schools, university students, their professors, government agencies, and nonprofit groups. Vicki has served on the boards of the Telluride Institute and San Miguel Watershed Coalition. She has a BA degree in Biology with a minor in art from The Evergreen State College, a secondary science teaching certification from the U of AZ, and elementary certification and a masters degree in Education from Adams State College.

I was born in Mödling, a small town south of Vienna, and moved from there into the world at the age of 18. After various studies in London, I travelled to Tibet, to the Indian sub-continent, to Australia and Japan before finding my second home in the Navajo Reservation in the 4 Corners. Today I commute between Slavonice in the Czech Republic (where I am involved with Centre for the Future & Institut Slavonice) and the rest of the world, depending on my work. I live from writing, directing & producing documentaries, Journalism, and media work in the broadest sense.

Peter Waldor is the author of five collections of poetry: Who Touches Everything – which received the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry – The Unattended Harp, Door to a Noisy Room, The Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing, and State of the Union. He was the Poet Laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Mothering Magazine. Waldor has worked as an executive in the insurance business for thirty years – for a small family insurance agency with his father and brother, at his own agency, and for three years working for a large public company, when he was exposed to the intersection between the political and business worlds.

Kris Holstrom is currently San Miguel County Commissioner from District 3. She is the owner of Tomten Farm, a high-altitude demonstration and education farm at 9000’ above Sawpit, Colorado. Kris grew up in Ft. Collins, Colorado and has lived in San Miguel County since 1987. From 2007 through 2013, she was the Regional Sustainability Coordinator and Executive Director of EcoAction Partners, a non-profit focused on sustainability issues in the San Miguel Watershed. Prior to that she worked for the Telluride
Institute as its Sustainability Director. Kris has a B.S. in Forest Management from Utah State University and an M.S. in Horticulture from Virginia Tech. She has a diverse background having held many different positions in the region from cleaning houses to operating a small saw mill. She co-founded and is Board President for SWIRL – the Southwest Institute for Resilience – a non-profit that supports community gardens, greenhouses and the Telluride Farmers Market. Kris has spent over three decades educating the public and youth about sustainability issues including renewable energy, food security, waste reduction and “out of the box” systems thinking to contribute to regional solutions to current challenges.