(Scroll down for a video recording of this conversation.)
Gillian first appeared at our annual Soil Sponge Gathering at Lake Morey Resort in Vermont in 2019. Among a crowd of already quite interesting and knowledgeable people, Gillian’s voice stood out for her ability to think in systems, and describe what she was seeing in ways that led to everyone around her getting more and more engaged.
“Who is that person?” we all wanted to know.
Gillian had travelled from Erie Pennsylvania, where she was working with software teams for an insurance company, and changing the way the company worked from the inside out. But Gillian embodies complexity in the way she works: always involved in multiple projects from inventing board games to giving TED talks on regenerative agriculture.
We quickly became friends and collaborators. She’s one of the people I call when I need a thinking partner while designing curriculum, for example.
This podcast episode happened because we were in the midst of a conversation we while I was driving, and it was so interesting I said “hang on, I’m going home: let’s record this so others can listen.” In our conversation, we explore various frameworks, and real life examples, that might help us find our way through the thickets that keep cropping up as “the mechanical beast” of industrial capitalism races toward what seems to be a very belated death scene.
A bit of background: While working within the belly of the mechanical beast, Gillian has contributed to regenerative agriculture research and educational initiatives through our Land and Leadership Initiative, Kiss the Ground, and the One Planet Education Network (a sustainable agriculture program for primary and secondary schools in several countries in Africa, Australia, Haiti, and the US.)
Gillian has over a decade of experience from the world of business and software integrating Lean, Agile and design-based approaches to enable experimentation, evolution, and widespread creative collaboration. Through this work, she has witnessed the profound transformations that become possible in human creative endeavors when work is managed in alignment with the principles of living systems.
Her desire to unleash the creative potential of humans evolved into a new passion when she discovered the subjects of ecosystem regeneration and regenerative agriculture. She began a relentless pursuit to learn everything she could about this emerging field and the potential it has to create transformative change and wide-reaching benefits for society. She studied at Schumacher College in Totnes, UK focusing on narrative-based approaches for generating systemic change around climate and other complex issues. As her focus intensified around soil as a critical intervention point, she pursued formal training in the Soil Food Web and explored the work of leading-edge thinkers and regenerative practitioners.
In her local region of Western PA / NY she has been active in efforts to promote regenerative local food production, and consults with growers to help them incorporate organic no-till and other regenerative practices into their operations.
Gillian Julius: Ending our Dependence on the Mechanical Beast.