My background of life and work experience in environmental study, community action, and business development began as a child working on my first political campaign and local charity fundraiser and now spans two decades and four continents. With a B.A. in Community Psychology and a minor in Environmental Studies, I decided to throw caution to the wind and travel the world.

During five years of independent, international travel and development work experience, I lived in Laos and launched one of South East Asia's first community performance spaces, created and taught the region's first college course in Sustainable Development through partnership with environmental NGOs, served as a trainee in the Peace Corps in Senegal as an Environmental Educator, and worked in Berlin as the Development Director for the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy.

Upon return to the U.S., I worked extensively in several related social enterprise, travel and green companies and startups to build the foundation in business development needed to launch any venture. After designing and delivering various business and marketing strategies for startups and sustainable ventures, I traveled towards my true passion and founded Travelcology in fall of 2007, a venture to retool tourism into a vehicle for positive social change.

When the world economy plummeted, this global vision was put on hold, to consult other startups, and then to co-found Open Venture Society, an open source web firm geared to provide web services to socially responsible ventures. In winter of '09, I handed over Travelcology to my co-founder and set my sails in a new direction. I began teaching, lecturing and speaking on how to launch social ventures and what radical green ecological change could look like.

This brings us to my current work, Third Rail Ventures, a new venture to seed and support startups for social and ecological change. The first project, Green Breakfast Club, launched on June 13th, a monthly networking event series to grow local green business communities through resource exchange. Our second project, E-Wasted, is a documentary film and social action campaign that is currently under development. Both projects are looking for angel funding, team members, and allies of all stripes.