Ei Welcomes New Advisors

 Within the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic, Elemental Impact (Ei) continued living the tagline, Regeneration in ACTION. A new working group was announced in the spring and a new platform launched in the early fall.

On April 6, 2020 Ei Founder Holly Elmore hosted the inaugural Regenerative Working Group (RWG) call to announce the initiative formation. With approximately thirty prominent land-economics professionals on the call, it was a milestone day!

The Regeneration in ACTION (RiA) Magazine article, Global Thought Leaders Embrace Regenerative Land Economics, launches the initiative and announces the prominent RWG Executive Team.

In mid-September, the RiA Magazine article, Nature Prevails, a new Ei platform, launches the Nature Prevails platform to complement the Soil Health and Water Use | Toxicity platforms. Within the Nature Prevails premise, the Earth heals herself and nurtures renewed life forms, no matter the calamity caused by humans, natural disasters, or extraterrestrial activities.

Activities within Ei’s Nature Prevails platform are in partnership with the RWG.

New Advisors
Since inception, Ei enjoyed a stellar Advisory Council of  distinguished industry professionals. When the Era of Recycling Refinement (inception through June 2017) was Mission Accomplished, Ei entered into the Era of Regeneration with a focus on Soil Health | Regenerative Agriculture and Water Use | Toxicity. The Nature Prevails platform opens a gateway for new dimensions of regenerative work.

Ei welcomes the below new prominent Advisors with expertise in RWG | Nature Prevails focus areas.

Bernadette Austin

As Acting Director of the Center for Regional Change at the University of California at Davis, Bernadette brings extensive experience in community development praxis and public-private partnerships. She works to build bridges across disciplines and support research that is community-engaged, policy-oriented, and equity-focused.

Brad Bass, PhD

Brad is a 30-year veteran at Environment and Climate Change Canada as well as a Status Professor at the University of Toronto. Brad led the development of COBWEB (Complexity and Organized Behaviour Within Environmental Bounds) in 1999. COBWEB, is now used by students to simulate the performance of vertical flow constructed wetlands, urban segregation, and retail locations.

Brad served on a team that was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Climate Change.

In 2012, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities awarded Brad the Lifetime Achievement Award for Green Infrastructure Research. Brad's most recent work on the cost of algal blooms was published in July 2019.

Mario Cambardella

A Landscape architect, environmental planner, former Urban Agriculture Director for the city of Atlanta, Mario Cambardella’s current project is ServeScape.net, a digital platform to enable beautiful and resilient landscapes. Launched on the first day of Spring, March 19th, 2020, ServeScape is a digital marketplace connecting independent growers with landscape professionals through a cost-efficient, customer-oriented supply chain. ServeScape partners with responsible horticulture farmers across Georgia to supply Atlanta residents with access to food-producing, pollinating, and native plants.

As urban agriculture director Mario led the “AgLanta,” initiative. AgLanta is a comprehensive and systematic approach toward strengthening the local food system. Developed programs include the country’s largest municipal food forest, “Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill” and the “AgLanta Grows-A-Lot” program that converts vacant properties in USDA-defined food desert areas into food-producing spaces, and the hyperlocal food promotion program, “AgLanta Grown.”

Mario was awarded Georgia Trend’s 40 under 40 in October of ‘19 and serves on the board of the MicroLife Institute and Keep Chamblee Beautiful and member of the Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association, and American Society of Landscape Architects.

Simon Lamb

Simon M. Lamb is a writer, businessman, farmer, countryman, and passionate conservationist who was born in London and educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, England, studying maths, languages and economics. He has since studied evolution, human development and market economics extensively in the context of their combined impact on the natural world and human society.

His new book Junglenomics represents the culmination of the insights gained during that time into the underlying causes of the world environment crisis, and presents a unified plan to address it based on the workings of ecosystems. Simon presents economies as “virtual ecosystems” in which the speed of evolution has outstripped their ability to develop symbiotic relationships that complete the cycle of resources found in Nature, and sees the economic disruption of environmentally damaging markets in favour of benign ones as the only way forward for the long term survival of civilisation.

Simon lives in Dorset, England, and is married with four sons, three grandchildren and two labradors.

Ronald Thomas, FAICP

For two decades Ron directed his planning firm located in Washington DC; and then became an associated principal with the landscape architecture and planning firm, Jones and Jones in Seattle. From 2000 to 2010 Ron served as the executive director of the Chicago regional planning agency, Northeast Illinois Planning Commission and then semi-retired to Athens, GA to serve on the University of Georgia faculty at the College of Environment and was chair of the Oconee Rivers Planning Commission from 2011- 2016.

Ron continues as a practicing consultant urban planner with the Community Design Exchange and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners receiving over 40 awards for distinguished work in the broad field of planning. He has edited the APA Regional Planning Journal and has published frequently. He is working on a book on Arts & Crafts era planning, a subject of personal interest for over 40 years.

In addition the following Ei Advisors serve as RWG Industry Experts:

• Stephanie Barger - U.S. Green Building Council Global Director, Market Transformation
• Britt Faucette, Phd - Filtrexx International Director of Research, Technical, & Environmental Services
• Kathy Kellogg Johnson, Chairman of the Board, Kellogg Garden Products
• Tim Trefzer - Georgia World Congress Center Authority Director of Sustainability
• Wayne King, U.S. Composting Council Past President, ERTH Products CEO

With Nature Prevails and the Regenerative Working Group launched and additional industry experts welcomed to the Ei Advisory Council, Ei is staged to soar with an expanded voice and impact.