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Do you wish you could “break the rules” of modern business so that your business thrives while playing a role in evolving the food system to be truly nourishing?
We’re investing in the regenerative capacity of business for the sake of nourishing all life, and we invite you to join us.
reNourish Studio is a space where food business leaders can develop their capacities and capabilities to think differently, work differently, reimagine potentials, and step into new roles in support of whole systems. By evolving our leadership roles and developing ourselves and the systems we work within, we aim to set a new pattern and standard for how businesses function.
reNourish supports this development through a three-year cohort arc of weekly sessions, three in-person immersions per year, and individual support to enable success.
3 Year Studio Arc
Year 1
Cultivate a fluency in living systems thinking within each business leader
Business leaders work with their extended teams on applying this form of thinking to their business strategy
Leaders and their teams broaden their scope to involve stakeholders in their evolving business strategy to influence industry-level shifts by engaging in their newly developed roles within systems
Hear From Our Cohort Members
FAQ
Why reNourish Studio?
Our food system is delivering essential value, but at an undeniable cost.
Food is at the center of multiple global crises: ecosystem destruction and biodiversity loss,
climate collapse, malnourishment, pervasive disconnection and depression, and an associated loss of spiritual relationship with the earth and one another.
Our food system is currently contributing to these crises while simultaneously delivering useful value to humans: We are able to rely on a high degree of conveniently available calories, short-term dependability of supply, a range of affordability and economic viability, and reliable standards of food safety.
But the system could be delivering a higher-order value that meets these needs while addressing the crises: the value of nourishment at every level. Nourishment of and by soils, communities, and ecosystems. And nourishment of opportunities for businesses to support the wealth of
place-sourced food that can feed bioregional economies while creating celebration, connection, and cultural renewal worldwide.
Despite our best attempts as change agents, we are fragmenting our efforts around system evolution. In the current regenerative agricultural movement, the focus on soil health is insufficient. We will not evolve our food system to be truly nourishing for people, communities, ecosystems and soils if we only focus on soil carbon or any other isolated factor.
In order to nourish the thriving planet we all long for, our businesses need to grow the capacity of the systems we are nested within to be able to work developmentally on regeneration of larger wholes. We do this by learning to hold increasing complexity in our thinking so that we can work at a systems level and bring new potential into being. This requires working alongside a group of
thinking partners as we collectively evolve our roles.
We need to develop our capacity to understand how living systems work and see the potential to grow, process, and distribute more effectively by working with a dynamic living systems worldview. We need to grow our ability to think differently so that we can see potential to bring something new into being—and then to act differently so that the new potentials come into reality.
What is living systems thinking?
Living systems thinking is the kind of thinking we are cultivating through participation in the studio. Differing from mechanically-based systems thinking modalities, living systems thinking is a way of engaging with our work and world as alive and capable of transformation. These practices and technologies help us to understand whole systems in a non-generic way and bring forth their unique potentials for contribution and regeneration– emergent potentials that cannot even be imagined until we develop our thinking. In order to rigorously grow our thinking capabilities, we use living systems frameworks to disrupt and evolve. Through this practice of developing our thinking, we are able to perceive and bring about new potentials that allow our businesses to generate integrated benefits while uplifting the systems within which we are nested.
How do we know this works?
We’re working within a lineage and school of thought that traces back to Socrates. The lineage is identified by a developmental epistemology and living systems worldview and has roots in indigenous ways of thinking. Recent stewards of this lineage include Charlie Krone, Carol Sanford, and The Regenesis Institute. reNourish Studio contributes by offering the first developmental community focused on living systems thinking for the food industry.
Our colleagues’ work has spanned many decades and includes long-term successful engagements with Google, Seventh Generation, DuPont, Intel, P&G, and many more.
How will whole systems actually transform?
Rather than trying to work with every food business on the planet, we work with businesses operating at influential nodes within the food system. Some current studio members deliver their core value to hundreds of other businesses, and others work with dozens of suppliers upstream and tens of thousands of customers downstream. All are consciously becoming industry leaders who aim to transform systems. Thus, the effects of reNourish Studio radiate through nodal points in the system to begin a profound shift bringing about new standards of regenerative thinking and practice.
How do cohorts work?
Many businesses want to develop capacity to become regenerative and self-organizing, and to continuously upgrade product offerings in order to grow true wealth and nourish growth. But how to do that in our modern business context is a challenge. At reNourish, we work in community with food industry leaders to develop living systems thinking capacity through immediate, practical application of new ways of working in our businesses so that we can test and evolve our ideas in real time and develop ourselves, our businesses, and our industries.
Rather than working directly on problems using the common mechanistic version of systems thinking seen so often in modern leadership, we work on identifying and bringing new potential into existence by applying these living systems thinking technologies to our work. In this way, we aim to shift the conditions that gave rise to the problems and realize new orders of potential that are currently blocked from expression. Cohorts offer a structured space to rigorously develop our thinking and practice and bring these new orders of potential to life.
What can I expect at a reNourish Studio Event?
We join together in person for multi-day gatherings that bring alive the feeling of a unique place, while each individual and business group works in rigorous sessions that develop their thinking and businesses.
We provide and curate the following:
● Airport transfer
○ Group shuttles from the closest airport are provided
● Accommodation
○ 2 or 3 night stay depending on location
○ Range of past lodging experiences include: bamboo treehouses, private casitas, shared farm houses, rustic cabins, fully furnished glamping
○ Past event locations: Trout Creek Wilderness Lodge, White Oak Pastures, Playa Viva Resort
● Meals
○ Hyper-local meals created through the intentional collaboration of chefs, farmers,
the venue host, and our team.
○ All dietary restrictions are accommodated
● Developmental Sessions
○ Guided by rotating faculty members
● Amenities
○ Vary depending on location
○ Past experiences: Sauna/cold plunge bath-house, river access, salt water pool,
firepit, yard games, spa, beach, hiking trails
● Excursions/Experiences
○ Vary depending on location
○ Past experiences: live music from local artists, visit to cacao farm, visit to
saltmakers, foraging hikes, ranch tours, bonfires, fishing, culinary workshops,
wildlife and conservation walks
● Wellness
○ We begin our days with a movement or meditation practice optional for all
attending
○ Past offerings: Yoga, sound-healing, meditation, qi-gong
○ Connection, laughter, new ideas, moments to feel gratitude for beautiful unique places
What’s not included:
● Airfare
● Additional nights of lodging outside of event stay
● Optional Excursions offered by venues
● Personal travel insurance
“There are few times in my life when I’ve arrived at an unequivocal ‘yes’ regarding a sizable decision based on my intuition, or rather the opportunity aligning with so many of my senses I haven’t needed to analyze it deeply intellectually. In reflection, those easy decisions seem to arise for me when an opportunity presents itself to meaningfully shift my paradigm in a way that will help me go deeper in pursuit of my passions, aligns with a deep need I see in the world, and seems to offer something unique and valuable.
One of those decisions was to join reNourish Studio to study living systems and regenerative frameworks. We’re six months in and it’s rocking my world in the most amazing way.”
Cameron Miller
Chief Executive of Business Strategy
& Innovation at Non-GMO Project
“In the first six months, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of how to approach some of the challenges we are encountering, a shared language within our team, and fresh perspective on how to test/explore solutions we are looking to develop.”
Courtney Pineau
Climate Collaborative
“Through the Studio, I am understanding that regenerative means more than simply green cover over soil. Regenerative is a state of mind, an awareness that there is no arrival, just continual creation in each and every aspect of life. I now see the potential to steward regeneration and succession on millions of acres of prime farmland through agri-voltaics.”
Iain Ward
Solar Agricultural Services Inc. (SolAg)
“Since the very first session, my understanding of regeneration and rethinking our relationship to food through business has been drastically challenged and deeply impacted. Every session challenges me to think in new and creative ways about how regeneration extends beyond a way of farming to a way of rethinking the entire lens through which we view ourselves and our businesses. I have taken many of the frameworks and the paradigms that we have been working with in the Studio and applied them to our business and that has been very expansive and exciting. As a person deeply interested and committed to personal growth and transformation, I cannot recommend ReNourish Studio enough. And even more so as a leader of a business who is striving to reimagine and pioneer regenerative agriculture beyond a simple, myopic focus on soil health, to a complex and connected way of functioning through living systems worldview. So thankful for the staff that lead the Studio with so much grace and wisdom and create a space for this growth and regeneration of thinking to happen.”
Juan Pablo Guzman
Artisan Tropic
“Since being steeped in this wisdom for almost a year now, I see things through a much more complex lens of living systems. I no longer see a need to fix, but rather to understand and pursue a deeper commitment to shifting existing systems in a way that understands how life supports life. It’s taken both personal growth and a willingness to see my business in completely new ways; ways that carry greater potential for change by understanding the complexities that we too often want to simplify into existing paradigms. Within the frameworks of the studio, I believe I have not only grown as an individual, but have also become a more deeply compassionate and caring business owner who is laying the groundwork for more potential and transformation within our current food system.”
Sherry Hess
Team Leadership
Lauren Tucker
Lauren Tucker is an entrepreneur and leader focused on evolving our food system.
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Her experience as the Co-Founder and former Executive Director of Kiss the Ground, has led her to develop an extensive network of farmers, ranchers, food product manufacturers, scientists, and regenerative agricultural leaders. She works on crop-specific regenerative agricultural projects in collaboration with White Buffalo Land Trust through her consultancy, Beyond the Farm, and is leading reNourish Studio.
Joel Glanzberg
Joel Glanzberg has over twenty five years of experience as an applied naturalist, leading and designing community development projects.
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Trevanna Frost Grenfell
Trevanna Frost Grenfell spends her career working at the intersections of how people relate with the living world and how we develop our thinking and actions within it.