We are an interdisciplinary team of change makers, ecologists, builders, educators, land stewards, social entrepreneurs and visionaries.
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Essentially, we are passionate about life and living and believe we have the power to organize, inspire and dazzle toward a better world.
The team that moves this school forward is made up of many individuals and organizations who believe that for the thoughtful evolution of our species, we must connect and move forward with individual action and collective awareness. As more and more folks become involved, each brings with them a network of support that connects synapses, thus growing the web. Together we move into the future as a living, emerging organism that is innovative and resilient.
With that said, there is a nucleus composed of several key figures that have, and continue to co-create a dedicated and comprehensive support structure to ensure the wise and sustained development of the school.
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Matthew Abrams
Founder & CEO: The Mycelium School
By exploring 43 countries on 6 continents and 42 of the United States, Matthew has realized the profound global need for young leaders to get together and share their experiences as we together gain the tools, support and insight needed to move proactively into tomorrow. For 6 years Matthew has been cultivating the dream of The Mycelium School to provide that environment.
From leading sports teams in high school to initiating projects at Ithaca College to serving as co-president at The Graduate School for International Training’s student government, Matthew has always found himself in roles of leadership.
His travel writing and has been published within the pages of The New York/LA Times and The Boston Globe as well as internationally. His award-winning travel photography has been published in magazines across the world and shown in galleries throughout Connecticut.
Matthew’s certified in natural building, Permaculture and as an international tour director. He is currently a Masters Candidate at The School for International Training where his focus lies in international education and social entrepreneurship.
He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Social Entrepreneurship Alliance, New York Chapter and was also a development consultant for Taking It Global (an online networking site of over 250,000 young global leaders).
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Ashley Nielsen, PhD – Living Education, LLC, Founder
Ashley has been teaching for almost ten years, working with diverse cultural populations and educational settings, and age levels ranging from preschool to college. Through these experiences, and her research abroad, she became deeply concerned about the fragmentation and mechanization of the educational process and the disconnect with the current world situation. She also found that many times educational organizations have a philosophy that is not congruent throughout the structures and processes of the organization. She therefore founded Living Education, LLC to raise awareness and enable educational organizations to be in harmony with what they teach. Living Education, LLC (LE) is a consulting firm that enables organizations, such as schools and non-profits, to envision education holistically and regeneratively.
Her PhD is in humanistic psychology. Her dissertation was on a new holistic philosophy of education she called Regenerative Education and what’s required to manifest such a philosophy as a living education system. Through her formal educational experience she studied cross-cultural education, alternative educational practices, living systems thinking, alternative health practices, social transformation theory, and ecopsychology (the bridge between psyche and ecology of place). In addition to these formal degree programs, Ashley has had extensive organizational systems training and work experience through the Institute for Developmental Processes. These experiences include the design of leadership development processes, the facilitation of place-based visioning processes, the coalescing and evolving of group critical thinking processes, and the development and use of systemic frameworks.
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Visiting Professor at the SIT Graduate Institute:
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management
John D. Vogelsang has been working with nonprofit organizations and NGOs for over thirty years in the areas of leadership capacity building, board development, strategic planning, organizational and leadership transitions, conflict transformation, participatory evaluation, and strategic restructuring. He serves as a coach for executive directors, senior management teams, and boards, and he has facilitated numerous board and staff retreats and executive director peer learning groups. His clients have included foundations, human service agencies, mental health agencies, community health centers, universities, professional associations, arts organizations, social justice and environmental organizations, and HIV/AIDS service providers. He is the Associate Director of the Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values and Social Change and the Coordinator of the Queens College/CUNY ethnic, racial, and religious understanding project. He has published many monographs and articles on organization development and leadership issues. He is the Editor in Chief of the OD Practitioner.
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Andrew Barer – Business Consultant & Educator
Andrew is an accomplished entrepreneur, executive, educator and public speaker. He has founded two companies for which he has raised over $10 million in seed capital. He also founded The Common Ground Foundation, a non-profit organization that brings leadership development programs and free basketball clinics to Native American reservations.
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Andrew Taggart – Philosophical Counselor and Educational Consultant
Andrew’s ultimate aim is to lead a philosophical life: a fully integrated, meaningful, self-reflective existence. After finishing a PhD in 2009, he moved to New York in order to sort things out. He has since trained as a philosophical counselor, and he is now writing a book on philosophy as a way of life.
He’s convinced that we’re living through a historical period in which our current institutions are no longer workable and grand experiments are vitally necessary. He left higher education two years ago because he came to realize that it produces experts rather than generalists and because it values piecemeal thinking over synoptic visions. But our time demands considerably more from us: it demands judgment and compassion, stewardship and craftsmanship, self-reliance and vision. For these reasons, he’s begun working with social entrepreneurs like Matthew to develop educational curricula that nourish our spirit and transform the world.
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Stephen Spaeth, Entrepreneur
A Babson graduate is the co-founder of Brooklyn Boulders; the largest climbing gym in New York City and one of the largest, most successful gyms on the eastern seaboard. Stephen doubles as the Director of Business Development for Spaeth Design, New York City’s premier industrial design firm with annual revenues of $5 million. He also teaches courses on social marketing at New York University. Stephen is 27 years old.
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Ellen Smith, MA – Director of Fundraising & Development
Brattleboro Memorial Hospital
Ellen has experience in development, consulting, fundraising and program management. Her expertise lies within annual funds, major gifts, special events, and planned giving. She is an experienced grant-writer committed to social responsibility, civic engagement and building social capital.
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