Core Team
The co-creators of 7th Generation Labs play diverse roles in the world. We include community weavers, social artists, organizational and leadership development consultants, systems thinkers, educators, strategists, ethicists, technologists, visionaries, grassroots activists, facilitators, personal coaches, leaders, followers and learners.
What we share in common is our mission:
Weaving old and new eyes wisdom
to co-create a future where all our relations flourish.
animals . . plants . . humans . . the entire natural world
Stephanie Nestlerode, MSW
Founder & Chief Synthesizer
As a social worker and strategic planner, I’ve focused my 45 year career in the areas with most heart and meaning for me = healthcare, social services and education. For me, these arenas are essential for democracy.
No matter the setting, my goal is bringing all 'voices into the room’ to learn and make wise choices for our shared future. Organizations expand their capacity to serve the common good. Individuals expand their ability to shift with changing circumstances.
As a life-long learner, indigenous wisdom expanded my worldview forever. My journey began over 20 years ago when I met Paula Underwood, keeper of a 10,000 year old oral history. At the very first break, I spoke to her and pledged to do my best to bring her practical wisdoms to ‘all listening ears.’ These wisdoms completely altered both my personal life and my consulting career.
The journey continued with Grandmother Tu Moonwalker, an Apache medicine woman. She shared an indigenous blueprint for peaceful co-existence that begins with the rights and responsibilities of being born into a human suit. Her practices reveal the power of aligning to universal laws and principles. Her work continues through Grandmother Láné Sáan Moonwalker.
As Chief Synthesizer for 7th Generation Labs, I’m joining with kindred spirits to gather a treasure trove of ways to learn what matters. At this moment, what matters above all else is creating a future where all our relations flourish.
Leilani Henry
Priestess of Wholeness
Conifer, Colorado USA
Leilani Henry is a proven pathfinder in workplace creativity, whole-brain integration and change. She is the creator of the Leadership Vitality Checkup and Brain Jewels, a multisensory process for transformation. She is licensed in Educational Kinesiology and founded a national Playback Theatre company. Her lifetime experience in the performing arts is integrated into her approach to wellness, leadership and learning.
In her words “what could be slowing your momentum is all in your head and body – literally.” Leilani is a game changer who specializes in whole brain strategies for individual and collective transformation. Her experiential processes bring lightning speed results to tough challenges. She deepens the ability to ask your own questions and receive your own answers. Leilani sparks the hearts and minds of those who want extraordinary results aligned with their highest aspirations.
She is the daughter of George W. Gibbs, Jr., the first black explorer to set foot on Antarctica. Her non- fiction book, The Call of Antarctica: Exploring and Protecting Earth’s Coldest Continent, uses his diaries to introduce us to the history, science and climate change of the continent.
Láné Sáan Moonwalker
Wisdom Carrier of Apache and Yaqui Lineages
Moriarty, New Mexico USA
Grandmother Láné Sáan Moonwalker has been an oracle, healer, spiritual teacher and environmental guardian for more than 40 years. Láné began her training in the healing arts at the age of 12 and learned to work with creative expression as a doorway to spirit. In 1987, she met her main teacher Grandmother Tu Moonwalker, an Apache, the great great granddaughter of Cochise. The Moonwalker lineage is about a medicine way of being. Grandmother Tu was the holder of this unbroken Moonwalker lineage and Láné is a part of that lineage.
Working with Grandmother Tu helped Láné manifest her vision to train teachers, healers, and oracles, and ministers under the umbrella of environmental guardianship. Together Grandmother Tu and Láné founded the Philosophy of Universal Beingness within the Whole. The foundation of this system is about working with nature in a sacred way, understanding that if we don’t take care of the Earth, there is no basis for anything else.
Marita One Who Catches Lightning
Wisdom Carrier of Zapotec, Purapecha and Sephardine Lineages
Marita is an artist, filmmaker, singer-songwriter poet, motivational speaker, metaphysical healer, a guide and mentor – helping others sing their parts into harmony thus finding the peace and happiness of being alive. They offer the rarest cacao in the world – made in ceremony for ceremony. Proceeds go to land restoration, indigenous elders, growing food for the local community, animal rescue, first nation sovereignty efforts, and subsidizing/free access to teachings for indigenous students.
Tiago Vilas Boas
Chief of Belonging and Unity
Brazilian from São Paulo, based in the Netherlands
Weaving south and north wisdoms
Odette Bovenberg
Chief Storyteller
Rotterdam Netherlands
Writes, asks, structures, learns and co-develops 7GL offerings
“Indigenous?” the eyebrows of my husband ask. I am reading a 7GL flyer. Grateful for the friend who mailed it. “It is a course based on the work of Paula Underwood,” I smile a few years ago.
By then I already journey through her work for over a decade. As a tribe of one. For not many in the Low Lands study Paula Underwood, keeper of a 10.000 year old wisdom tradition. Her words reach me. She has a special way to dance with paths to wisdom on paper. I like being nudged to hop on one leg, then on the other on a sandy path. Answering her question “What may you learn from this?” when I am back to walking on both feet.
Slowly I add her exercises in my work. In my coaching of young health care professionals for instance, the Beings of the Four Directions appear. They instantly relate to how that shows where they might need to rebalance. They love the Chicken Scratch Path as it shows them the impact of the small decisions they make every day. And how that impacts their movement towards their goals. They love listening to the story Who Speaks for Wolf. About including all voices.
So yes, somewhere downtown Rotterdam that spring, I clicked that 7GL button. Starting a string of many Reading Circles to learn together.
www.emptycup.nl
Carolina Carvalho
Community Weaver and Facilitator
BSc in Environmental Biology and MSc in Natural Resource Management and Conservation
Sintra, Portugal
Carolina Carvalho is a portuguese ecologist with a particular interest on the interconnectedness of living beings and how to apply this knowledge to human society.
Accelerating our transition to a regenerative future as Activation Team member at the Global Regeneration CoLab (GRC), Data Scientist at African Data Technologies and Permaculture Designer at Kumano Shindo GIA.
Marc Choyt
Santa Fe, NM USA
I am a social entrepreneur, activist and writer, dedicated to fostering the rebirth of Circle wisdom as a tool and teacher that can help us think differently and make decisions based on the coherence of Nature. I drew upon this wisdom to pioneer ethical sourcing/fair trade in the jewelry sector. I dedicate myself to sharing this wisdom with all who seek to understand the deep structures necessary to bring about a regenerative economy and more vibrant individuals and communities. My approach will be shared in, “Think Like A Circle: Centering in the Gravity of Grace.”
Deborah Cruzen Baird
Whidbey Island, WA, USA
In my long and precious life, I have been gifted with many invitations into a deeper way of knowing, being. Humans were a mystery for me, so many of my early friends were the four legged, wingeds, insects and reptiles that lived in the sage and cactus covered hills of Southern California.
In the past many years, I have studied in the Moonwalker tradition. I remember when I first met Grandmother Tu Moonwalker she said, ‘welcome home.’ Now, I have been welcomed into the beautiful wisdom of Paula Underwood through Odette and Stephanie. These teachings have given me a sense of hope, a blueprint of how to live through challenging times when what we hold most dear is under siege. To embrace Mother Earth and all our relations, plant, animal and human.
I am so honored to be walking this road with 7th Generation Labs and helping to bring these teachings to others. May we all find our way forward in a good way.
Virginia Stockwell
Chief Tech Support
Austin, Texas USA
Chief Technical Support
Virginia is our dedicated tech support with a passion for helping organizations like ours thrive in the digital realm. She’s responsible for ensuring that the technology we use (Kajabi) meets the needs of the people and organizations we serve – to make sure it’s user friendly. Her background in sales and marketing gives her the expertise to help us ensure we stay connected with our participants in all the ways they participate – sending us feedback, taking on-line offerings, receiving occasional newsletters, tracking our offerings and stories, and creating customized libraries for the practical wisdoms we share. She guides us though the process of course creation, membership site setup, marketing automation and website design. She’s a master of empowering others with the knowledge and tools to build a thriving online community.
William Nestlerode, PhD
Founder & Chief Technology Architect
Whidbey Island, WA. USA
Bill weaves 7th Generation Labs’ platform, hardware and software together into an integrated system to ensure its effectiveness and efficiency.
Bill is a mathematician, technical consultant and systems engineer with experience designing and implementing integrated software and hardware solutions. His specialties include open source and security systems. He enjoys solving complex technical problems, minimizing resource requirements and maximizing results. He is skilled at tutoring people learning new ways – whether in math, statistics, physics or computing. As Director of Research Computing at the University of South Carolina, he bridged math faculty into the world of computing. He has provided systems engineering expertise to IBM, MCI, BSDI, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies and Unisys. As a tutor with high school and college students, he is especially gifted with students who experience math anxiety.
Our Founding Elders
Paula Underwood 1932 - 2000
Paula's grandfather's grandmother began the task of Keeping an Ancient Way of Learning safely preserved until a future generation could give it as a gift to all Earth's children with Listening Ears.
This Learning Way from the Oneida begins with the assumption that it is the responsibility of each of us to learn to understand who we individually are, the unique way in which we learn, what we need from our community and what we can give in return.
It is the responsibility of the community to enable and encourage these understandings in the most effective ways it is able to devise.
You may learn more about Paula's story here - the site is hosted by Paula's dedicated students.
Tu Moonwalker 1953 - 2011
Grandmother Tu, of Apache and South American native American heritage, focused on bringing sacredness into our daily lives.
She died in her home surrounded by family and friends in 2011. She died as she lived, celebrating life.
Her artwork is in several private and museum collections nationally and internationally including the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. and the Smithsonian Institution.
Since the mid-1980's, she travelled nationally as a spiritual teacher and minister. In 1988, she and Láné Sáan Moonwalker founded the Philosophy of Universal Beingness within the Whole, a spiritual system based on environmental consciousness and peaceful coexistence.
Her community, family, and students worldwide honor her as a Grandmother of great wisdom and insight.
Tu loved life and is missed by her students, friends, and family. We continue to celebrate her life, honoring her legacy.
Our Partners
Kindred spirits, social artists, organizational and leadership development consultants, systems thinkers, educators, strategists, ethicists, technologists, visionaries, facilitators, personal coaches, leaders and learners.
Jane Wei-Skillern PhD
Chief Researcher
Berkeley, CA USA
Jane Wei-Skillern is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she has served on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School (HBS), and London Business School. She has studied and published extensively on nonprofit networks for more than two decades. She has taught social entrepreneurship, nonprofit strategy, and network leadership to MBAs and executives for more than two decades and is the author and coauthor of dozens of HBS and Haas UC Berkeley case studies, book chapters, and journal articles.
A distillation of her work can be found at newnetworkleader.org. Her research has focused most prominently on network leadership. This research examines how nonprofit leaders that focus less on building their own institutions and instead invest to build strategic networks beyond their organizational boundaries can achieve dramatic gains in mission impact more efficiently, more effectively, and more sustainably.
For the past several years, she has taken a leave from teaching in the MBA classroom to focus on supporting social impact leaders in the field to grow their impact through networks. Jane is frequently invited to present keynote speeches, webinars, and workshops to share her research on network leadership and to facilitate the development of trust based collaborations within organizations and communities.
DuAnne Redus
Chief Confidence Supporter
Wimberley, Texas USA
After retiring from her work as a consultant with Amadeus International, based in London, DuAnne used the skills and knowledge she gained in executive leadership and organizational behavior with multi-national organizations, to develop programs with youth as Executive Director of The LifeWorks Institute.
Through collaboration with 7th Generation Labs, her current focus is to support young leaders and entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to co-create a collective global future that serves everyone.
Her book, The 6th-Dimensional Blueprint for Shaping the Future, addresses the right to ‘be’ in work and life.
Ondine de Kroon
Chief Artist
Bear, Wolf, Turtle and Eagle: you see their images on the website. Symbols that link to old wisdom about living together as a community.
They are stamps made by Ondine de Kroon. A Dutch artist, specialized in the art of lino cutting and etching. When 7GL requires another symbol on its website: we’ll ask Ondine to make it.
We like her work. And like the fact that she shares her knowledge with young children. That she initiates community projects. Like the ‘Giant picture book of the Heemraadssingel’. Where young and old work together to bring a street alive in the form of art. Neighbors make linocuts to create a giant shared book of what makes that street what it is. A project that brings people together.
Or the smallest stage of the world project. Where children make linocuts that are printed on concrete tiles. “If you walk barefoot, you can feel my flowers”, a child explains.
"I love lino cutting, It is an old traditional method. An indirect way of expression. The material is crumbly, which makes it somewhat headstrong. The figures in my linocuts are as vulnerable as the material but self-conscious at the same time. Recognizability is very important to me. Yet, colors, I make more intense, situations more absurd, people more vulnerable. I treat my subjects with as much irony as love”.
Want to learn more about Ondine?
https://ondinedekroon.nl/en/
Maya Townsend
Chief Communitarian &
Master Chocolate Connoisseur
Watertown, Massachusetts USA
Founder of Partnering Resources
Maya Townsend, founder of Partnering Resources, brings diverse people together to tackle complex problems. Her work is based on understanding how to leverage networks: the complex, interrelated, and often messy webs of relationships that drive all group activity.
Jon Roberts
Bayfield, Colorado USA
Jon Roberts is Paula Underwood's grandson and lineage carrier for the wisdom tradition.
Laurie Roberts
Bayfield, Colorado USA
Laurie Roberts is Paula Underwood's daughter and lineage carrier for the wisdom tradition.
Glenna Gerard
Ojo Caliente, New Mexico USA
Glenna Gerard is a multidimensional and skilled consultant and human being. She has a passion for supporting individuals and collectives in growing their capability and capacity for conscious leadership, enabling them to see systems and gain the clarity needed to make wise and strategic choices in service of all Life.
She is a master facilitator and teacher of personal and organizational leadership, a business manager, a program designer, a coach, a strategic and systems thinker. In the 1990s Glenna was one of the initial pioneers in developing Dialogue, She co-authored the book Dialogue: Rediscover the transforming power of conversation, John Wiley & Sons (1998) with Linda Ellinor. Glenna’s clients span Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, communities and various not-for-profit organizations.
More recently Glenna’s intention and attention are focused on making the Way of the Council, from the Origin Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, more accessible in our world today.
Walkabouts with Glenna, are a unique, guided process that enables you to ‘stop the action’ of your busy life, breathe and connect with the leader within you that knows what you most need NOW for balance, vitality and direction. The walkabouts are a synthesis of Glenna’s internationally recognized work with Dialogue, her deep connection with the natural world and the earth wisdom traditions, and a lifetime of guiding individuals and groups in support of creating the outcomes they want for themselves and the world.
Elizabeth Doty
El Sobrante, California USA
Elizabeth specializes in designing and facilitating high-engagement conversations that integrate strategy, values, and execution. For over 30 years, she has helped C-Suite leaders improve strategy execution by building cultures of commitment, collaboration and action. Ms. Doty writes regularly for strategy + business magazine. Elizabeth served as a Network Fellow with the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Based on that work, she was named a Top Thought Leader in Trust by Trust Across America. Her book, The Compromise Trap, documents the challenges executives faced in trying to live their values and lead with integrity during the build-up to the financial crisis. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1991.
Elizabeth’s clients are mission-driven leaders looking to:
- Align Teams for Execution
- Build a Culture of Commitment
- Deliver on Brand Promises to Customers & Other Stakeholders
Lisa Heft
Chief Curate, Culture & Learning Facilitator
Berkeley, California USA
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator – Opening Space
President Emerita, Open Space Institute US
Fellow Emerita, Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution
Lisa provides guidance, facilitation and consult for 7th Generation Labs and its users in realms such as access and inclusivity, experiential learning, interpersonal communication, content and service proposals and the curation and care of resources, culture and community.
7th Generation Labs is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems, Inc. EIN: 94-2524840
