Earth911 Podcast: Brenna Simmons-St. Onge is on a Regenerative World Quest

On today's Sustainability In Your Ear, meet Brenna Simmons-St. Onge, a systems strategist, regenerative futurist, and founder of B the Light Consulting, as we explore her family's extraordinary three-year journey around the world. The Regenerative World Quest isn't your typical travel adventure; it's a deliberate mission to identify, amplify, and help replicate Earth's most promising regenerative communities and projects. From Costa Rica to South Africa, she and her family engage with leaders, learn from Indigenous knowledge holders, and discover models that regenerate land, restore community agency, and reconnect people to purpose. Brenna's aim is to demonstrate how regeneration—not just mitigation—can serve as our organizing principle for addressing the climate crisis.

Rather than extracting experiences as tourists, Brenna and her family integrate into the places they visit, contributing through forms of meaningful exchange. Her key insight is that true abundance comes from within—our creativity, generosity, and the love we share with others and the planet. Thee regenerative communities she's visited focus on building a prosperity based on relationships, ecological health, and community resilience rather than accumulating material possessions. The Regenerative World Quest will culminate in a documentary series and practical playbook that others can use to live more lightly on the planet, thinking seven generations ahead following Indigenous traditions. To follow Brenna's journey and learn from the regenerative communities she discovers, visit https://bthelightconsulting.com/ or follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are in this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society, and I'm your host,
Mett Tracliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation. Today we're going
to be talking with an old friend of mine. As
the climate crisis deepens and the extract of economy continues

(00:32):
to deplete Earth's resilience, a growing movement is asking a
different set of questions. What if regeneration, not mitigation, was
our organizing principle. What if we stopped trying to fix
broken systems and instead designed entirely new ones rooted in reciprocity,
well being and planetary health based on regenerative, agricultural and

(00:53):
living practices. That's the quest at the heart of Brenna
Simmons Saint Ange's work, a system strategist, regenerative futurist and
founder of Be the Light Consulting. And I met Brenna
while collaborating with New Day Impact Investings Climate Week programming
back in twenty twenty four. She isn't just advocating for
change she's living it, trying through experimentation and visits to

(01:17):
regenerative communities around the world to embody a whole system
approach to transformation, rooted and lived experience, wisdom, and deep
ecological respect. Brenna's project, which he calls the Regenerative World Quest,
is a three year journey that she and her family
are taking to travel the world to identify, amplify, and
help replicate the most promising regenerative communities and projects on

(01:40):
Earth so you can take these ideas and apply them
at home. From Costa Rica to South Africa, she's engaging
with leaders, learning from indigenous knowledge holders, and documenting models
that regenerate land, restore community agency, and reconnect people to purpose.
The project is the basis for an upcoming documentary series
and play book that others can use to live lightly

(02:01):
on the planet. So we're going to explore what regeneration
means in practice and how Brenna navigates the boundaries between
storytelling and systems design, as well as the lessons that
she's gathering from the front lines of a better future
that's already beginning to bloom. You can follow Brenna's journey
at Bethlightconsulting dot com. Be the Light Consulting is all

(02:23):
one word, no space, no dash, Be the Light Consulting.
We're going to get to the conversation with Brenna right
after a quick commercial break. Welcome to the show, Brenna.
How you doing it? You've been on the road.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm doing great, Mitch. Thank you so much for having me.
It's wonderful to be talking with you today. Amidst the
ever increasing crazy times we're living in. How are you well?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Crazy times are par for the course, and I guess
in my life, but it seems like in everybody's these days,
doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Absolutely You know now you're turning to.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
The future, and that's one of the things I appreciate
about you. I have to ask what inspired you to
embark on a regenerative world quest?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, thank you for that question. There are mini layers
of that inspiration, many different moments of clarity and frustration
that ultimately manifested in us, like I say, pulling out
of the matrix and going on a three year regenerative
world quest with our family. So the first thing that
I'll share is, you know, humans are really creatures of narrative.

(03:32):
We are shaped by story, and that is how human
culture has evolved over the thousands of years that we've
been on this beautiful planet. And when I think of
and this comes from a very Western, colonized context, but
when I think of the dominant narrative that is out
there right now, it's Hollywood painting one apocalyptic picture of

(03:52):
our future after the next, whether it's AI takeover or
the zombie apocalypse, or then you flip to the news,
and the news just splatters the headlines with kind of
the dark side of humanity and what's going on in
all the systems that shape and govern our lives, and
it doesn't give us a very positive, optimistic picture of
human character or of the future that we're headed towards.

(04:15):
And that's one harsh realization that we live in today.
And the other belief that I have is that we
are creatures that of manifestation, meaning what we focus on grows.
So if what we're focusing on is the dominant narrative
of our time, shaped by Hollywood and the news, then
that is what we're going to collectively manifest. So that

(04:37):
is just a hard reality that we live in every
single day. The other thing to share with the motivation
for the quest is my husband and I. We've been
together almost nineteen years, and when we were first together,
we always dreamed about what does it really look like
to live and write relationship with ourselves each other in
the natural world, and we are constantly searching for that
throughout our life's adventures and always thinking of about potentially

(05:01):
starting or joining an intentional regenerative living community. And it
was always sometime in the future, sometime in the future.
And after we had our second kiddo during the pandemic
he was born October twenty twenty, we realized, no one's
really promising us the future, no one's promising us tomorrow,
and we have to be the change we want to
see in the world. So that was another big reality

(05:22):
for us, is recognizing that it's not someday in the
future where reginerative living is important, it's right now and
it's today. The other realization was after spending about ten
years in corporate social responsibility and then nine years as
an executive in the nonprofit world doing systems level change,
I was always working and fighting for change out there,

(05:45):
changing the systems at shape and govern our lives, and
was able to make a lot of great impact in
the world, but it wasn't necessarily as deep, or as robust,
or as authentic as I really wanted it to be.
So I'll give you one example. As the executive director
of the Alliance for Collective Action, we passed sixty six
state laws in Colorado in three years and directed over

(06:07):
a billion of the ARPA funding towards regenerative solutions in Colorado.
And a lot of those right now are stalemated. Their
funding is cut, they're not able to be implemented, or
they're caught in regulation. And so even though we put
all of this effort and all of this work into
getting policy wins, the actual impact on the ground wasn't happening.

(06:27):
And so at the end of the day, we really
recognize that we have to be the change we want
to see in the world, and in order to do that,
we needed to completely change our lives to align with
our values. So it took us about twelve months of
planning after we agreed that this is something that we
wanted to do, and in May of twenty twenty four
we officially launched. We took the big leap, pulled out

(06:48):
of the matrix, and moved to a farm in Lyons, Colorado.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
My wife and I have been together thirty eight years,
so twice as long as you. But we're still finding
that choice is always a one that we have to make.
And we moved into the mountains a few years ago
in order to live more closely and in better harmony
with nature. It's interesting that so many people are starting
to experience that, or maybe it's just start a little
clatch of people. But I'm wondering, what was Was there

(07:15):
a moment where you said, that's it, we have to
do it. What was that moment?

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Like scary, a little scary? I think there's when it
comes to is it scary? I think for me, there's
four different ways of knowing. And I'll get back to
your other question. I promise that with those four different
ways of knowing, one of them is analytical, and in
my analytical brain, it's still scary. Now, you know, it's

(07:42):
scary every single day when you're only knowing from a
pure sense of analytics. But part of what I've been
cultivating in myself is looking at four ways of knowing.
So your analytical knowledge, your intuitive knowledge, your somatic knowledge
in your body, and your emotional knowledge as well, and
when I only tune into the ani littal way of knowing,
it's very scary and I still question it today. And

(08:04):
when I look at this holistic way of knowing and
moving through the world, it feels so right to do
what we're doing. It feels like my purpose path, my
life's calling. So you asked, was there one moment, It
was really a series of moments, and then there was
one very clarifying moment that's very vulnerable and heartbreaking that
I'll share with you. But from the series of moments,

(08:26):
my husband and I both had very successful careers, and
on paper, we were successful, you know, we checked all
the boxes of the American upper middle class family, rocking
it in our careers and having two kids and a
white picket fence and all of those items. But what
we noticed was year after year, our quality of life
was actually going downhill, and the more money we made,

(08:49):
the more stressful we were. And while we appeared successful
on paper, our well being was not where we wanted
it to be. And so I think that was a
series of kind of awakenings that we had. And at first,
you know, you go to a cocktail party, you go
out socializing, and people ask you how you are, and
you're like, oh great, and you know, you talk about
these trips or what you're doing or what your kids

(09:12):
are doing in school, and it's kind of these surface
level connections that are really easy to have. And there
was one summer where Matt and I made my husband's
name is Matt. We made a promise to each other.
We said, next time we go out and someone asks
us how we are, let's be honest. And so that
happened at a party and I said, you know, we're
not okay, We're you know, here all the different things
that we're going through. And I could tell my friend's face.

(09:34):
She didn't know how to respond at first, and she
kind of put on the mask, and then a few
minutes into the conversation she let down that veil and
really connected with me on a deep, authentic level that
they were going through all those challenges too. And so
I think it was this awakening of hey, success on
paper is not actually the well being and the quality
of life we're looking for. If we are just measuring

(09:55):
wealth by money in our bank account, we're missing out
on a whole other dimensions of of what this life
can really offer. And the more that we're able to
be honest with each other and honest with our friends
and social group, then we can really awaken to be
these full humans. So that was a series of unfoldings.
And you know, at the time, I was a CEO
of a nonprofit, I was working sixty hours plus a week,

(10:17):
I had two young sons. It was kind of in
the middle of the pandemic leading these incredible statewide initiatives,
and I didn't realize how bad my mental health had gotten.
I really didn't, and ultimately it ended up in my
dog passing away in a really tragic accident. That was
my fault, and I had to be really it woke

(10:37):
me up that day. It really woke me up that
I can be fighting for solutions out there in the world,
but if I'm not living my own best life and
being the solutions and showing my children that path, it's
all for Nott. And so that tragic event happened August
of twenty twenty three, and after that I could not

(10:59):
continue to life of my life the same way. And
so it was that day that we decided we had
to make a big change, and we didn't know exactly
what it was going to be, but we knew it
was going to be as values aligned as possible and
in the context of regeneration. And the more we started
talking to people about what became the Regenerative World Quest,

(11:20):
the more support it garnered. And people kept saying to me,
that's my dream too, that's what I want to do too.
And then the other response would be, oh, Brenna, that's
a beautiful vision for the future, but that's never going
to happen. You're such a dreamer. And so that made
me really go, well, wait a second, it's actually already
happening all over the world. And so I started to
do research, and I realized that there are thousands of

(11:43):
communities living all over the world right now that are
living the solutions that we need, but they're not getting
the coverage. Right. It goes back to media and Hollywood
being this dominant narrative of the doomsday side of humanity,
and there's so much good in humanity that's happening right
now as we talk. And so it became this passion
of mine to find these projects, find these communities, learn

(12:05):
from them, and uplift them and help people see that
regenerative living is not some utopian dream two hundred years
in the future. It's actually happening right now as we talk.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
First, thank you very much for sharing that. I really
appreciate you doing so with us. There's a lot to
unpack in what you just said. But we talked about
life being driven by narratives. I'm curious and I'm going
to ask this assumptively, but you can correct me if
I'm wrong, please. I would assume that life in the
regenerator community is fairly quiet, which is the antithesis of

(12:38):
what Hollywood and the front page of the newspaper, well
website care about. What's the new narrative? HM.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
That's a really profound question, you know. I think that
really is contextual. That depends on culture and where you
are and your own lived perspective. But I think from
a climate science perspective. So I spent about twelve years
of my career in CS are deeply entrenched in climate science,
and a lot of my peers and I would even

(13:11):
talk about how humans are a virus and we're replicating
like we do in a peatri diistion. We're just all
out for our own good and we're extracting and consuming
Earth's resources, and you know, I think that really is
a colonial capitalistic narrative where humans are here, and in
some ways it's organized religion as well. Human humans are

(13:32):
here to have dominion over Earth, to manage Earth's resources
for our own benefit, and that has resulted in a
very consumerism, extractive, exploitive narrative that then it comes from
a lack scarcity mentality that there's not enough and for
you to get yours, I can't get mine. And if
I'm going to get mine, I have to take it
away from you. And so I think that the new narrative,

(13:56):
and actually I think the true narrative of human nature
is one of love, is one of abundance, is one
of possibility and opportunity and hope. And what does it
mean to come together in community to uplift each other
and to understand that there is enough? And really also
a new narrative about when is it enough? Because there's

(14:16):
this obsession with consumerism, and I see it even in
my young children now where they'll get hooked on, you know,
going to target and they see all these toys in
the toy aisle and they're almost paralyzed to pick one
toy because they want them all. And so I think
we've bred this culture of consuming as much as possible
and the person who dies with the most toys wins,

(14:38):
and I think that's really a false narrative. So I
think the new narrative is one of integration. And you
know the other thing that takes a little bit to
set up, but I'm going to go there because it
feels like it wants to be shared. Is I feel
like humans have been on this journey of separation, and
it really started after the last Ice Age, kind of
in the last agricultural Revolution and all the other main

(15:01):
ages and stages of human development. And again this comes
from a very colonized context. From the agricultural Revolution to
the religious Revolution, the scientific Revolution, the industrial Revolution, and
now the tech revolution are all these revolutions of separating
human connection, connection from self, connection from spirituality, connection from nature,

(15:23):
connection from each other. And each of them did it
in their own way right. Religion really separated man from
nature and man from woman, and the scientific revolution broke
everything down into its smallest bits and bobs and studied
it in a peak jud dish. But we forgot to
put Compty dumpty back together again, and so we've been
not the system exactly, and so I think to be

(15:44):
you know, to be more concise, I think then the
new narrative is one of deep integration and deep connection.
And that's where I hope we're at right now. Is
the age of regeneration, the age of integration. It's you know,
as many thought leaders will put it in the Great
turning back to connection with each other, connection with nature,
and that's really indigenous knowledge, you know, that's really an

(16:07):
ancient way of being, as that deep integration with all
living things.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Interesting to use the phrase back to it, I actually
think of it as forward to it. It is not
a retrograde motion. It's the thing we need to move toward.
And we compared, say to the end of the last
Ice Age, we have profound connectivity in the planet and
it's something new and we can go deeper. But again,

(16:31):
then the question is whether or not you're providing access
and connectivity to everybody, especially those indigenous communities. And I
want to talk more about that in a little bit,
but let me ask you this. You're taking your kids
along on these trips. How are they being changed by it?

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Oh? It is transformational for them. Our older son Louis
turned eight while we are in Costa Rica and our
younger son, Tucker, is four, and it's really interesting to
see how they move through the world now this experience,
and it's also really beautiful to see the quest through
their eyes where you know, I'll give some specific examples

(17:09):
in Costa Rica. As a parent from the United States,
we're constantly teaching our kids stranger danger and don't talk
to people you don't know, and you know, don't go
out of my eyesight when we're in public, and you know,
kind of trying to always protect and shelter our children.
And when we went to Costa Rica, that just had
to go out like right away. You know, we go
out to these social settings and we're trying to control

(17:31):
our kids and keep them where they should be, and
you know, they just their wild children, so they went
often about. But seeing how communities there embraced them was
so heartwarming and it just broke our heart open with
joy to see how they were received for who they
truly are and see how they were able to build
authentic connection in that way with land, with animals, with

(17:54):
the environment, and also with humans, and so it's been
truly beautiful. We homeschooled them while we travel, which I'm
not going to lie is very challenging. Probably the hardest
part of all of it is the homeschooling of the kiddos,
but we're able to do it in a really immersive way.
And so building the homeschool curriculum around where we're going
and the climate and the culture and the history of
place has been really really rewarding for me as a

(18:16):
mom and also for our kiddos, and it's been beautiful
to see them grow up in that way. And you know,
we're kind of at the beginning. We're about a year
into it, so I'm excited to see as they continue
to grow and evolve on the quest. And it's also
been a major motivating factor for it. You know, when
I think about what school and my mom's a teacher,
so was a teacher. So I don't mean any disregard

(18:38):
to our educators. They are, you know, very important to
our future. But when I look at kind of the
industrial complex of education and what education is my children
would be receiving right now, and kind of like the
industrial complex, like I said, it is only teaching part
of a human and it really focuses on that analytical

(18:58):
way of knowing and I I feel like it's kind
of grooming these capitalistic soldiers to be good cogs and
these well oiled machines. But humans are not machines. We're
living systems. And so it was really an intentional motivation
for us, is how do we raise whole children, whole
humans in a living system's approach, while also teaching them

(19:18):
the rugged skills they're going to need for the systems
stress that we're currently facing right now. How do you
grow your own food, how do you filter your own water,
how do you make your own shelter? You know, how
do you interact with people in a multicultural, diverse setting,
And so really looking at raising rugged, resilient children that
can be self sufficient for the future that we're moving into.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
There's a lot of paradoxical perception in what you just
said to be both rugged and gentle and connected and
interdependent and so forth. And as I think about what
you were talking about, Yeah, we are living systems individually,
We're systems within systems within systems within systems act above
and downstream from us too. And I know that stranger

(20:03):
danger concern. And I remember one time my wife and
I when our son was less than a year old
went to a restaurant in Baton Rouge, where I come from,
and the waitress picked up my son from his high
seat and started play with him and said, he's so cute.
Look at his missing his little two feast. I remember
she said, his little two fees. And she walked into

(20:24):
the kitchen with our son and my wife and I went,
holy smoke, but we just let it go and we
had this really wonderful interaction with her and the cook,
and it was really great. The communities that you're like
in Costa Rica. Talk about how the other adults interacted

(20:45):
with your kids. What was that like?

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, you know, it was similar to your experience. And
I feel like it's important to say. Tucker, our youngest,
he's four, has like this strawberry blonde, red blonde hair
that's really rare down there, and so he would always
attract people, especially the locals. Had always come up and
you know, people we don't know, don't even know us,
they'll just go up and start touching his hair and
want to hug him and kiss him. And Tucker is

(21:10):
very social as well, and so he, you know, would
always embrace that that affection and they were very receiving
of them. Louis, our oldest, is extremely intelligent. His IQ's
off the charts, and he has really high intensity energy.
ADHD off the charts. The child psychologists told us that
they could give a higher score for Adhd, they would,

(21:32):
and he wasn't medicated at the time, and so his energy,
particularly in the United States, is received in kind of
a curt way, and he overwhelms people very very quickly.
When we were in Costa Rica, people couldn't get enough
of him. It was just so much fun. And they're
always and part of it is we are outdoors all
the time, right, and people would take them on adventures
and take them on hikes and go over to the

(21:54):
pool and go to the beach and go in the rainforest.
And it felt like we had a team of people
who loved our children from the moment they first met them.
And they were so warm and so loving and so
accepting and almost entertained by the energy that our family brings,
whereas sometimes I feel like in the United States it
can be a lot to handle. We're a high intensity unit,

(22:17):
and so it was really beautiful to see just the
open arms that we are received with, and that was
we toured ten different projects, and that was common among
all the projects. And the other commonality that I think
led to the experience we had was that it's such
an international diversity there where people from all over the

(22:37):
world were in these communities and we were interacting with
and English was a common language, but English was one
of many languages spoken. So we would be at gatherings
and you'd hear six or seven different languages spoke all
around you and people from all over the world, and
it was this melting pot of culture, and all of
it came from a very heart open space and especially

(22:58):
in support of the youth and ar kiddos.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Like a restaurant in Europe. I always love that. Let
me turn to what we came here to talk about,
but this has been really a lot of fun to
dig into. What is a regenerative community? Describe how you
identified them and how do you choose where you were
going to go.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, there's a couple of layers to that. So first,
and you know, everyone kind of has a different uh
definition of regeneration, and for me, regeneration simply means healing.
It means helping to make things better than how you
found them. Whereas a lot of times, sustainability is like
maintaining right how do we have the same inputs and
outputs and maintain things, whereas regeneration is really about healing

(23:43):
and improving and with that for us, regenerative living is
living in right relationship with self, with one another and
with the natural world. And so that's just an environmental
it's so much more correct, yes, and that's very contextual.
And so what is right relationship in any given setting.
It's not always going to be a cookie cutter answer,

(24:05):
and in fact it shouldn't be. It's very much understanding
what are all the systems at play and how do
we create create conditions in which all life can thrive.
That's regeneration, and so as we are looking at what
is real reginerative living. You know, I've had the great
honor of studying under a lot of the regenerative thought

(24:25):
leaders like Kate Roworth and Hunter Leven's and John Fullerton
and Carol Standards and not Daniellemetters or Buckminster Fuller, but
I read and studied them deeply throughout my career. And
the reason why I shared that is because I've had
the honor of learning from reginative thought leaders and practitioners,
and then from that understanding the different frameworks that they

(24:47):
operate within, and through that developed an eleven point framework
for reginative communities that covers things like circular economic flows, energy,
self sufficiency, how do we value all life from our
elders to our youth? You know, do we put elderly
in the youth and these care facilities and kind of
have them on the fringes of society, or do we

(25:08):
deeply integrate their knowledge and respect them and intentionally actually
connect those multi generational wisdom keepers things like resilient infrastructure.
And at the at the end of the day, I
think reginative living really is solutions based living. For how
do we live in a way that addresses the wicked
problems we face today from the economy to in a

(25:29):
quality to climate change to biodiversity loss while also adapting
constantly to the changing forces that are at play. So
all of that really came to help us understand the
criteria and how we're developing reginative living frameworks. And I
think the other thing to say, from a very just honest,
vulnerable perspective is the more we learn about this, the

(25:51):
more I know I don't know, and it's you know,
less about identifying here's all these metric driven solutions that
we can define and put nice boon, and more about
looking at this as an experiment as the next evolutionary
leap for humanity. So that's kind of the framework of
which we approached all of this, and then from that

(26:12):
started doing lots of research and looking at where in
the world of these communities existing. And like I said earlier,
there are thousands, tens of thousands of them all over
the world, and it became very clear in the research
very early on that Costa Rica is actually one of
the highest concentrations of these communities. And so I started going, Okay,
what's happening in Costa Rica and why Costa Rica? And

(26:34):
there's lots of reasons for that, one of which I
think is because of the climate. Right, it's like a
tropical paradise there, and people go there for vacation and
have a wonderful time and kind of get that taste
of pura vidra, the good life. But the other thing
is coast Riaca is demilitarized and so and has been
for many, many decades. And if you think of the
trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that the US

(26:56):
government puts into the military. Costa Rica Go took all
of that money and put it into welfare and education
and healthcare and conservation, and so they actually have kind
of a regenerative lens to government there. And you know,
not necessarily saying that's happening currently or into the future,
but the history of Costa Rica has been demilitarized and

(27:17):
they have a huge focus on conservation and environmentalism. In fact,
five percent of the world's biodiversity is in Costa Rica
and it's a ten tiny little country. So it became
really clear that there's something magical happening in Costa Rica.
It's got a pretty stable government, pretty stable economy, and
a beautiful, beautiful climate. So it was clear that that

(27:38):
was going to be the first kind of international leg
of the journey. And through that, you know, you can
Google it and come up with lots of different communities
that come up, and it's one thing to read about
it on a computer, and it's a completely another thing
to experience it yourself and in the immersive way that
we've had the privilege and honor of doing earlier this year.
So that's kind of where we started. I had probably

(28:00):
fifty different communities that we are considering to go to,
and then that's when that eleven point framework that I
mentioned a few moments ago came into place. So it's okay,
here's all the list of all the communities, let's look
at it through this lens of true regeneration, and what
are some of the ones that seem like they're kind
of the best in class. And that gave us seven
different projects that we were going to visit in Costa Rica,

(28:23):
And when we went there, we ended up being referred
to several others, so we ended up checking out ten
of them. And I'm so glad that we held space
for those last three because they were really some of
my favorite projects and some of I think the best
examples of real regenerative living. And then the last thing
I'll say to that how we selected them. This project
is actually fiscally sponsored by Savory Institute Savory International, so

(28:45):
they don't actually fund the project, but it is run
through a nonprofit so that we can fundraise and support
of the quest. And Savory has fifty hubs all over
the world, international hubs, and they're all built on the
premise of reginerative agriculture, holistic grazing and how do we
build community resilience around agriculture And so throughout Savory's network,

(29:05):
I was also able to be introduced and connected to
lots of movers and shakers in the originative agg space
in Costa Rica that helped kind of guide the quest
sites that we selected.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
This is an amazing conversation. We need to take a
quick commercial break. We're going to be right back. Stay tuned, folks.
Now let's return to the conversation with Brenna Simmons Saint Oh.
She is a regenerative on is she is on a

(29:37):
regenerative world quest, a collect and chair restorative practices that
can heal the environment and our society. Brenna, you've talked
about these communities, You've seen at least a dozen of
them now in Costa Rica alone. What are the common
challenges that these communities have living in this world that
we live in, the highly transactional world where you have

(29:59):
to be rugged to get by.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, that's a really good question, and that's actually one
of the many research questions we asked founders and residents
and all the projects and some of them varied, and
you know, we're kind of nuanced depending on each person's
own individual journey. And there were some real common threads
that were very obvious, kind of right off the bat,
and one of them is how do you hold space

(30:24):
for such multicultural diversity when you're bringing people together from
countries all over the world who didn't know each other.
They all had their own cultural heritage, their own background,
their own way of knowing, their own way of being,
and now they're uprooted and moved and intentionally right. They
did this on their own, moving to live together in
community and different cultures like in Latin America and the

(30:45):
United States versus Africa or Australia or New Zealand or Europe.
We all have our own ways of operating and kind
of quote unquote social norms that are acceptable or not acceptable.
And so that was something that we saw a lot
of was in these cultural rich melt pots. How governance
structures work in a way that honors each individual culture

(31:07):
but also uniquely has to honor place because remember, these
are not necessarily deep rooted in their indigenous lands. These
are folks who are moving internationally to live in a
new land. And so that I think goes into The
next one is is what does it mean to be
of a place when you're an expat and what does
it mean to honor the history of the place, In
this example, Costa Rica, the indigenous knowledge, the natural life,

(31:30):
Costa Rica's history in and of itself, but then also
have your own identity as an expat. And so I
think that was a really interesting challenge that was in
all of these communities. And you know, I think that goes.
I would be remiss without mentioning what's happening with this
placement of locals when there are expats moving around the world.

(31:52):
And to be really honest, a lot of, if not most,
of the communities we were in, in order to do
this to pull out of the matrix movie family across
the world, you have to be at some level of
economic stability to do that. And then when you're moving
into these communities, a lot of time the projects were
on previously degraded cattle ranches where there's economic downturn all

(32:16):
around the areas because of what's happened, And so they're
buying these lands and kind of areas of poverty, increasing
the value of the land. And then is this just
the next stage of global gentrification where people are looking
for these values aligned lives, but they're displacing locals from
their native homelands and then building these beautiful resort like
communities and then the locals are displaced or you know,

(32:40):
in some situations. And I guess I should preface it
by saying, of the tin we visited, we saw anything
from these rich, gated xpact communities that were truly the
next stage of global gentrification that had a garden and
called it regenerative to cults, all the way up to
the real deal of reginative living, where it's done with
true values aligned and true honor of place and culture

(33:02):
as well. So we saw everything within that spectrum and
those each each part in that spectrum can have its
own challenges as well. You know, some of them we saw, Well,
I won't go into that because I don't want to
paint it a bad light, so cut that out of
the podcast.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
I'll leave that because I think that reflects exactly how
challenging some of this is. It's not it this is
a right decision. We can't say it's the right decision,
but it's hard. You used a phrase earlier to be
of a place. And this is a question I've asked
a number of people, and you've spent time around indigenous communities,
and I've phrased it the following way. How do you
become indigenous to a place when you aren't of that

(33:42):
place by heritage? And I mean small eye indigenous to
be very clear, but to know and become immersed in
that place. I'm doing this on two acres in the
Southern Cascades, learning all the rocks, all the soil, all
the bugs, all the animals, what you know the shaman
runs and the river everything, the trout runs. It's it's

(34:07):
only the beginning of what an indigenous wisdom is built on.
But how do you How have you begun to explore that?

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah? I think that's a really deep question and something
that I ponder a lot, and some days feel very
hopeful and inspired by that journey and others and very
self reflective of, you know, my own role in that
whole kind of displacement. So you know, I think you
touched on it yourself. Is how do you become of

(34:36):
a place? I think is understanding first who you are
and what you value and what is uniquely you that
you will not waiver or trade, while also deeply devoting
yourself to the study, the love, the reciprocity, and the
honoring of the place that you're in. What is its history?
And not quote unquote his story from the colonial textbooks,

(34:59):
but what is the true story, the true history of
people there? And what is a story through the indigenous lens?
What is a story through the animals, through the geology
of place? And really it's taking that responsibility to know
a place, to honor the place, and to give back
to it, to look at how do I give more

(35:20):
than I take in every single day, in every setting,
And how do I deeply honor this place, And how
do I change to meet the needs of the place
in the community that I'm now honored to be in
versus expecting the community and the place to change to
meet your needs. Right, And we saw this a lot
the really touristy areas of Costa Rica, where they'll have

(35:42):
like a sign like Nacho's as big as your ass,
and like here is pizza and here and it's all
this adapting to market to the American or the United
States tourists, because in the very tourism context, you want
to go and you want all your needs to be
met and you expect there to be food that you
like there, and that's almost the opposite of being of
a place that's exploiting a place. And so I think

(36:04):
it's really deeply familiarizing yourself with culture, with place and
understanding how you can give back more than you take,
and how can you come from a learning mindset and
really deeply try to connect with the systems in the
local area as opposed to impose your own knowledge there.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
So, having learned and reflected on your learning, what indigenous
lessons do you think you've learned that you could translate
to actions we could all take wherever we are. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Well, I would say firstly that concepts and principles of
regeneration really are ancient ways of being, and they are indigenous.
They are deeply rooted in indigenous practices, and so it's
not some new thing that scientists just discovered, right, this
is actually indigenous knowledge that we are Again that many

(37:01):
of us have been not intentionally ourselves, but from the
quote unquote larger society intentionally disconnected from these ways of being.
And I think you know, maybe two lessons that I'll
share And we've been talking about this a lot, but
one is the deep interconnectedness with all life, with every
single life forces and the entire universe is connected. And

(37:23):
when you pull a string over here, it's going to
impact something over here. And it's this giant tapestry, this
gorgeous tapestry of rich biodiversity in life and energy and
life force that flows through all things in the universe
that is woven together. There is nothing that's separate or siloed.
It is all woven together. And I think that is

(37:44):
one of the first things that I'd say. And then
the second big knowledge or second big awakening that I've
been blessed to have, and this is something I feel
like I intuitively knew as a child, but able to
really put words to it now, is the life force
that flows through all things. Right, a rock is alive,
trees are alive, soil is alive. There is more biodiversity

(38:07):
in one teaspoon of soil than there is humans on Earth,
And so really recognizing that it's not just human life
that's valued and that's important, it is all life, and
all things are alive and all things are connected. So
I think those are two really poignant, powerful learnings and
awakenings that I carry with me through the indigenous lens.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
You know, when you think about what you said, I
recognize that interdependence is seen as vulnerability by most folks,
certainly here in the United States, and that reflects one
of the challenges of taking and translating some of these
practices into, say, an urban setting. When do you think
about the scalability, the ability to actually do this kind
of practice in a larger setting, like in a western city,

(38:52):
like in Denver or in the hills above Denver.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, that's another great question, and I think start with
there is in my days of CSR, and even in
the nonprofit days that I had, we were so focused
on scaling, scaling, scaling, scaling. How do we pilot to scale?
How do we find something that works and growth as
big as possible? And I think maybe this is another
you know, teaching from nature or even some indigenousism as well,

(39:17):
is that nature doesn't scale. Nature replicates, And so how
do we find what works and then replicate it in
units that aren't obsessed with growing big but looking at
that context of self sufficiency and carrying capacity that creates
conditions for all life to thrive. And so when I
think about that, layered over an urban setting. It's both

(39:41):
mind shattering to think about the intense level of transformation
humanity is going to go through over the next few
decades to arrive at you know, and continue to evolve
an originative lens, But when I think about it from
a lens of application in maybe suburbia, urban, rural kind
of wherever we are, I think it depends on the

(40:02):
context of what that is. But since you asked about cities,
you know, take lawns for example, and when you just
see lawn after lawn that it's perfectly manicured, probably you know,
round up used and watering used, and these gas powered lawnmowers,
but they don't actually provide a lot of nutrient density

(40:22):
or benefit for humanity from an ecological perspective. And so
I think I'm really fascinated to imagine what would suburban
and urban settings be like if lawns became edible food
forests and we actually recreated all the niches of a canopy,
so you have the canopy, the subcanopy, the bushes, the hedges,
and all of that was somehow food producing for humans

(40:45):
or for animals, and all of that would be able
to sequester carbon, and when you have healthy food forests,
they can storm more water, and so these huge storm
rainwater runoff programs would probably be a lot more leaved
if there was actually functioning food forests in everybody's backyard.
And then that's also food self security, and it's also

(41:08):
more income generating for folks because you're not spending all
your money in the grocery stores. And so I think
of solutions like that, where how can we work with
existing infrastructure to kind of move the needle bit by
bit in this incremental way leverage layering in regenerative practices.
And the hard truth is we don't have time for
incremental change. You know, we need broad scale systemic change

(41:29):
right now in order to meet the challenges that we
face and the timeframe that we have to meet them.
And so I also think about what do we look
at from a regional planning and zoning perspective, What about
large scale real estate developers that have all these kind
of cookie cutter real estate projects they just rubber stamp
all over the nation. What if those actually had principles

(41:50):
of regeneration built in and we look at the caring
capacity of let's say one hundred and fifty housing units,
and what is all the food, the medicine, the healthcare,
the education, water, the energy needed for each of these
units to be self sufficient? And then what if that's
what we replicated kind of all across the country, all
across the world, And of course it have to be

(42:10):
nuanced for culture and climate. And so I think about
this from both like how do we use existing infrastructure?
And then what if we completely rebuilt America using lenses
of regeneration in real estate development? And then of course
there's ideas every which way and in between. But I
think the last thing I'll end on there is also

(42:31):
looking at how we're zoning are areas. For example, some
of the farms that I work with with agricultural zoning
want to bring in more elements of cohousing there, but
they can't. They can't have they can only have so
many housing units on these thousands of acres or hundreds
of acres of land, And so the farming, the people
who are doing the farming have to drive hours and

(42:53):
hours away to get to the farm to do the labor,
and then hours and hours of back home. But the
food is right there, and there's land right there, And
so I think looking at how we're doing planning and
zoning in a regional context, for not densification in an
urban setting to pack thousands and thousands of people into
one area, but looking at co usage of education, healthcare, agriculture, energy,

(43:15):
everything that you need within one self contained unit that
then becomes your community. And then those communities aren't in silos.
Those communities are deeply connected to each other and can
share cultures and ideas and practices and friendships and exchange
breast practices and cross pollinate while living very locally in
a way that can meet all your own needs within

(43:38):
your community as.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Well, and each with a John character exactly. Yes, Yeah,
And I had a question, and you just answered my
last question, so I'll ask a different one. You have
mentioned several times your background and corporate social responsibility, and
of course I've worked in that space too. We have
a lot of assumptions about what we're trying to achieve
by being corporately responsible based on your experience. How are

(44:02):
the assumptions you've brought to corporate social responsibility misplaced in
the past and how would you change them today?

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Hmm. I think first and foremost, there is a really
big focus and prioritization in corporate social responsibility for metrics,
and you know, there's that old adage in management like
you can't manage, but you don't measure. And you know,

(44:29):
I think there's benefit in being able to measure a
carbon footprint, for example, there's benefit in measuring your supply chain.
But I think that there's a lot of flaws in
corporate social responsibility, and one of them is just so
focused on these metrics that have to be reported and
valued every quarter. And you know, I think a lot
of times those produced unintentional incentives to kind of prioritize

(44:54):
productivity over the real impact of a company. So I
think that is one when my early days, you know,
measurements were how we got our bonuses and how we
prove that we are doing our job. And it felt
really good to have your goals and your numbers come
in and you know, beat your goals. And I think
that that took CSR in a really mechanist perspective. I

(45:17):
also think a lot of times in CSR, companies that
have the biggest budgets can tell the best stories. And again,
like we said earlier through this podcast, where creatures of
narrative and so we're really moved by stories, and you
can paint CSR in a really beautiful way, and that's
resulted in a lot of I think greenwashing unfortunately, where

(45:40):
you can tell a story about the good a company's doing,
but it's not necessarily moving the needle. And you know,
I think carbon markets are an example of that. I
was really all for them in the early days and
then started to work within them and seeing how it's
not really doing what we need to from a climate standpoint,
and it can be really easy to be double counted

(46:01):
or miscounted within how carbon markets are bought and sold
and traded. And so, you know, I think there's a
lot of good intention there where we want corporations to
have some of the largest footprints to take accountability in
their actions. But I think that a lot of times
the way that the measurements coming back to that kind
of assumption, the way that the measurements are prioritized, can
be really a false reality.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Well, it's certainly easier to tell a story than make
a substantive change to your business.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
That is very true.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's been my experiences that they will do a little
bit of work and then they'll tell a very big
story exactly. We have a big story and you're going
to continue this journey. Can you talk about how to
stay connected with your quest and where should people follow
your journey?

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, thanks for asking that image. So we are on
all of the social media channels Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn
under the Regenerative World Quest, and so that's probably the
best way to follow along. They were posting every week
on different elements and YouTube. If you just go to

(47:07):
YouTube and type in the Regenerative World Quest has a
whole collection of videos, short videos from one minute to
maybe seven minutes that we've made on the Costa Rica
chapter and what we're doing here in Colorado. So that's
a great way to stay up to the content. I
do a monthly blog as well, which is on my
website for Bethlightconsulting dot com. And then the Regenerative World

(47:28):
Quest has its own website as well, so it's the
Regenerative World Quest dot com and you can kind of
see where our next quest sites are. You can read
more about the project, and then if you scroll all
the way down to the bottom of that page, there's
a contact me button and you can email me and
set up a meeting. I'd love to get to know
any of you listening out there, and love to have
you follow us along on the quest.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Brenna, thank you so much for your time today. It's
really been an inspiring conversation. I've enjoyed well.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Thank you for having me Mitch. I really think the
world of the work you do and love to stay
connected in the journey ahead.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
You've been listening to my conversation with Regenerative World quester
Brenna Simmons Saint Ange, and she's going to continue her
travels to regenerative communities for another couple of years, and
you can follow along at Bethlightconsulting dot com. Be the
Light Consulting is all one word, no space, no dash,
Bethlightconsulting dot com. Each of us is on a quest

(48:26):
if we choose to be toward a better world. One
of the challenges the regenerative sustainable economy faces relates to messaging.
There is, correctly, I think, a debate about the shape
of the future that we're building together. Many committed sustainability
advocates argue that the answer is simply a matter of
doing more with less, and while that is a truism
that applies to the typical person considering a purchase of

(48:49):
one among thirty to fifty different types of breakfast cereal
or deodorant. The reality is that people want more than
to just get by, so we have to find a
way to describe and and collectively achieve abundance. They want
a better world, and we've generally associated better with having
more for the past one hundred and fifty years. In

(49:10):
a sense, we've become locked in an iron mask of consumerism,
counting what we accumulate, no matter how much of it's junk,
instead of looking holistically at our lives to ask what
is the better choice that I can do more with,
whether that's choosing organically produced food, a durable sweater over
fast fashion, or choosing a form of transportation. Brenna's quest

(49:33):
is an opportunity to squarely look at the rampant consumerism,
and it's important to note here the potential for global
gentrification through the lens of our personal values. Are we
going to participate in that? Are we going to make
this a better world? She and her family are learning
to integrate into the places they visit, not just to
extract experience and resources without giving back, and that giving

(49:57):
back can come in many forms. You might visit cost
and choose to teach in that country, or contribute to
the preservation of small holder farms, or start a fair
trade coffee roaster that pays good wages to the migrants
who pick many of the beans that we sow savor.
Brenna mentioned that several of the communities that she visited
were in fact cults wrapped in the flag of sustainability,

(50:20):
just like many of the early sustainability goals declared by corporations,
only to be abandoned when the political winds changed. We
have to do more than put on a nice coat.
We have to actually change ourselves. You should subscribe to
Brenna's feed to hear more about the cults and those
genuinely sustainable communities that the family discovers. But let me
ask you to think about this as you read along.

(50:41):
Where does the excess, the abundance that Brenna described come from?
And I put it to you, it comes from within us.
It might be the labor or generosity I mentioned a
moment ago, but most of it comes from our creativity
and the love that we share with others and the planet.
We have plenty of that to give and the reward.
It is a flourishing world if we choose wisely with

(51:03):
a long view, one that looks, for instance, seven generations ahead.
As in the indigenous traditions, all of us are on journeys,
all of us face choices, and we're all looking for
what will make things better for our children, grandchildren and
the descendants that we'll never know. And they will look
back on this pivotal time in history and ask did

(51:23):
those people, those grandparents, great grandparents and ancestors of mine choose,
well did they do better? The resolution of our personal
quests lies far in the future, not at the moment
when we leave this world and count the piles of
stuff accumulated during our lives. So start your personal regenerative quest,

(51:43):
started at home, started in the kitchen, started in the yard.
Think about what we're doing and give back to this
planet and it will give us generations of value to come.
And I hope they'll take a moment to look at
the more than five hundred episodes of sustainability in your
ear that we produce and share them with your friends
and family. Writing review on your favorite podcast platform, folks,

(52:05):
will help your neighbors find us. You are the amplifier
that can spread more ideas to create less waste. So
please tell your friends, family, and coworkers. They can find
sustainability in your ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible,
or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer. Thank you
for your support. I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Earth nine

(52:27):
one one, and we will be back with another innovator
interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and let's all take care
of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green Day.