BOARD OF DIRECTORS

As a fiscally sponsored project of the Good Work Institute (GWI), the governance and fiduciary responsibility for Alliance for a Viable Future (AVF) resides with the GWI Board of Directors. This includes financial oversight, quarterly and annual reporting, compliance with charitable giving regulations, and ensuring adherence to nonprofit accountability standards. If you’d like to see a list of GWI’s Board of Directors, click here.

ADVISORY CIRCLE

The Advisory Circle plays a vital role in offering support, insight, mentorship, and guidance for leadership development, strategic direction, and program design for our core staff.

Jake Singer serves as the Alliance for a Viable Future’s Spiritual Advisor. He is a Dine Navajo Medicine Man, Sun Dance Chief, Ceremonial Leader and decorated Vietnam Veteran; and he has been supporting AVF for over ten years. He conducts many traditional ceremonies for his community and has been working for twenty-plus years on bringing awareness to support Native American Veterans, as the Commander of Walk with the Warriors, an advocacy and education organization for Native American Veterans. In that role, he walked across the entire continental United States and has held traditional ceremonies in Washington DC to bring awareness to this issue.

He helped to introduce a Bill into the House of Representatives, proposed by the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, Deb Holland, to officially establish November 7th as a Federally-recognized Native American Veteran’s Day holiday.

JOAN DWYER
Leadership & Strategy Coaching

Joan Dwyer is founder of All That Matters, a "little yoga studio with a big vision" that has grown, since 1995, into the largest nonresidential holistic center in New England. More than 60 weekly yoga classes, workshops, a retail store, and health-care services draw 1,000 visitors a week.

As a strategic consultant, Dwyer brings decades of holistic education and business experience to empowering teachers, practitioners, and yoga studios to succeed. She also shares her expertise on radio, television, at the Yoga Alliance and Mind-Body Conferences, and at other venues.

Joan Dwyer teaches “The Business of Yoga” as a three-day program at many yoga teacher trainings.

Beth Mills, PhD is a Conservation Educator and Consultant. She recently retired as Director of Conservation at the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC). She brings 20 years of experience working with communities on land use and sustainable, growth, public open space, land and water conservation.

Beth is an experienced facilitator and public speaker, focusing on consensus building, working with diverse communities, and has had success with policy advocacy.

She brings 16 years planning experience; including community, strategic, and conservation, planning, open space acquisition and management planning, 10+ years experience as project lead on acquisition of both conservation easements / restrictions and fee title with accredited land trusts in New Mexico and New York, 4+ years experience as the supervisor of 7 person land protection team for land, acquisition and management, one year administrative experience as Executive Director of an accredited land trust.

BETH MILLS
Conservation Educator and Consultant

THOMAS LINZEY, Esq.
Rights of Nature Legal Strategy

Thomas Linzey serves as Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. He is the co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and is widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary “community rights” movement which has resulted in the adoption of hundreds of municipal laws across the United States. He also sits on the Board of Advisors of the New Earth Foundation.

Linzey is a graduate of Widener Law School and a three-time recipient of the law school’s public interest law award. He has been a finalist for the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award, and is a recipient of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union’s Golden Triangle Legislative Award. He is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania, and is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. District Court for the Western and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania.

Linzey is the author of Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community (Gibbs-Smith 2009), the author of On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability (PM Press 2016), and the co-author of We the People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States (PM Press 2016). He was a co-host of Democracy Matters, a syndicated public affairs radio show broadcast from KYRS in Spokane, Washington. He was featured in Leonardo DiCaprio and Tree Media’s film 11th Hour and We the People 2.0 (Official Selection of the Seattle International Film Festival), assisted the Ecuadorian constitutional assembly in 2008 to adopt the world’s first constitution recognizing the independently enforceable Rights of Nature, and is a frequent lecturer at conferences across the country.

Linzey’s work has been featured widely, including in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and the Nation magazine. In 2007, he was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “Top Ten Revolutionaries,” and he was named one of the top 400 environmentalists of the last 200 years in the two-volume encyclopedia, American Environmental Leaders (3rd Ed. Grey House Publishing 2018). He is currently working on a new book, “Modern American Democracy (and other fairy tales)” (forthcoming, Spring 2021).

Maureen Walsh is an international visionary artist, energy guide, and meditation teacher whose work spans public art, mixed media installations, and textiles crafted with natural dyes. With a background in fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Maureen’s artistic journey has been shaped by her travels around the world and deep personal healing experiences. Her creations are inspired by diverse cultures, yogic practices, and the magic of life’s transformative moments. Through her art, she connects to the vibrational energy of the world, offering both visual and healing experiences that inspire connection, growth, and reflection.