This program supports earth-based leaders
we are partnering for regenerative solutions in our beloved berkshires
Join our yearlong community-of-practice to create regenerative solutions in the Berkshires. The Climate Leadership Journey fosters deep relationships through shared learning, indigenous wisdom, and strategic collaboration. As part of this cohort, you'll develop the awareness, skills, and partnerships needed to lead transformative climate initiatives in our Berkshires bioregion.
With a structured, year-long program involving retreats, online learning, and peer support, you’ll join a community of leaders committed to regenerative, bioregional climate solutions.
Together, we’ll nurture the vision, projects and initiatives that are needed to respond to our beloved community's most pressing challenges.
Why is this work needed?
We are facing ECO-Anxiety due to convergent crises across all sectors of our community and bioregion
In response, we are establishing deep partnerships to work towards bioregional climate resilience and stability.
In 2024, we launched the inaugural cohort of deeply committed change-makers & organizations in the Berkshires and neighboring regions to connect and initiate projects for bioregional climate stabilization through a year-long cohort journey. In 2025, we are growing the coalition that we’ve begun to build, and we want you to join us!
Our Guiding Principles to Address Eco-Anxiety through Collective Action:
DEEP LISTENING AND TRUST: Change flows through relationships at the speed of trust.
EMBODIED LEADERSHIP: Commitment to core values leads to lasting change initiatives.
RELATIONAL SYSTEMS-THINKING: Multi-stakeholder partnerships elevate everyone’s results.
BREAKTHROUGH ACTION INITIATIVES: Leaders learn by doing.
We are making a conscious choice to do everything in our power to create a viable future for the generations to come.
Our Approach
The AVF Leadership Cohort brings together a organizational leaders & community changemakers who are ready to invest in:
Relational Infrastructure – building trust and long-term partnership across sectors
Inner & Outer Transformation – integrating personal development with systems-level impact
Place-Based Solutions – rooting change efforts in the ecology, culture, and needs of our bioregion
Through seasonal in-person retreats, monthly virtual circles, peer learning, and facilitated dialogue, we create the conditions for meaningful collaboration, aligned action, and shared leadership.
Who It’s For
This Cohort is designed for organizational leaders, innovators, and community changemakers who:
Represent an organization, business, community initiative, or public institution
Are actively engaged in work that contributes to climate resilience, cultural healing, or social transformation
Are ready to collaborate, listen deeply, and co-create with others beyond their immediate network
We welcome participants from across sectors—education, arts, local government, wellness, environmental advocacy, indigenous leadership, health care, and more.
Why Now
We are living in a decisive moment. While extractive systems continue to dominate, a new possibility is emerging—grounded in reciprocity, interdependence, and courage. The AVF Leadership Cohort exists to amplify this possibility through a culture of partnership, rooted in the values and relationships that will allow us to thread the needle and navigate the path forward.
This is our time to weave a stronger fabric of connection, capacity, and care—for our communities, our land, and future generations.
we can’t do this alone.
Apply today to save your spot in the 2026 Bioregional Partners Circle
What Is the Rhizosphere?
In ecological terms, the rhizosphere is the narrow region of soil surrounding and influenced by plant roots. This is no ordinary dirt. It is a teeming underground network—a relational zone of microbes, fungi, minerals, and enzymes constantly exchanging nutrients, signals, and support. Through this web, trees and plants communicate, nourish one another, and adapt to their environment in real time.
The rhizosphere is not just a place of survival—it is where regeneration begins.
In The AVF Leadership Cohort, this ecology becomes metaphor, method, and practice. Participants come together over the course of a year to engage in “social biomimicry” of this fertile zone: a dynamic, co-evolving space where relationships are nourished, partnerships are formed, and new systems of care and resilience take root.
This initiative began in 2024, and was formerly entitled the Climate Leadership Cohort Journey. The name The AVF Leadership Cohort emerged through the process of sitting in circle together and witnessing this multi-dimensional regenerative culture of relationships that we are experiencing and co-creating. It became clear that we needed a name that reflected the fullness of what we are doing - that is focused on climate change as part of a holistic process of building long-term partnerships towards regenerative culture.