Catarina Mota
OPEN SOURCERER, TECHNOLOGIST, HUMANITIES SCHOLAR, FARMER

: : FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Marcin Jakubowski
Open Source Ecology
FARMER, SCIENTIST

Provides technical execution details and supporting construction equipment.

Bob Berkebile

Principal Emeritus, BNIM Architects

Provides subject matter expertise on integrated regenerative design, the Living Building Challenge and Resilient Community Systems.

Bob Berkebile is co-founder and principal of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri and a leading voice in the green building and resilient design community. In 1989, he founded the AIA Committee on the Environment and served as its initial chair. Bob was a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council and served on the national board in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was also part of the team that created the LEED rating system, and the Living Building Challenge. Bob’s work as an architect and thought leader in integrated, high-performance design and sustainable methodologies continues to increase the national and global momentum towards regenerative, triple bottom line solutions in our communities.

Alastair Parvin

Architect, WikiHouse

Alastair Parvin is a designer and civic entrepreneur based in London, UK. He is the co-founder of WikiHouse Foundation and a member of strategic design group 00. He is currently working on better housing systems, democratic cities & technology made by and for everyone. He also thinks, writes, speaks and advises on strategic design, housing policy and what the digital revolution means for cities, society, markets, sustainable development and our ability to tackle the most social, environmental and economic challenges of the 21st century.

Lesa Mitchell

Network for Scale

Provides support in the development of growth strategies, partnerships, and operational effectiveness of OBI

Lesa Mitchell has over twenty-five years of executive experience in enterprise technology design and implementation and as an entrepreneur.  As the VP Innovation and Networks at the Kauffman Foundation, she designed, implemented and scaled models focused on initiating new markets and recovering markets in support of economic growth. Lesa’s works with executives focused on scaling first in class for-profit and not-for-profit business models and is a collaborator at Instigating+Co. Lesa is board advisor of Modern Meadow, Neighborly, 8 Rivers Capital, CapLinked, Copia, Merian Ventures and Althea Foundation. She is also a Sr. Fellow at Milken Institute Faster Cures.

Cameron Herold

Management Consultant and Motivational Speaker

Provides coaching on growing a company rapidly while maintaining core values

Cameron Herold is a business coach and mentor to several companies, and a CEO coach to large corporations globally. He  is known around the world as the business growth guru. Cameron was an entrepreneur from day 1.  At age 21, he had 14 employees. By the age of 42, Cameron engineered 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s growth from $2 Million to $106 Million in revenue, and 3100 employees— and he did that in just six years. Cameron is also a powerful and effective speaker at Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer leadership events around the world. When Cameron steps off the stage, he doesn’t stop teaching.  He is the author of the global best selling business book Double Double – in its 7th printing and in multiple translations around the world. He is also the top-rated lecturer at EO/MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program.

Alicia Gibb

University of Colorado, Boulder

Provides expertise on developing and running an open source hardware business.

Alicia Gibb is an advocate for open hardware, researcher, and a hardware hacker. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), an organization to educate and promote building and using open source hardware, where she founded  the Open Hardware Summit and co-chaired the first two. She  also directs the BTU Lab (Blow Things Up) at CU Boulder, where she teaches in the areas of physical computing and information technology. She is a member of NYCResistor, where she has curated two international art shows. Her electronics work has appeared in Wired magazine, IEEE Spectrum, Hackaday and the New York Times. Alicia has worked within the open source hardware community since 2008.

Mitchell Joachim

Terreform ONE

Provides guidance on designing an autonomous infrastructure systems on the scale of  individual OBI homes as well as larger settlements 

Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D, Associate AIA, is a leader in ecological design and urbanism. He is a co-founder of Terreform ONE and Terrefuge, and is on the faculty at Columbia University and Parsons. Formerly he was an architect at Gehry Partners and Pei Cobb Freed, and he has been awarded the Moshe Safdie Research Fellowship. Joachim won the History Channel and Infiniti Design Excellence Award for the City of the Future, and Time Magazine‘s “Best Invention of the Year 2007” for his Compacted Car with MIT’s Smart Cities. His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published. He was chosen by Wired for “The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To.” Recently, he has been awarded a Fulbright grant.

Eric Toensmeier

Perennial Solutions

Provides expertise on designing useful plant and living ecosystems around a house

Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of Paradise Lot and Perennial Vegetables, and the co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. He is an appointed lecturer at Yale University, and an international trainer, presenting in English and Spanish in the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean. Eric has studied permaculture and useful plants of the world for over two decades. He managed an urban farm project for five years, ran a seed company, and co-developed a farm business training curriculum that is now used in eight US states and three Canadian provinces. Eric is currently writing Carbon Farming: a Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices.

Cat Johnson

Cat Johnson Content

Provides assistance on content strategy to align OBI communications and goals

Cat Johnson is a writer and content strategist helping collaborative spaces and organizations stand out with custom content creation and strategies. She works with coworking spaces, open organizations, community projects, nonprofits and collaborative alliances. She’s a regular contributor to Shareable and her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including Yes! Magazine, Mother Jones, Triple Pundit, UTNE Reader, GOOD and LaunchableLabs. More information and resources: The Freelance Cat

Gwynne Mhuireach

U. Oregon

Provides assistance on designing an outdoor house landscape that promotes a microbial environment for improving human health indoors

Gwynne Mhuireach is a Ph.D. candidate in Landscape Architecture, University of Oregoon, Eugene. She has an eclectic background that includes a rural farming upbringing, formal education in the “hard” sciences, entrepreneurial experience gained from founding and operating a dance studio, and an enduring passion for blending ecological and creative pursuits.  She works at the Energy Studies Building Laboratory; works well with a variety of people on different projects; and enjoys questioning the assumptions that contribute to our current energy problems.

Jeshua Lacock

3DTOPO Inc
ENGINEER, TECHNOLOGIST, ARTIST

Provides subject matter expertise on large format 3D Printer development and recycling.

Jeshua Lacock became infatuated with casting and recycling when he and his father built a charcoal fired furnace used to recycle aluminum. By the age of 19, Jeshua was the Supervisor of the Computer Education Center at Academy of Art University. After working for multiple Academy Award winner Phil Tippett at Tippet Studios, and earning his name in film credits in 1995, he has been self-employed. A career highlight was being invited to the White House where he had the honor of meeting President Barack Obama and the First Family. Jeshua has built numerous 3D printers, CNC machines and furnaces of all kinds. He is credited with first documenting the Lost PLA metal casting technique.

Matthieu Lietaert

COHOUSING DESIGNER, COOP-PLATFORM ACTIVIST, FILMMAKER

Provides subject matter expertise on communication and media.

Matthieu lives and recently co-built – without any developers – a 18 flats urban project in the heart of Brussels (Belgium). The project was designed by and with 30 adults + 15 kids, and it offers more than 600m2 of mutualized common spaces (kitchen, workshop, library, cars, garden, solar panels, etc). In 2007, he published for the Fellowship for International Communitya short DVD of his tour in 15 pioneer cohousing projects in the North of Europe. Matthieu holds a Ph.D. in Global Political Economy and he has directed films about corporate lobbying (2013) and about climate change (2015) for several EU broadcasters. He also teaches at the IE Business School in Madrid.

Yorik van Havre

uncreated.net
ARCHITECT, PROGRAMMER, OPEN-SOURCE

Provides assistance in using FreeCAD and generating BIM + IFC models.

Born in 1973 in Belgium, graduated in Architecture in 1995 at Institut Supérieur d’Architecture St-Luc in Brussels, Yorik already lived and worked in Belgium, Japan, USA, South Africa, Mali, and lives in Brazil since 2001 where he set up his own studio, uncreated.net. His experience, acquired in several architecture and engineering practices around the globe, includes a wide range of projects, from furniture design up to city planning. Yorik also already worked many times directly on construction yards, from mason to worksite management. Yorik is also one of the main developers of FreeCAD.

Dave Hakkens

Precious Plastic

Provides assistance in communicating the potential of the Open Building Institute in addressing the global housing crisis.

Dave graduated cum laude from the Design Academy in 2013 and a couple of years before that studied at the Sintlucas. While studying he did an internship in Milan and one with the guy with the big 3D printer.  Trained as a industrial designer, Dave also loves to build machinery and produce videos. His goal is simple: “try to make the world better by making things”. Whether it’s an inspirational video, machines to recycle plastic or a phone concept, he doesn’t really care. As long as it might push the world in a better direction, Dave is interested. He lives in Helmond, Netherlands,  and shares his workshop with friends. Find out all that he makes at http://davehakkens.nl 

Elijah Pearce

RRM Design Group
ARCHITECT

Provides assistance in navigating international building codes, engineering approvals, local ordinances, material and product certifications, and other industry standards of performance.

Elijah Pearce is a licensed architect and LEED accredited professional in the state of California. His experience spreads across multiple project types: single family homes, multifamily residential, civic, healthcare, educational, and institutional buildings. He has worked on a variety of award winning projects, and has served as a guest juror at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and invited speaker at the “Renewing the Campus” a national sustainability conference focusing on higher education. He is the co-author of “Life Cycle Considerations in Energy Conservation for Design of Low Income Housing” in Energy and Buildings: Efficiency, Air Quality and Conservation. He has also worked directly with manufactured home builders to analyze their existing production and identify opportunities to improve the efficiency and sustainability of their products. Elijah has a passion for green architecture, and is currently practicing in California under the strictest energy codes in the United States.

Michel Dhoore

OPEN SOURCE SOCIETY PROPONENT. JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF SOME.

Provides expertise on Interactive 3D web visualizations.

Over the years working in several sectors from printing, stage building, as theater technician and as a entrepreneur / contractor mainly in ecological insulation gives me a broad technical insight. Not so keen on schooling but very keen about learning and education (don’t confuse them) the internet has given me and humanity as a whole a tool to learn and share at an unprecedented rate. The relatively new 3D web possibilities has even enhanced this and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The last two years I’ve been focussing on 3D web visualization as a learning tool only using Open Source software. On my website 3dcontent.be you can find some of the results. My final goal is building all kinds of stuff, not only virtual, in a totally Open Source workshop.

Marc Zorn

Vision Launch Development Group
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST

Provides expertise on crowdfunding and social media marketing

Marc Zorn spent 20 years starting, owning and operating several businesses, and has recently focused his efforts on business development. In 2013 he founded Vision Launch Development Group which helps entrepreneurs with all phases of business development. Vision Launch is primarily focused on social entrepreneurs. Marc is a strong proponent of the emerging peer to peer economy, crowdfunding, open source and decentralization. Marc is dedicated to the advancement of these trends.

Walt Pyle

Hion Solar
HYDROGEN SYSTEMS ENGINEER

Provides expertise on building a solar hydrogen system that can be used for night time power storage, and which can also be used for cooking. 

Walt Pyle is a hydrogen systems engineer at H-Ion Solar Inc, a California corporation specializing in direct solar water-splitting and direct solar carbon dioxide reduction for solar fuels production. He has developed a home scale solar hydrogen system with storage, which he currently uses at home.

Kostas Latoufis

Rural Electrification Research Group
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

Provides expertise on building small wind and pico hydro turbines suitable for home use. 

Kostas Latoufis is an electrical and electronic engineer with a specialization in off-grid renewable energy systems. He is a researcher in the Smart Grids Research Unit (SmartRUE) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and is currently pursuing his PhD on open source hardware locally manufactured small wind turbine technology. He has co-founded the Rural Electrification Research Group (RurERG) of the NTUA which is an interdisciplinary research group providing open source technical solutions on small wind and pico-hydro systems for rural energy access and implements international development projects in Central America and East Africa. He is a co-founder of Nea Guinea, a non-profit organization which practices popular education and permaculture design for developing the self-reliance and resilience of people and communities in Greece. With Nea Guinea he has a taught many design and hands-on courses in renewable energy systems, and has installed several solar, wind and hydro powered electricity systems for rural projects. He is a member of the executive board of the Wind Empowerment association, a global network for the promotion of locally manufactured small wind turbines.

Bill Ottman

Minds
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTIVIST

Provides expertise on building an open source social network to promote participation and collaboration for the Open Building Institute. 

Bill Ottman is co-founder and CEO of Minds, an open source and encrypted social networking platform. He is also a writer, artist and freedom of information activist driven to rapidly evolve to a global open source and sustainable infrastructure. Bill contributes as an advisor at Code To Inspire, fellow at Boston Global Forum and earned a B.A. in English and Music from the University of Vermont. https://minds.com/ottman

William Bombardier

Open Source Aquaponics
ECOLOGICAL AQUAPONICS DESIGNER AND RESEARCHER

Provides expertise on principle-based systems and architecture for ecological aquaponics.

Emmanuel Puybaret

Sweet Home 3D
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

Provides technical advice on Sweet Home 3D and its application for OBI purposes.

After studying Aeronautics Engineering, Computer Science and Industrial Design in France, Emmanuel started to use his programming skills in various domains, with a preference for the development of user interfaces. In 1999, he launched eTeks to take advantage of his rising expertise in Java, writing various open source libraries, teaching programming and writing books. In 2005, he started to write Sweet Home 3D, an interior design free software which became very popular around the world with the help of a growing enthusiastic community. This application was chosen by Open Building Institute to let users assemble modules and design their structure.

Christopher Reinhart

OPEN SOURCE DESIGNER

Provides guidance on construction details, documentation and educational materials.

Christopher served as the Architecture Lead and Construction Manager for Open Source Ecology during the Microhouse 1 and 2 projects, which he summarized in a TEDxBloomington talk in 2014.  He practices residential design in Indiana with a focus on small, green homes as well as buildings for permaculture farms. He is a Volunteer Ambassador for the International Living Future Institute and recently earned the distinction of Indiana’s first Living Future Accredited Professional. As a scholar, Chris has been honored with many awards, including five Indiana Architectural Foundation Pinnacles of Excellence awards, the AIA Henry Adams Certificate, and the ARCC Bruce King Medal for excellence in architectural research, and he was selected as a Udall Scholar in 2012. He is a graduate assistant at Ball State University where he is completing his M. Arch degree. His research explores the intersection of open knowledge sharing, web-based platforms for collaboration, and new business models for architecture firms to broaden access to regenerative architectural services. You can follow Chris and his work on Twitter and Instagram at @_chrisreinhart.