Kimberly Callas

Kimberly Callas originally began her work in sustainability by moving to Maine with her family, determined to find ways to live sustainably and independent of foreign oil. Together, she and her husband built an in-ground, off-the-grid home and co-founded a sustainability institute called Newforest. This institute provided opportunities for research and education in sustainability to a broad range of the community, including school children, energy auditors, and permaculture gardeners. Callas and her husband were guided by the belief that “to restore to the human community its ability to see itself as nature, embedded within the larger landscape, is a fundamental and indispensable act of environmental restoration.” In other words, the recognition of how intertwined our existence as humans is with nature is a vital part of allowing us to live with nature, rather than from it. Seeing ourselves as nature “allows us to act more often in concert with nature, creating in both the built environment and natural worlds systems that would allow the human community to meet its needs in ways that promote sustainable ecological health” (Read et al.).