About
Pandora Thomas is a passionate global citizen who works as a caregiver for her mother and globally as a teacher, writer, designer, and speaker with over 25 years of experience. Pandora's work emphasizes the benefits of applying ecological principles to social design. She is currently a designer, teacher, and facilitator at several permaculture and ecological design schools and programs.
FULL BIO
"The earth is my employer."
Pandora Thomas is a passionate global citizen who works as a caregiver, teacher, farmer, designer and speaker. Her work emphasizes the benefits of applying ecological principles to social design and reconnecting humans to our non-human kin.
As a presenter both domestically and internationally, she has given keynotes and lectures on topics ranging from designing mutually beneficial diversity strategies, collaborative design for community driven planning, social justice, youth and women's leadership, social entrepreneurship, permaculture and sustainability. She has designed curriculum for and taught groups all over the world as diverse as Iraqi and Indonesian youth to men serving in San Quentin and men and women returning home from incarceration.
For the last 10 years her earth service has included being a carepartner for her mother who was diagnosed with alzheimers; co-founding the Black Permaculture Network; working for 6 years with Toyota to design and serve as a coalition member of the Toyota Green Initiative, which supported African Americans in understanding the benefits of adopting sustainable lifestyles; co-designing, teaching with and directing Pathways to Resilience-a permaculture and social entrepreneur training program that worked with men and women returning home after incarceration; working with the Urban Permaculture Institute in Marin City supporting a People’s Planning Process, which supports community members to assess and design strategies for their own resilience; and working as an advisor, co-designer and facilitator with Women’s Earth Alliance’s Grassroots Accelerator Program. Her lifelong commitment to honoring ancestral legacies of earth stewardship and centering the contributions of people of African Ancestry in reclaiming our shared earth care journeys is culminating in her most recent gift to the planet, founding EARTHseed Permaculture Center and Farm, the first Afro Indigenous permaculture farm in Sonoma County. EARTHseed’s farming and centers programming will elevate the earth stewarding contributions and legacy of peoples of African ancestry throughout the Diaspora.
She is also currently a co-owner of the collectively run permaculture design firm The Urban Permaculture Institute and a Senior Climate Innovation Fellow with the Movement Strategy Centers Climate Innovation Team.
Thomas has studied four languages and lived and worked in over twelve countries and her other achievements include being featured in the films The Future of Energy and Inhabit, presenting at Tedx Denver and SF, and being awarded internships and fellowships to the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, Green For All, the Bronx Zoo and the Applied Research Center.
Her writing includes a children’s book, various curricula and a manual entitled "Shades of Green" for individuals wanting to teach green building to youth. Pandora studied at Columbia and Tufts University and with several permaculture and ecological design programs.
When she is not working you can find her spending time with her at EARTHseed with her beloved mother, dogs, pigs and cats, thrifting, watching her favorite movies, learning how to transform orchards into food forests or in the redwoods frolicking!
Listen to Interviews with Pandora