The Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture: Board of Directors
The board of directors for the Center for Sustainable & Cooperative Culture (501c3) and Dancing Rabbit Land Trust (501c2) oversees financial development and strategic planning for our non-profit in conjunction with the Dancing Rabbit membership.
Alis Yoder
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Rutledge, MO
Having grown up baling hay on a forty acre farm in Iowa, Alis subscribes to a simpler form of sustainability. He studied physics, then history, then English at Macalester University before reexamining his trajectory and ultimately moving to Dancing Rabbit in 2010, where he now studies wood, clay, and village design. He has constructed two homes at Dancing Rabbit and continues to contribute to the growing database of alternative building technologies of cob, earthbag, strawbale, timberframing, and subterranean construction. He is specifically interested in designing the “in-between”– spaces where buildings, people, and the outdoors converge. He presently works around the rural Midwest, conducting soil samples to facilitate improved agricultural resource management.
Karen Gillooly
Director of Programs for Family Connections – Cleveland, OH
Stephen Shapiro
Turin, Italy
Stephen grew up in Los Angeles, CA and, after living in the Midwest for ten or so years, has recently moved with his wife to Turin, Italy (where she is from) and there they have a young baby. Between 2010 and 2018 Stephen spent about five years living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Stephen has studied and/or worked in photography, writing, real estate, education, environmental canvassing, and other fields. He now teaches middle school in Turin, Italy and tries to integrate all he has learned from Dancing Rabbit and elsewhere, and hopes to pass it on to the next generation.
Sue Ann Kortkamp
Foundation Executive Director of OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of IL (Retired) – Illinois
Sue Ann Kortkamp graduated with a BS in Biology from the University of Illinois. She retired in 2008 after a 23 year career in health care fundraising. Prior to that time, she also worked for the Tazewell County Health Dept as their first environmental sanitarian and served for 12 years on the Council of the City of Pekin. Currently, she serves on the board of The Dirksen Congressional Center and the MS Council of Central Illinois. During retirement, Sue Ann enjoyed helping students with their reading skills and helped found the Pekin Outreach Initiative which provides weekend snack packs to all students who are food insecure; as well as helps feed the homeless through local food pantries and church feeding programs.
Zach Rubin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lander University – South Carolina
Zach Rubin is a Midwesterner displaced to the South, trying to learn a whole new group of trees and bugs while working as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lander University. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of Missouri and is working on some other, higher degree in loving the Earth. In 2015, he lived at DR for eight months. This led him to write his dissertation, “My Year Pooping in a Bucket” about the experience, as well as to publish several journal articles using DR as a case study for social movement activity. He also sits on the board for the Communal Studies Association. In his spare time he likes to practice carpentry and gardening.
Brenda Van Gelder
CPA & Senior Vice President, Finance for the Arizona Science Center
Brenda was introduced to Dancing Rabbit when she and her family attended a visitors’ session in 2017. It was a transformative experience for them, and she is honored to be able to contribute to the organization’s mission through service on the Board of Directors.
Brenda graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Accountancy in 2000 and obtained a CPA license from the Arizona State Board of Accountancy in 2004. She worked as an auditor in public practice for seven years performing audit, review,and compilation engagements for privately held companies. Since leaving public accounting in 2007, Brenda has held various accounting and finance roles: Revenue Analyst for a medical transportation company, Controller then CFO for a fundraising company, CFO for a health and safety consulting company, and most recently as head of Finance for state education and culture institution. Additionally, from 2012 to 2018, Brenda served on the Board of Directors at an Arizona based non-profit organization that provides free out-of-school programs for youth.
Brenda is currently employed as the Senior Vice President of Finance at the Arizona Science Center, a non-profit organization that seeks to inspire, educate and engage curious minds through science. She lives in Chandler with her husband, Charles. Brenda and Charles have four adult children and one grandchild.
River Abel
Toledo, Ohio
River grew up in South and North Carolina and has lived in Northern Ohio since 2018. They currently live in a queer collective in Toledo, OH and do a lot of event planning and facilitation with a focus on conflict engagement, group process, and non-hierarchical collectivizing of resources in the Upper Midwest. They have attended the visitor program and WEXed at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage; they also coordinated a speaking tour for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage which kicked off in spring of 2023. They are frequently on the road cooking for Food not Bombs or calling contra dances in the midwest and eastern so-called United States.
Dylan Linet
Minneapolis, MN
Dylan has lived in intentional community his entire life. Growing up in a multigenerational family with his mom, sister, grandparents, and often cousins he learned to love having people around to share fun, food, and work. In college he lived in the Farm House cooperative at Carleton College, assisting with house meetings, event planning, and meal prep. After living at Dancing Rabbit for a year after graduating college, he now lives in Minneapolis and works in Housing Justice.