Planetwork Bios

Jim Fournier – Cofounder, Chairman & President
has three decades experience in sustainable systems design, renewable energy and information technology – a former industrial designer, entrepreneur, software developer and industrial ecologist; left MIT to found an industrial design firm; owned and operated an international consumer goods design and manufacturing company; and developed 3D software as a Geometry Partner with Silicon Graphics. He currently serves on the board of Buckminster Fuller Institute, Channel G Network and Threshold Foundation’s Sustainable Planet Grants Committee.

He recently exited Biochar Engineering Corp after five years as the leading entrepreneur in biochar – a carbon sequestering soil amendment – one of the only effective ways to remove net carbon from the atmosphere. Biochar increases soil fertility and has great promise for mine-land reclamation, the focus of Biochar Solutions Inc., a profitable spin-off where he serves as Chairman. biocharsolutions.com

Currently working on a narrative that situates energy technology within the context of biological evolution; Meta-Nature shows how and why our moment in history may represent a shift point at the dawn of a new phase of climax technology leading toward a plateau of long-term stability. metanature.org

Elizabeth Thompson - Cofounder & Board Member
Has been a pioneer in the New York and San Francisco art and culture scenes for over 15 years. Her work has centered on the creation, dissemination and synthesis of leading edge ideas, people, and networks of communities across disciplinary boundaries and media platforms including the worlds of information technology, sustainability, global change activism, digital media, art, architecture and design.

Prior to founding Planetwork in 1998, Elizabeth survived a prolonged immersive experience in conceptual art as Director of the internationally acclaimed John Gibson Gallery in New York (1986-1993), and as a founding member of the Obie Award-winning experimental theater company: Cucaracha Warehouse Theatre, where she worked as both a performing artist and creator/producer of their renowned Summer Performance Art series (1987-1995). While with John Gibson Gallery, she designed and produced exhibitions in New York and throughout Europe including Basel, Frankfurt, Cologne, Zurich, Geneva and Paris. Immediately prior to fleeing the hyper post-modern New York art world for California’s utopian highways, she managed the studio of the renowned political artists, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero. (1994-1996).

Lee Buric – Creative Director
Is Creative Director for Planetwork. An American filmmaker and video journalist whose work explores the discourse between art, theory, and activism, she has worked extensively as a television producer for several major US independent media outlets, notably Free Speech TV, the first independent, national progressive television network in the US, and Democracy Now, a digital media pioneer and the largest community media collaboration in the US. An independent media veteran and a student of experimental film, her work employs cinema-verite and non-narrative elements within the documentary genre. Her current project focuses on climate change as a social construct in a new film – "Climate of Denial." She is also a creative consultant in integrated social media and UI/UX.

Kaliya Hamlin – Network Director
Has been an active member of the Planetwork community for five years with her natural networking and community bridge-building capacity.

In 2003 Identity Commons hired Kaliya to evangelize on its behalf in multiple communities, partly because she was doing it already. Kaliya's persona as Identity Woman emerged in January 2004 as she continued to participate in the larger Identity 2.0 and "meta identity system" discussions. Currently, she works on behalf of the whole identity ecosystem. She co-produces and facilitates the Internet Identity Workshop.

She also designs and facilitates unconferences, participant driven conferences without pre-planned agendas, for professional technical communities. She has developed a reputation for designing extremely high quality interactive events that support communities getting things done together.

Kaliya came to the Bay Area from Vancouver, Canada to study at UC Berkeley, where she graduated with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on Political Economy and Human Rights. She also minored in Demography and Environmental Science Policy Management. Throughout college Kaliya played on the Canadian National Water Polo Team and won a Gold Medal at the 1999 Pan American Games. Her "inner geek" roots can be traced to winning the regional science fair and making it to the Canada Wide Science Fair in grades 7 and 9.

Michael Mell – WebMaster
Has designed and built web sites for Fortune 500 companies, artists, lawyers, Buddhists and many shades between. He prefers to work in the Open Source LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python). Michael is also involved in developing applications for i-names.