Doomer Optimism Episode 51 - SaraDay Evans w/ Dr. Josh Kearns and Jason Snyder
This episode of Doomer Optimism sees Jason Snyder (@cognazor) hanging out with two native children of Appalachian, returning guest/host Dr. Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia) and SaraDay Evans (@esaraday). What naturally starts as an interesting dissection of the tragi-magic quality to Appalachian living turns inevitably to SaraDay's amazing work with Accelerating Appalachia, a nature-based business accelerator that connects innovative businesses, investors and mentors who aligned with people, place and prosperity. Oh, and SaraDay is Wendell Berry's niece-in-law!
About SaraDay Evans
Sara Day Evans is the Founding Director for Accelerating Appalachia and Co-Founder of Prosperity Collective. She's a sixth generation Kentuckian, and has worked with communities and small businesses across the southeast for over 20 years. She’s served over 300 communities and small businesses in economic development, entrepreneurship and environmental protection and leveraged over $250M in funding in service to the southeast and Appalachian region. She was awarded a presidential commendation from Bill Clinton for her work in the health and livelihood of women living in Appalachian Kentucky through her clean water efforts.
With degrees in Geology/Hydrogeology and a background in water law, she was instrumental in developing Kentucky’s groundwater protection programs and later developed Kentucky’s first ongoing solid waste management fund, resulting in an 85% reduction in illegal dumping and a 25% increase in recycling. She served western North Carolina’s hardest hit counties by developing sustainable economy plans that fit with the people and place of the region and created North Carolina’s Green Economy Resources Directory. She’s particularly proud of the program she developed and implemented to install clean energy systems on farms in western NC’s high-unemployment counties while also training high school and community college students in clean energy installation.
In 2011, Sara Day co-founded the social enterprise Prosperity Collective and inspired by the textile, farming, forest products skills of Appalachians, the expanding world of social entrepreneurs and investing for good, she launched Accelerating Appalachia in 2012 to serve nature-based businesses in Appalachia and beyond.
About Dr. Josh Kearns
Josh is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.