Mother, entrepreneur, eco-feminist, somatic therapist, solutionary …

Laura M. Ridenour (she/her) is a Mother, consultant, writer, cultural design strategist, fundraiser, and certified coach with 20+ years in the nonprofit sector and a lifetime in food movements.

Laura has extensive experience in marketing and community engagement, beginning in her teen years as an environmental activist, and events planner, and helped to grow her family’s organic food business. For over a decade she focused on policy solutions, domestic food insecurity, and circular economy development with hundreds of farm, restaurant and food-based businesses including running a successful business incubator. Laura founded the now state-wide EatLocalFirst.org campaign, and food policy councils and campaigns outside of Washington. She co-founded the Farm Fund’s Revolving Loan, and was an initiating force behind the Whatcom Food Network, which established a food policy council and an innovative 10-year food system plan. Laura is the co-author of the 8th edition of the 196-page Washington State Small Farm Direct Marketing Guide. She has served on six boards of directors, and regularly serves on grants review committees, such as for WSDA’s capital infrastructure grants. As an entrepreneur and fractional philanthropy director, Laura is a member of the Pacific Northwest Grant Writing Association, and has worked with more than 16 clients throughout the West.

Laura is adept at public speaking, holding space for group process and facilitating practices for inclusion, and power sharing, such as liberating structures (LS design) in online and in-person formats, and in another example, bringing holocracy and consent-based governance to the establishment of the North American Food Systems Network, a project of Cornell University.

Laura has a M.A. in Sociology of Food and Agriculture with a focus on qualitative methods, adult transformational experiences and human dimensions of disaster and recovery for vulnerable populations, as well as a B.A. in Food Systems and Social Change. She also holds certificates and hands-on experience in grant writing and fundraising, behavioral economics and marketing, ecological horticulture and organic farming, as well as in Integrative Somatic Trauma Healing Therapy, Mind-Body Coaching, and is a professional Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner.

MISSION STATEMENT

Helping people build attention and capacity, practice resilience, and center equity so we can transform the world.

WORK WITH LAURA

My ideal clients are self-identified leaders who are interested in the body as an ecology that has innate medicine, and any person or team interested in working together toward community liberation and embodied joy.