MYRIEM LE FERRAND
Work Story, Expertise and Projects
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. – Edward Everett Hale
Work Story
Myriem does this and that … and, she continues to think outside the box about ways we can orient for a better future.
Her expertise builds on study and practice in environmental economics. She translates analytical insights into the domain of group decision-making. With over 30 years of experience in hands on problem-solving in a range of settings, she is poised to present a new strategy for our times. Her aptitudes rest in perceiving patterns and building new pathways for a better future.
Myriem’s professional life began in Boulder, Colorado where she raised her son, also a participatory researcher. Since 2010, Myriem spent considerable time working in the Northwest, New Mexico and the Western Slope of Colorado. She visited and worked with natural building collectives, organic farms and in retail. It was not an easy life, but her experience with every day survival in a changing American economy underpins new found insights. In this time, she has refined the scope of the Institute and is working with a smaller Board of Directors.
Since the mid 1990s, her interest in participatory action research and mediation have lead her to coordinate the Animas Watershed Partnership and write a regional planning backgrounder in the southwest. This “field guide” served to address the fundamentals of reconciling hydraulic fracturing, coal-fired electric production and outdoor recreation in the southwest. From these experiences and others working overseas in participatory development, she formulated her approach to eliciting real local input in a way that could reconcile a wide range of disputes. She has written for the Association of Conflict Resolution – Environment Sector, and more.
Of note, Myriem resigned from a position with a prominent electric utility data service in 1993 over the question of cap and trade for carbon. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 led to a significant shift in sourcing coal and in particular sourcing from mines served by a railroad on the oldest organic farm in Colorado.
In her position as Senior Project Specialist, she was the first person to calculate the emission allowances for the prototypical sulfur dioxide markets. She advanced GIS based display strategies which comprehension of management information. Mapping was particularly useful in assessing shifts in bulk power markets in the mid 1990s. Remember Enron, anyone? Needless, to say – there had to be a better way to make public decisions affecting local people and whole economies. How to reconcile differences and get local input? Ah, now that is an interesting question.
Testimonials
[testimonial_view id=2]Coming Soon ∴ Social Fieldwork Projects
A list of projects with brief description. Once we are fully funded, this section of the member profiles will include clickable links to a repository of fieldwork protocols, tools, lessons learned and takeaway. We also plan to provide parallel resource for communities to share information to support their goals and objectives through social fieldwork.