Marta Ceroni
Gund Affiliate
Co-Director, Academy for Systems Change
Donella Meadows Institute
BIO
Marta Ceroni has been interested throughout her life in rebalancing the relationship between humans and nature. This inquiry has taken multiple forms: talking to trees as a child; receiving a doctorate in forest ecology; teaching about and researching economies that prioritize communities and nature; activism and engagement on clean energy; building community cohesion through movement and dance; and creative writing. Marta co-directs the Academy for Systems Change, a nonprofit that supports organizations and communities in shaping more equitable and sustainable futures. She is also a facilitator of Telling My Story, a nonprofit that uses the expressive arts to build community and strengthen voices across social and cultural divides and stigmas. Before her current positions, Marta worked as a Research Professor for 10 years at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. There she taught and did research on how nature contributes to people’s wellbeing through services such as water purification by wetlands, or climate regulation by forests. Her international consulting with the United Nations Development Programme has quantified ecosystem services in monetary terms to build capacity for local management of natural assets. In 2021 she published her first novel L’ Anatra Sposa (The Wood Duck) set in her ancestral home of the Po River Valley, in northern Italy. Besides her work, Marta gets energized by dance, accordion playing, native Italian cooking, and the experience of the wilderness and friendship in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire. Her current home is on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River, USA.
Bio
Marta Ceroni has been interested throughout her life in rebalancing the relationship between humans and nature. This inquiry has taken multiple forms: talking to trees as a child; receiving a doctorate in forest ecology; teaching about and researching economies that prioritize communities and nature; activism and engagement on clean energy; building community cohesion through movement and dance; and creative writing. Marta co-directs the Academy for Systems Change, a nonprofit that supports organizations and communities in shaping more equitable and sustainable futures. She is also a facilitator of Telling My Story, a nonprofit that uses the expressive arts to build community and strengthen voices across social and cultural divides and stigmas. Before her current positions, Marta worked as a Research Professor for 10 years at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. There she taught and did research on how nature contributes to people’s wellbeing through services such as water purification by wetlands, or climate regulation by forests. Her international consulting with the United Nations Development Programme has quantified ecosystem services in monetary terms to build capacity for local management of natural assets. In 2021 she published her first novel L’ Anatra Sposa (The Wood Duck) set in her ancestral home of the Po River Valley, in northern Italy. Besides her work, Marta gets energized by dance, accordion playing, native Italian cooking, and the experience of the wilderness and friendship in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire. Her current home is on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River, USA.