Marta’s work focuses on fostering systems thinking for the design of sustainable regional economies. Before joining the Meadows Institute in November 2012, Marta has worked as a Research Professor for 10 years at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at 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. Marta has also been delighted to work with students and professionals in face-to-face, online classes, and in ateliers, hands-on travel courses to solve a sustainability issue over two weeks. A forest ecologist by training, over the years Marta has seen the redesign of the economic system as the leverage point to get to “unsustainability”.  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.