Maren Van Nostrand is a highly skilled facilitator, planner, researcher, and educator. For over 25 years, she has worked within communities to help them discover, clarify, and define what is important to their health and development--processes that involves people working toward the identification and preservation of special community places and the traditions that take place within them. She's passionate about connecting people with each other and with their precious shared places and resources, for ultimately healthier and more sustainable community living. 

 

Maren is a big picture thinker with experience in cultural/natural resource management, community planning/organizing, and environmental review/law (SEPA/NEPA). She has written chapters of comprehensive growth management and mitigation plans, conducted cultural research for the basis of community center designs and grants, and facilitated meetings, workshops and classes on a broad range of topics. 

 

Maren has worked on many levels of community: private or non-profit organizations, local, regional and federal governments. Her experience has taken her from natural resource planning for King County, to cultural planning for FEMA Region IX and X in Pacific NW and Saipan and Guam, to shoreline planning for the City of Sammamish, and more. 

 

In 2006, Maren created Soundfalls, a community involvement company focused on music education, performance, and stories. This included coaching piano and percussion, directing ensembles in schools, facilitating workshops, performing at Benaroya Hall, and more. Soundfalls is expanding to include community history and identity, and community research and decision-making. 

 

Maren is an expedition kayaker, canoer, and adventure traveller, outdoor educator and guide, with thousands of miles covered on land and water, both solo and in groups, as leader and as friend. Read more about one of her adventures in Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage.