Who We Are

photo of a young woman smiling, hand on the wall of a strawbale house, truth window evidentAlyson Ewald is Director of The Altai Project. After serving as Program Coordinator for the Russian Environmental Partnership Program at Sacred Earth Network from 2000-2003, she helped launch The Altai Project with former Director Susan Cutting. Alyson received a BA in English from Bates College in 1990. From 1991 to 1999 she lived in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, and Croatia, organizing educational exchanges and environmental activist training programs. She spent a year with ISAR in Kiev and two years in Budapest at the Energia Klub, where she initiated a training and internship program for young safe-energy activists from across Eastern Europe. Alyson is fluent in Russian and has traveled extensively in Eastern and Western Europe as a freelance organizer, trainer, interpreter, and exchange group leader. She serves on the Board of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage and recently cofounded Red Earth Farms, the community where she currently resides.

Jennifer Castner has been Project Coordinator at The Altai Project since June 2006. Prior to this she served as Director of the Russia Program at San Francisco-based Pacific Environment.young woman near a vista There she oversaw an $800,000 annual operating budget, managed a team of five staff, conducted fundraising and reporting, and was responsible for a small grants program to Russian environmental NGOs (averaging $350,000 in grants annually). Prior work history includes work as a Program Coordinator and Vocational Counselor for Russian and Bosnian refugees, Operations Director for Heart to Heart International Children’s Medical Alliance, and Program Associate at American Councils. She lived and studied at the Moscow Energy Institute in 1992 and lived and worked in Kiev in 1993. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Russian language and linguistics in 1993 from Bryn Mawr College. She is fluent in Russian and has traveled extensively in Siberia (including Altai) and the Russian Far East, Ukraine, and Europe. 

Our Advisory Committee:

Bill Pfeiffer, Sacred Earth Network in Petersham, MA
David Gordon, Pacific Environment in San Francisco, CA 
Enid Schreibman, Center for Safe Energy/EII in Berkeley, CA
Fran Macy, Center for Safe Energy/EII in Berkeley, CA
Gary Cook, Baikal Watch/EII in San Francisco, CA
Susan Cutting, Student Conservation Association in Acworth, NH

We are a project of Earth Island Institute.

Earth Island Institute’s (EII) mission: Life on earth is imperiled by human degradation of the biosphere. Earth Island Institute develops and supports projects that counteract threats to the biological and cultural diversity that sustain the environment. Through education and activism, these projects promote the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the Earth.

EII was founded in 1982 by veteran environmentalist David Brower. It fosters the efforts of creative individuals by providing organizational support in developing projects for the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the global environment. EII provides activists the freedom to develop program ideas, supported by services to help them pursue those ideas, with a minimum of bureaucracy. Earth Island's Project Network consists of more than 30 projects worldwide (see the Project Directory for program and contact information).