(Alejandra) Liora Adler
PINA Board Member since 2017
Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, in the village of Sto. Dgo. Ocotitlan near Tepoztlan, Morelos in Central Mexico.
Types of Permaculture Work:
Liora Adler has been deeply involved as a leader in ecovillage, permaculture, ecoversities, bioregional, ecosystem restoration and facilitation worknets for over thirty years. Gaia University, of which she is co-founder and co-president, is a pioneer in educational design, allowing learners (and unlearners) to discover and demonstrate grounded solutions to complex ecological and social problems through the integration of ecosocial theory and hands-on practice. It is founded on the Permaculture Ethics and its pedagogy is self-directed, project-based transformative action learning.
Web Sites and Affiliations:
Gaia University, Global Village Institute and the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)-USA. She is on the International Advisory Council for Ecosystem Restoration Camps and is a GEN-Elder. She and her husband are co-founders of the Ecoversitites Alliance.
Life Trajectory
Liora Adler was born in 1946 and became a visionary social actionist, educator, facilitator, mentor, event organizer, holistic nutritionist and dancer. Raised during the 60’s social movements in the US, she came to understand that protest alone was inadequate for making substantive societal changes. Consequently, throughout the 70’s and 80’s she explored supportive, purposeful community building that provided both for physical needs and the basic human need for belonging.
In 1982 Liora co-founded a thriving ecovillage, Huehuecoyotl, in central Mexico, and in 1996, a mobile ecovillage and training center that for 13 years, shared knowledge of ecological systems and regenerative living while activating ecosocial movements throughout Latin America.
Liora has been a global leader in the ecovillage movement, where she served on the Board of Directors of the Global Ecovillage Network and as a representative to the United Nations. She has spent most of her adult life in Mexico and other parts of Latin America where she also helped form a Women’s sewing cooperative and a men’s campesino collaborative. She is a fluent Spanish speaker and has significant cultural and socioeconomic sensitivities. She has organized courses, workshops, events and artistic activities for 100s of people, including farmers, indigenous peoples, and permaculture practitioners on 5 continents.
As co-founder and co-president of Gaia University, Liora has been intimately involved with its design and development. She also oversees operations, and mentors students and staff. Her feisty, outgoing nature, her capacity to negotiate for practical action in challenging situations and her resonance with people living both very simple and highly complex lives are key to the success of the project.
With her husband, permaculture designer Andrew Langford, she now lives in Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in Mexico, where, among other projects, they are working on watershed design and implementation on a valley scale
Along with her key work in Gaia University, a current vision is the creation of a road to cooperation and collaboration amongst the permaculture, ecovillage, indigenous, ecoversities, personal development and allied movements. With so much on her plate, these days Liora dances to the tune of “older and bolder”!