Team - The Resilience Hub

The Resilience Hub Permaculture Design Courses (PDCs) and Advanced Permaculture Design Courses (APDCs) are facilitated by Kate Wallace of the Resilience Hub and Jesse Labbe-Watson of Midcoast Permaculture. Lisa Fernandes has been instrumental in the design and implementation of the last 20 PDCs hosted by the Resilience Hub and will continue to serve as a guest facilitator and adviser.

Every PDC and APDC also features a range of guest professionals from around our region to round out and deepen your learning opportunities. The guest lineup varies from course to course depending on location, guest availability, etc. Below you will find information on our core team and most common guest professionals!

Lead Facilitators

Jesse Labbe-Watson came to permaculture by way of the movements for social andenvironmental justice. His first introduction to the concept was in a convergence space during the WTO ministerial meetings in Seattle 1999. After a brief apprenticeship in natural building at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, Jesse formally studied permaculture with Charles and Julia Yelton of Humustacia Permaculture Gardens. He graduated from their Advanced PDC in October 2008, with Lisa Fernandes as part of the teaching team. He has gone on to start a permaculture landscape design and construction firm in the Midcoast area. He has designed and built systems for private residents, market gardens, farmers and non-profit organizations since 2009. He was a principal logistics coordinator for the 2010 and 2014 Northeast Regional Permaculture Convergence hosted at the MOFGA fairgrounds. He currently serves as president of the board of PAN – the Permaculture Association of the Northeast. Since 2012 he has partnered with The Resilience Hub to offer Permaculture Design Certification courses in Maine and Boston. Jesse brings an artist’s paintbrush, a philosopher’s pedantry, a tracker’s attention to detail and a holy fool’s comedic relief to the company he keeps. He lives with his family in Rockland, Maine on a one-acre acre demonstration site that incorporates small-scale agroforestry, annual and perennial polycultures, small livestock and nursery production.

Jesse’s lineage of study includes: permaculture design, holistic management, keyline design, the Regrarians farm planning platform, master gardener certification, construction trades, primitive and aboriginal skills, botany, art, philosophy, psychology, meditation, labor and community organizing.

Kate Wallace is the Programs Director at the Resilience Hub. She discovered permaculture after eight years of working on different farms around Maine. She took her first PDC with the Resilience Hub in 2013, followed by an Applied Design Course with David Homa in 2014 and an Advanced PDC with Lisa Fernandes and Jesse Labbe-Watson in 2016. Since then she has designed and installed projects for clients both independently and through the Resilience Hub. In October 2018 she completed the Women’s Permaculture Teacher Training with Pandora Thomas and Lisa DiPiano. She believes in the synergistic wisdom of groups and the importance of collaborative learning. In addition to permaculture design, Kate has a small herbal medicine business called Brown Bag Herbals and is a gardener, musician, and fermentationist. She works seasonally at Fedco Trees, a worker co-op specializing in cold hardy trees and perennials, and runs the Maine Fiddle Camp Kitchen, an explosion of local food and traditional music in Montville.

Lisa Fernandes is the founder of The Resilience Hub in Portland Maine where she guided more than 50 client design projects and over 70 educational events every year. She currently serves as the Communication Director for the Food Solutions New England project based at the UNH Sustainability Institute in Durham, New Hampshire.

For more, see Lisa’s bio.

Guest Professionals

Not all of these guests participate in all courses. Guests vary based on season, location and guest availability. Past and current guest professionals to our PDC have included: