Team | The Resilience Hub

The Resilience Hub Permaculture Design Courses (PDCs) and Advanced Permaculture Design Courses (APDCs) are designed and facilitated by Lisa Fernandes with co-facilitation (for most courses) by Jesse Watson of Midcoast Permaculture. Jesse and Lisa have been working, teaching and facilitating together for nearly a decade and bring a complementary set of skills and styles to convening our courses.

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

Lisa Fernandes is the founder and Director of The Resilience Hub in Portland Maine where she guides more than 50 client design projects and over 70 educational events every year.

She is an experienced facilitator and permaculture designer/educator who believes that the strategies of resilience-building, re-skilling and re-localization are among the best we have for creating vibrant communities and for navigating future challenges. She appears in the film “Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective.”

Lisa has sat on the boards of the Eat Local Foods Coalition (ELFC), the Permaculture Association of the Northeast (PAN), the Grantmaking Committee of the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and on the Advisory Panel for Green & Healthy Maine Homes magazine. She has been active in the Portland Mayor’s Initiative for Healthy Sustainable Food Systems, MOFGA’s Ag Services Committee, the Portland Food Coop, Hour Exchange Portland and is a Master Food Preserver and Master Composter.

Lisa attended Boston College and The Evergreen State College and has worked in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including several years owning a software design firm with more than 100 client companies across the region.

Lisa and her family are actively converting their 1/3 acre property into a demonstration site for resilient and abundant “post fossil fuel” living.

In 2017, Lisa is writing the book “Co-Create! A Permaculture Design Manual for Groups and Community Projects.”

Jesse Labbe-Watson came to permaculture by way of the movements for social and environmental 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 tone-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.

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: