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Symposium Speakers

The Crafting Intentional Communities Symposium will feature a number of distinguished speakers on the topic of intentional communities. You can scroll down to see short biographies of each speaker, or you can click on a name to jump to information about an individual that you are interested in.

Zev Paiss

Dene Peterson

Dr. Drew Leder

Z. Peter Lazar

Janaka Casper

Zev Paiss

A native of Los Angeles, Zev has lived in cohousing since 1994. Over the past 12 years, he has become a nationally recognized cohousing consultant known for his expertise in Group Process and Community Building. Zev is a principal in Abraham Paiss & Associates, an independent business that helps cohousing communities get started. He has traveled across the United States assisting cohousing groups in California, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, North Carolina and Texas. Zev is the founding Executive Director of The Cohousing Association of the United States, a national non-profit organization he ran from 1998-2002. Since 1991, he has taught “Getting Started” workshops and delivered dozens of presentations and slide shows about cohousing neighborhoods and the professional development process.

Zev is a National Spokesperson for the Cohousing industry and has been interviewed by many of the country’s leading national print and broadcast media about the sustainability benefits of living in a community setting. He is also co-founder of Support Financial Services which provides early stage financing to cohousing groups. Support has helped 13 cohousing neighborhoods get built since 1993.

Zev produced the 22-minute introductory cohousing video “Neighborhoods for People.” Since 1997, Zev has resided in the Nomad Cohousing Community in Boulder.

Dene Peterson

Dene (Geraldine) Peterson is the Executive Director of Trailview Development Corporation and the Project Director for the ElderSpirit Community in Abingdon, Virginia, where she has been a resident since February 2006. ElderSpirit is a 29-home mixed-income Elder Cohousing community with an emphasis on late life spirituality. Dene oversaw all aspects of the construction process and obtained over $1,500,000 in grants to make the homes affordable to buy or rent. The neighborhood is the second completed Elder Cohousing in the United States.

Dene is a certified Housing Finance Development Professional and has a Masters Degree in Higher Education from the University of Michigan. She has been the administrator of non-profit organizations throughout her professional career. Dene has extensive experience in raising funds from public and private sources and has been highly successful in securing funds for ElderSpirit.

Dr. Drew Leder

Dr. Drew Leder has blended an unusual array of interests and accomplishments. He has an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is currently a full professor teaching Western and Eastern Philosophy at Loyola College in Maryland.

Dr. Leder is the author of many books. His latest, Sparks of the Divine: Finding Inspiration in Our Everyday World (Sorin/Ave Maria Press, 2004) explores the spiritual lessons hidden within the things of the natural and human-constructed world.

Another book, Spiritual Passages: Embracing Life's Sacred Journey (Tarcher/Putnam, 1997), grew out of work Dr. Leder did on cross-cultural views of aging, begun as a Scholar-in-Residence at Chicago's prestigious Park Ridge Center. Dr. Leder continues to offer lectures and workshops on spirituality and aging, and acts as a consultant to educational and residential communities with this interest.

In addition, Dr. Leder has worked extensively with prisoners in a maximum security environment. Using philosophical and spiritual tools, he has explored with them the nature of violence, incarceration, and self-transformation. The results of this work are found in The Soul Knows No Bars: Inmates Reflect on Life, Death, and Hope (preface by Cornel West; Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

On a lighter note, Dr. Leder was inspired by his daughter, and personal experience, to write Games for the Soul: 40 Playful Ways to Find Fun and Fulfillment in a Stressful World (Hyperion, 1998) Many spiritual practices and disciplines have the structure of games. To reach "enlightenment" it can help to lighten up and follow the way of play.

Z. Peter Lazar

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Mr. Lazar is active in the cohousing movement (www.cohousing.org), giving talks and writing articles on the subject. He and his wife are founders of Blue Ridge Cohousing (www.blueridgecohousing.org), which is working to build a 26 home cohousing neighborhood in Crozet, Virginia. Peter, his wife, and their two daughters, aged 3 and 5, live in Shadowlake Village Cohousing in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Janaka Casper

Janaka Casper, President and CEO of Community Housing Partners (CHP), has over 30 years experience in housing and community development. He expanded the corporation’s programs and activities to include architecture, at-risk adolescent services, construction management, energy services, enterprise development, homeownership opportunities, and housing development and management.

Casper was selected by the Fannie Mae Foundation as one of six community-development leaders to receive the 2001 James A. Johnson Community Fellows Award for his contribution to providing decent and affordable housing. In 2002 he was selected to participate in the inaugural program of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for Achieving Excellence in Community Development. Under his leadership, CHP is a five-time recipient of the Virginia Governor's Housing Achievement Award, including the first Annual Award and recently the Best Housing Organization in 2003 and the Tekoa Youth Residential Campus as the Best Housing Development in 2004. In 2005 he was honored with the National NeighborWorks Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2006 was selected by the Virginia Housing Coalition as an Architect of Change, one of twenty-five housing leaders in Virginia.