Sarah van Gelder

Sarah van Gelder is a founder of a new nonprofit start-up, PeoplesHub, which offers live, online training to local groups around the country who want to make change where they live. She is also YES! Magazine Co-Founder and Columnist, a public speaker and the author of the new book, The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000 Mile Journey Through a New America. She also edited Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference and This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement (both with Berrett Koehler). Sarah has also written for Huffington Post, The Guardian and for other outlets.

As founding editor of YES!, Sarah led the magazine’s and website’s development from a scrappy start-up operating out of a rented basement to a publication that is nationally recognized for exploring leading-edge solutions to the major ecological and human challenges of our times. The magazine has won national awards for its coverage of such topics as the cooperative economy, mass incarceration, neighborhood sustainability and personal resilience.

Sarah speaks nationally and internationally and is a guest on radio and television on topics ranging from cooperative economics, local foods and solving the climate crisis, to alternatives to prisons, green and inclusive cities and confronting racism. Sarah has interviewed Frances Moore Lappé, Ralph Nader, Van Jones, Pete Seeger, Angela and Fania Davis, George Shultz and Desmond Tutu.

Sarah is a founder of Suquamish Olalla Neighbors, a group of Native and non-Native allies who, together with the Suquamish Tribe, won the return of Old Man House Park to the Tribe. She serves on the board of the Tribe’s Suquamish Foundation and travels with the Suquamish canoe family on the annual tribal canoe journey. She has lived in India, China and Central America. She is the mother of two adult children and was a founding board member of Winslow Cohousing in Washington state.