Today we’d like to introduce you to Chiara D’Amore.
Hi Chiara, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
In 2009 I was a manager in an international consulting firm. I was doing interesting, challenging and impactful work. And commuting more than an hour each way and working 50+ hours a week completing deliverables and contracts that would always be intangible to me. That fall my first child was born and in that moment it was like all of the cells in my body regenerated at once. While I was still me, I was totally changed. I took the few weeks of maternity leave that I was eligible for and then found myself trying to navigate a new life in which I wanted to be a present mom who was there for all the tender days, weeks, months and years of my child’s rapidly evolving life, while also not wanting to totally give up my vocation. I wasn’t just any kind of consultant; I was an environmental consultant and helping to protect the natural world is an essential part of who I am and the legacy I want to leave especially since becoming a parent. While I was doing the juggle familiar to so many working moms, I was dreaming of how I might be able to forge my own path and create a whole life, one where it didn’t feel like motherhood and a career were in tension, if not in outright conflict. I ended up choosing to go back to school for a PhD in Sustainability Education. I started the program while my son was one, all while still working as a consultant – part time now – so I could pay for the degree (I was still paying off my bachelor’s degree loans and refused to take on more debt). Those four years were incredibly difficult, and I almost quit multiple times, especially after having my daughter in 2013. While I don’t recommend stacking working, early motherhood and earning a doctorate together, when I graduated in 2015 with a five-year-old holding one hand and a two-year-old on my hip I was enormously proud of my achievement. I had poured myself into my research right along with pouring myself into motherhood, and the result was the creation of a program that turned into the non-profit organization that I have now been leading for nine years. I have indeed forged my own path and share this with the hopes that more mothers can find a way to create a life that allows both their personal and professional passions to flourish.
My non-profit is called the Community Ecology Institute, and it is our mission to cultivate communities where people and nature thrive together. It began with two family-focused programs that were based on my research and designed to help children and their caregivers develop a deep sense of connection with the natural world and, ultimately, develop a life-long environmental ethic. In 2019 we were given the chance to purchase the last working farm in our hometown to protect it from development and create an environmental education center. From that space, and during the profound challenges of Covid, we created a very unique place of common ground where diverse members of our community of all ages could come together to learn how to lead happier, healthier, more connected and sustainable lives. Based on our success at Freetown Farm, in 2022 we were given the opportunity to purchase and protect a second property, a small but very special botanical garden that focuses on medicinal plants, the Green Farmacy Garden. Reflecting on what we have been able to achieve from these two properties and across our now seven experiential education programs I am somewhat in awe. In 2024 alone we deeply engaged with over 3,500 community members for over 59,000 educational impact hours – all of which are designed to support the health of the participant, our community, and our natural environment. When we took the leap of faith to purchase our first property, we had no staff and today we have more than 26 people who earn an income from CEI (half of which are moms choosing to work part-time), who work together to make these impacts possible. What CEI has become has reached and exceeded the dreams I had when I took that first leap of faith to go back to school to forge my own path more than fifteen years ago.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
On a regular basis people ask me questions like “How did you create this? How is this working? Can you tell me how I can create something like CEI where I live?” I have a lot of thoughts in response to these questions, and someday I hope to be able to write a book about the Community Ecology Institute’s story – I deeply believe it is worth sharing and celebrating in full. A few key thoughts are as follows:
1. There is a quote by Howard Thurman that says “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I think he is right and that there is also something uniquely powerful that happens when what makes you come alive is also something the world directly needs. For me, that is being in direct, tangible relationship with the natural world and helping other people come to connect with, enjoy, appreciate and care for nature as well. Getting clarity on that sweet spot that lights you up is so important, because creating and SUSTAINING something new in this world is a lot of work (just like creating and raising a child) and having it be a core part of what makes you feel alive will help fuel your efforts.
2. Once you know what you care about and what you want to make a positive impact around, see who is already doing related work near you. Whether it is human rights, or education, or science, or animal welfare, or the arts, or environment, some person or organization is almost always already doing something of worth in that space near you. Learn about them and offer your time, talent and treasure if it feels like a good fit. For years while I was both consulting and in school I volunteered in local environmental or grassroots action or organizing capacities. I served on a handful of boards, served in a very local elected position, campaigned for candidates I believed in, showed up to help other organizations with their activities, etc. While I was lending a helping hand to others, I was learning a tremendous amount, developing an understanding of what did and did not already exist in the area, and creating social capital. By the time I knew what my special and specific offering could be in my community there was a network of people who were happy to lend me a hand in return to help make it a reality.
3. Like in improv performance (which is what creating a new non-profit organization can often feel like), learn to say “yes, and”. So much of CEI’s success over the past nine plus years (our work started before we officially became a non-profit) has come from people hearing about what we are doing, finding that it resonates with their interests, needs, wants, hopes, dreams, expertise, etc. and showing up to see how they can get involved. For example, the very first event for the program I created for my research, which would come to be the foundation of CEI, ended up being a very cold and slightly snowing day and I didn’t truly know if anyone would show up despite my best efforts. More than 100 people showed up for that nature-hike, many of them became regular participants, and more than a handful of them have become dear friends over the years and/or members of the CEI team. I said yes to creating something, they said yes to being a part of it, and we have collectively kept saying “and what next? what can we create now?”. Another example is that just a few months into owning the farm, which is now known as Freetown Farm, the President of the local branch of the NAACP showed up and said that they would like to help us steward the farm and have a dedicated garden plot for their community supported agriculture initiative. I said yes and how do we sort out the logistics of establishing what clearly could be a win-win collaboration. Five years later and we keep figuring out how to grow together on the farm and off and this type of mutually supportive, collaborative relationship between CEI and dozens of other local organizations is an essential part of our recipe for success.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I was about to add a number four above, that said something like “be research based” or “do your homework”, but it feels like that can be a response to this prompt on “your work”. All of CEI has grown out of my research on how to help people care about the natural environment and continues to be rooted in the three associated essential life experiences that our first program was designed to offer: 1) time in nature, as early and often as possible, 2) mentorship around caring for the environment, and 3) the change to make a tangible difference. So, I think in terms of research as we design, implement, sustain and enhance all of CEI’s experiential education programs, which are inherently connected to the ways in which we steward our two special farms. In reflecting on how we have grown (and we have grown so quickly!), I do think that our rootedness in a very robust body of knowledge and wisdom that is much bigger than we are, has been essential. I didn’t just have a neat idea and throw it out there to see if it stuck. Every part of this journey has been thoughtfully created based on practices proven to be impactful. This goes beyond the ethics and mission of our work, and down to the details of what it takes to run a non-profit, from its infancy to what now feels like our teen years (conveniently(?) my kids have taken this journey at the same time, both are now pre/teens). I feel like I am constantly doing research to understand best practices on non-profit management, fundraising strategies, grant writing, staff and board development, and more. It is very important to be methodical in managing all of this, nonprofits are very much a business, even if they start out as a passion project. Bringing people on to the team who have expertise in areas where I do not and learning how to be comfortable delegating to them has been essential. The organization has grown beyond my capacity to hold it all or for it to be “Chiara’s organization”, and that has been an amazing and somewhat complex journey. Again, much like motherhood, I feel like just as I figure out one stage we are well on our way to a new one that I need to figure out. Also in alignment with motherhood, as you you/they/it grows there is more independence, both inherent and nurtured, and much of the dance becomes about creating more space and learning to let go bit by bit. Today at CEI my day-to-day work still feels like a tremendous responsibility, mostly around needing to raise the revenue to allow my wonderful team to do their life improving, nature protecting, community building work. But with each passing year we are collectively growing deeper roots and able to spread our branches more widely, creating a community of people who are all a shared part of our success. As Robin Wall-Kimmerer, one of my favorite authors, says “All flourishing is mutual.”
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
When I am writing grants I often say “CEI focuses on tangible, community-level change at the intersections of environment, equity, education, and health”. Each of those four areas will be acutely challenged in the coming years. And it is that first piece of the statement where I see the most hope. I strongly believe that for most people, our greatest potential impact is at the local level and that we CAN have a real positive impact when we work together locally. Our communities are where we live, learn, work and play and if we reach out to those around us to link hands in protecting our collective health and well-being, we can do a lot of good. It doesn’t get at national or global issues necessarily, but I think wealth in the form of strong, connected, resilient, empowered communities, trickles up way more than monetary wealth trickles down. When I am feeling overwhelmed by all there is to do and everything that is going on, going outside is almost always the first and most essential step to me feeling reconnected with just how beautiful the world is and how important it is to take a deep breath and the next step. My work, and the work of CEI, is to demonstrate, at a local level, the welcoming, beautiful, joyful, resilient, nourishing, impactful, healthy, actively hopeful world I think the vast majority of us want to be a part of.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.communityecologyinstitute.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/communityecologyinstitute/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/communityecologyinstitute
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiaradamore/
- Other: https://www.chiaradamore.com
Image Credits
My kids or I took these photos.