What To Expect
Every immersion workshop is tailored to the local ecosystem, ensuring each day is brimming with content and exploration. You should plan to clear your agenda and fully immerse yourself in the biomimicry experience! From our home base of the North Cascades Institute in the heart of North Cascades National Park, we’ll explore glacier-fed lakes, beautiful meadows and old-growth forests. We’ll be mentored by osprey and pikas as we hike the rocky slopes and explore cascading streams as we reflect on the endurance of nature’s genius. It makes for a jam-packed seven days of full-on, biomimicry-based exploration. Click below to get an inside look at one of our immersion workshops.
Over the course of the workshop, our expert biomimicry instructors will teach participants to:
- Practice applying biomimicry thinking toward individual and team challenges
- Define leadership challenges for which nature’s examples can best provide solutions
- Re-imagine organizational leadership, strategy, planning, and operations with inspiration from healthy and evolving ecosystems
- Apply the biomimicry process to model teams and organizations after healthy and evolving ecosystems and to become skillful at adaptive change
- Be part of a diverse learning network guiding the growth of biomimetic applications for organizational development and social innovation
- Apply design lessons from nature that can help grow resilient organizations and foster a regenerative society
PREVIEW AGENDA×DISCOVER NATURE'S GENIUS FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION
What can you expect to experience while you Discover Nature’s Genius for Social Innovation in the North Cascades? Here’s a preview of what each day will include:
Day 1: Meet the group at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) Airport for the shuttle to the North Cascades Institute. Settle in at the venue and spend the afternoon getting oriented to biological wonders of the North Cascades Ecosystem while getting to know your fellow participants. We’ll provide an overview on how organizational leadership, strategy, planning and operations can draw inspiration from healthy, evolving ecosystems.
Day 2: With the first full day at the North Cascades Institute, you’ll be introduced to the Biomimicry Thinking tools and methodology. Immerse yourself in the new skills as you meet the species in the North Cascades. Practice seeing with your new biomimicry lenses.
Day 3: Begin honing your observation skills during exploration of the cedar forest. Explore life’s resilience strategies in meadows of alpine wildflowers while connecting with Life’s Principles, a Biomimicry 3.8 tool that summarizes the rules for how life survives and thrives on Earth, and how our organizations and systems might too.
Day 4: Deepen your understanding of Life’s Principles as we canoe on glacier-fed Diablo Lake, spotting for bald eagles, trumpeter swans and beaver. Regroup back at the North Cascades Institute and discuss the experience of abstracting Life’s Principles in the field. After dinner, we’ll look to apply those lessons through an ecosystem-audit of your own organization or social-change endeavor.
Day 5: We’ll explore one of the world's densest ancient forests for lessons on endurance, as we look to apply design lessons to help grow resilient organizations and foster a regenerative society. We’ll practice applying lessons to model teams and organizations to become skillful at adaptive change. Spend the evening sharing your team’s design ideas inspired by the day’s discoveries.
Day 6: New lessons await as we explore a riparian zone and discuss as a group the dynamics of change in nature. After lunch, spend the rest of the day on a continued journey of discovery into your selected biological phenomena and share with the group what you’ve learned and what ideas it has inspired. Give thanks to the wisdom found in this rich biome and celebrate the final evening of the workshop with the group!
Day 7: On the final day, if we haven’t yet, perhaps we’ll get to see the elusive grizzly bear. Reflections on building the diverse learning network of practitioners of biomimicry in social innovation wraps up our time. We’ll close the workshop after lunch for you to head back to the airport… or stay in the Pacific Northwest to continue traveling–either way, the next biomimicry adventure awaits!
Instructors
Dr. Dayna Baumeister | With a devotion to applied natural history and a passion for sharing the genius of nature, Dr. Dayna Baumeister has worked in the field of biomimicry with business partner Janine Benyus since 1998, traveling the world as a biomimicry thought-leader, business consultant, and professor. Together they founded the Biomimicry Guild consulting practice, The Biomimicry Institute 501c3, and Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise that helps clients find innovation inspired by nature and offers the highest level of biomimicry training to professionals worldwide.
Dayna’s foundational work has been critical to the biomimicry movement, establishing it as a fresh and innovative practice, as well as a philosophy to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. As an educator, researcher, and design consultant, Dayna has helped more than 100 companies consult the natural world for elegant and sustainable design solutions, as diverse as Nike, Interface, General Mills, Boeing, Google, Natura, Herman-Miller, Kohler, Seventh Generation and Procter & Gamble. Dayna is a natural systems thinker and brings a unique perspective to her work to help others see nature as model, measure, and mentor. She designed and teaches the world’s first MSc in Biomimicry as a Professor of Practice at ASU, co-founded, is director of The Biomimicry Center at ASU. She compiled more than 20 years of experience in the practice of biomimicry into the world’s only textbook for the field: Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices (2014).
Toby Herzlich | Biomimicry for Social Innovation Founder Toby Herzlich is a leadership trainer and ICF-certified coach, master facilitator, and certified Biomimicry Specialist. Toby is committed to the creation of a just, healthy, and regenerative society, and heartfully enthused about the transformative potential of applying nature’s wisdom to humanity’s sustainability aspirations. With more than 25 years of facilitation experience, she is a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute, co-founder of Cultivating Women’s Leadership, and a faculty in B3.8’s Biomimicry Professional Certification Program. As a consultant, Toby advances climate solutions initiatives at organizations such as the Sierra Club and the AgroEcology Fund. With a commitment to race equity at the center of her work, Toby finds much of her purpose in catalyzing diverse networks of social change innovators, and is growing a co-evolving network of leaders using nature’s intelligence as inspiration and guidance.
Registration and Deadlines
The all-inclusive price for the workshop includes delicious, organic, and when possible, locally harvested breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks; overnight accommodations for six nights; all activities during the week; tuition and course materials; transportation from the Everett, WA Paine Field Airport (PAE); and administration costs. All rooming types are limited and available on a first come, first served basis. Reserve your seat for only $500.
Lodging is in European-style lodges with guest rooms offered in single or double occupancy in twin beds and shared gender-specific bathrooms with private showers. Bedrooms also include wi-fi, writing desks and built-in wardrobes.
Shared double room | $3,500
The majority of the room options are a shared room. You may request a specific roommate or we will assign you a roommate of the same gender.
Private room | $3,950
There are a limited number of private rooms.
Registration for this workshop is closed.
Scholarships and Discounts
Scholarships
A limited number of scholarships are available to BIPOC leaders, change agents working in non-profit social change or climate/environmental organizations, and to students and people with lower incomes who would otherwise not be able to attend. Scholarships will be awarded by the workshop leaders with the purpose of building a broad and diverse cohort and are based solely on your answers on the application.
Discounts – Limited Availability!
All discounts have limited availability, are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis, and may not be combined.
- Student discount: Enrolled university students save $250. Must upload copy of current student ID upon registration.
- Biomimicry Global Network member discount: Members of a local Biomimicry Global Network save $250. Must upload brief, written endorsement from local network leader upon registration.
In addition to a life-changing experience, immersion workshop participants also receive access to the Introduction to Biomimicry online course and earn credit toward a Biomimicry Specialist Certificate.
Learn more about immersion workshops here.
Convince your boss by downloading and sharing our PDF that outlines the professional benefits and values biomimicry immersion workshops can add to any organization. Download Convince Your Boss pdf here.
Covid-19 Cancellation Policy | We are planning now with optimism for gathering with the utmost health safety measures. We will follow the Covid protocols set by the state of Washington and the venue at the time of the workshop. If the workshop is canceled due to COVID-19, you will receive a full refund and will be given the opportunity to sign up for a later workshop.
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