"Instructor Applicants"
The Solar Living Institute is always looking for new talented professionals to join our team of instructors. If you are interested in becoming an instructor please email your resume & cover letter to:
For Solar Training & Sustainable Living Instructors email our Workshop Operations Manager,
Adam Gaska
Adam Gaska, a native to Redwood Valley. He started farming at Mariposa Ranch, briefly running a small summer CSA, and raising pigs, rabbits, and broiler chickens for a time. In 2005, he started to grow his flock of sheep, now about 50 ewes. Still based in the Valley, Adam raises sheep, cows, chickens, and goats, and gr...
Alex Aragon
Alex Aragon is a NABCEP certified solar installer and a C10 electrical contractor. He designs, sells, and installs on- and off-grid systems for his own company and is an installer for many Real Goods projects.
Allen Martin
Allen Martin has over 20 years experience in residental and commerical building, ten of those in strawbale and greenbuilding. Allen is a certified green building professional and currently works for Sonoma County as a building inspector.
Barrett Raftery
Barrett Raftery was born in San Francisco to an international family. After traveling extensively in his youth he completed his college degree and then continued on to live on-site at the Solar Living Institute. After his internship, he was hired on the Real Goods installation team. Since that time has been entrepreneu...
Barry Cogbill
Some call Barry the hardest working person in clean energy in Sonoma County. Wearing several different hats, Barry is passionate about solar and energy efficiency. He got his start in clean energy by installing swimming pool solar heating systems in the early 1990’s. He moved into the financial industry in 1992 a...
Doug Livingston Doug Livingston is a NABCEP certified solar installer and worked for Real Goods as a solar systems project engineer for eight years. He now works as an independent consultant, designing and installing solar and hydroelectric systems locally and internationally, and works on various aspects...
Dr. Abe Ghanbari
Dr. Ghanbari is president and CEO of Folium Technology; a company dedicated to providing the most comprehensive solar energy consulting in the Industry. He is currently an Executive in Residence at Plug & Play in Sunnyvale California where he is spearheading Clean Technology Initiative. He is working with entrepreneurs...
Erik Frye
A veteran of solar powered living since 1991 Erik Frye promotes the widespread adoption of renewable energy by everyone who shows interest in the subject. He designs and sells on-grid and off-grid photovoltaic systems at Real Goods in Hopland, California, as well as solar thermal and off grid wind and hydro. Erik tro...
Gary Hethcoat is a seasoned technology professional with over 20 years of experience in the computer industry. He developed and taught software courses for Sun Microsystems including UNIX System Interface and Shell Programming. He is currently co-founder of SunTactics, maker of portable solar power systems. ...
Jason Cotter
Jason Cotter is a solar power consultant and solar designer who has been helping folks go solar in Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin County since 2003. Jason Cotter has lived primarily in Sonoma County since 1971, and takes pride in the fact that, with every installed solar system comes a definitive reduction to the environm...
Jeff Adams
Jeffrey Murdock Adams is the owner of terrasophia, an ecological design consulting and education firm with a passion for solution-oriented action and helping people strengthen their connection to place. Synergizing experience in appropriate technology, construction trades, landscaping, project management, business, eco...
Jennifer Radtke
Jennifer Radtke is a member of the Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, teaches classes on home-brewing biodiesel at her house in Oakland, and taught interns for the Eastbay Biodiesel Internship Program. She is co-owner of Biofuel Oasis, the first biodiesel fueling s...
Jini Reynolds
Jini Reynolds has been mentoring people in sustainable living for as long as The Solar Living institute has been around. She has been tending goats and other backyard livestock for 36 years. First a student of Juliette De Barcle Levy at age 6, communicating through mail and finally having Juliette at her farm in the l...
Joan Weir
Joan Weir, licensed General Contractor, owns J.J. Design & Renovations, a Bay Area residential remodeling company with interests in sustainable and environmentally responsible building management procedures. Ms. Weir received her general contractors license in 1986. Her crafts background started in metal working as...
Jock Patterson
Jock Patterson started his solar career in late 2005, qualifying leads, managing customers, creating proposals, and developing a PV quoting tool for a major PV installer. Jock currently works for Clean Power Finance providing product support and development and also trains new employees on PV Solar.
Joe Jordan has been instrumental in photovoltaic installations on local schools, city agencies, residences and commercial buildings in the Santa Cruz and Monterey
Joshua Muscat
Joshua Muscat is an herbalist in his fourteenth year of clinical practice, and has been formally studying herbal medicine for the past eighteen years. His education in the art of herbalism includes studies at the Pacific School of Herbal Medicine, the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, as well as studied with Chuc...
Kermit Carter
Kermit Carter has been involved in Biodynamic agriculture for 37 years, beginning as an apprentice of the British master gardener Alan Chadwick. For the last 13 years, he has managed Flowers by the Sea, a Demeter certified Biodynamic farm on the coast in Elk, California. The farm produces vegetables, herbs, flowers,...
Kevin Rowell
As program director for Kleiworks International, Kevin Rowell has spent many years working with people around the world to develop safe and ecologically friendly building methods. He is a guest instructor at Merrit Community College and New College of California. He is co-founder of The Natural Builders, a design and c...
Kyle Collins
Harkening from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Kyle moved to California in search of training in sustainable agriculture and permaculture. Kyle's love of fungi grew out of the exploration and personal development of his college years. Kyle has studied and worked with fungi as an Environmental Educator, Permacultural...
Laura Allen
Laura Allen is a Bay Area educator and greywater activist. She has a BA in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley, and a teaching credential and masters in education from the New College of California. She is a co-founder of The Greywater Guerrillas and co-editor of Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground (So...
Marisha Farnsworth Marisha Farnsworth is the co-owner of The Natural Builders, a contracting
company based in the East Bay that focuses on green, ecological and indigenous
building systems. She also works as an organizer and a teacher with the
non-profit Kleiwerks International.
Massey Burke
Massey Burke’s career in natural building began with the Ecoshanty, a humble but well-loved earthen getaway on the Solar Living Institute site. While the Shanty did not survive the great flood of 2004, Massey’s interest in natural building did, and she went on to study integrated natural buil...
Max Meyers
Maximillian Meyers is an Ecological Designer, Permaculture Teacher, Farmer and Director of the Mendocino Ecological Learning Center (www.melc.us), a nonprofit educational organization and ecological reserve offering green job training and sustainable living skills to the public free o...
Mike Arenson
Mike Arenson, popularly known as Solar Mike, has more than 30 years experience in the solar industry. For the past decade Solar Mike has specialized in solar electric systems, and has worked on hundreds of solar projects in California. He is a college instructor, and has received the U.S. Department of Energy “N...
Nick Carter, Ph.D.
Dr Nick Carter, founder and owner of npc Solar, is also founder and owner of npc Imaging. He was the organizer of the 2005 Santa Rosa Solar Homes Tour, President of the North Bay Chapter of the Electric Auto Association from 2002 to 2007 and served on the National Board of the Electric Auto Association from 2004 to 200...
Richard Silsbee has owned Radiant Solar Technology since 1997 and has been in the solar construction business for over 30 years. Richard holds California Contractor's licens...
Rob Keller
Rob Keller received his MFA from UC Davis in 1999, where he became interested in incorporating bees into his art practice. As the owner of a small bee business (The Napa Valley Bee Company), Rob's goals are to build a community of beekeepers in his area that practice responsible, sustainable hive management with the be...
Rody Jonas
Rody Jonas received a degree in Physics from UCSB and after working for an aerospace contractor for several years, Rody decided to follow a longtime dream and pursue a career in Renewable Energy Technologies. He is the founder of Healdsburg-based Pure Power Solutions, which specializes in off-grid RE solutions.
Ryan LeBlanc Ryan LeBlanc, NABCEP certified solar installer and founder of Natural Energy Works, has been a renewable energy system designer, installer and consulta...
Sasha Rabin has a degree in Ecological Design from Evergreen State College. She has studied natural and traditional methods of building in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Indonesia, and the southwest United States. Following her internship at the SLI in 1999 she apprenticed at the Cob Cottage Company and worked with them...
Since the early 1990s Scott been instrumental in installing over 1000 PV systems beginning with the installation and maintenance of solar electric systems for the remote student research facilities around Southern CA. In October of 1997,...
Scott Cronk
Scott Cronk brings a unique blend of experiences from large multi-national corporations, innovative small companies, and nonprofits. For over a decade, he has developed web-based tools that now power the most successful sales and marketing solutions in the solar, wind, renewable energy and energy efficiency industries...
Serge Labesque
As a passionate beekeeper, Serge maintains bee colonies in four separate locations in Sonoma County. Over the past ten years, he has experimented with different methods of keeping bees, and has designed and fabricated his own beekeeping equipment. Serge is an active member of the Sonoma County Beekeepers’ Ass...
Stefan Stehling
Stefan Stehling is the garden manager of the Healthy Traditions Garden, a component of a diabetes prevention program at Sonoma County Indian Health Project, Inc. He is a Permaculture practitioner and instructor, and teaches biointensive gardening techniques for developing sustainable food systems. He serves on the boar...
Tamara Wilder
Tamara Wilder of Paleotechnics has been a primitive technologist for the past eighteen years, and regularly teaches old ways living skills programs to people of all ages through a variety of hands-on workshops, school programs and skills demonstrations. She also co-authored the book Buckskin: The Ancient Art of B...
Ted Schwarz
Ted is the Sales and Training Manager at Clean Power Finance, where he delivers solar sales training for installers throughout the U.S.. He has instructed courses of various depths at the Solar Living institute, Boots on the Roof, AEE Solar, and the Green Career Institute as well as electrical contactor organizations....
Workshops
