My life’s work centers on bringing human society into harmony with the Earth and all other beings, through approaches that emphasize non-dual consciousness, active embodied participation, and the intelligent design of systems that re-enchant us to beauty.

As an investor, consultant and facilitator on the climate crisis, I develop strategies that repair our planet’s ecologies. My work experience spans from political science and leadership development to corporate sustainability analysis, journalism, eco-cultural projects in emerging markets, land-based conservation initiatives and climate communication.

I founded the animist investment studio Naia Trust (formerly known as Ground Effect) to direct capital on behalf of other species and shift worldviews towards interbeing with all life. Current areas of investment and research include regenerative agriculture, soil health, food systems, earth jurisprudence, ecosystem restoration, ecological pedagogy, sacred ecology, new ownership models, biodiversity, and scientific research that illuminates life’s relational processes. More at www.naiatrust.com.

I was most recently co-director of SEED Biocomplexity, a new initiative of the Crowther Lab at ETH University in Zurich, that is creating the world’s most comprehensive assessment of biodiversity for any location on the planet. Our goal is to steer financial and political systems into a more holistic relationship with the living world.

As an author, poet, photographer and wilderness guide, I bring people into direct contact with the living world. In my role as an Associate at Leaders’ Quest and through the company I founded, Atlas Unbound (now in hibernation), I develop and lead multi-day immersive learning journeys for global corporations and decision-makers, principally into “nature”. These journeys embody my thesis that we learn most rapidly and durably through direct experience, and that visceral connection is a remedy to our systemic alienation from the world around us. More at www.alexafirmenich.com.

As a means to inspire a greater number of people across these subjects, I started the podcast Lifeworlds. Here, I ask “How can we learn to see the world through the eyes, minds and hearts of other life? Can we regenerate the earth through inhabiting different perspectives and lifeworlds?”. More at www.lifeworld.earth. My guests are farmers, lawyers, scientists, investors, indigenous scholars, artists, and many others. More at www.lifeworld.earth.

This website is a portfolio of my creative soul, a collection of my work and other things I come across that inspire me to keep creating, writing, and being.

If you are interested in talking please reach out at

al*************@gm***.com

MEDIA AND PODCASTS

• With my friend Nate Hagens, speaking to “Biodiversity, Beauty and Being”: on the relationship between climate and biodiversity, how we build emotional resilience for the times to come, grief, metacrisis, rewilding, monetizing of nature, biocredits, LifeWorlds podcast, animism, connecting to land, art, and other advice… https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/106-alexa-firmenich
• On Ma Earth ‘The Regeneration Will be Funded’ with Matthew Monahan… speaking of animism, investing, biodiversity measurement, framings of being human, MRV, and spirituality of ecology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lur6ArB_s68
• On the New Wholstand podcast: https://podcast.regenerativemarktwirtschaft.org/episode/alexa-firmenich
• If you want to hear the latest way I express my work, how I think about deep ecology principles and investing in nature, take a listen to this interview https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trashtalk-studio/id1543259405?i=1000556179500 
• If you want to hear where I speak to:
• ✧ Who are today’s priestly figures? What gods are we in service to?
  ✧ My investment philosophy centered on animism
  ✧ The tension between trust and measurement in defining success
  ✧ How capital can be used to shape worldviews
  ✧ Our collective initiation and why we should not be doing this alone
  ✧ The difference between hate and justice
  Then listen here https://open.spotify.com/episode/0y0NxflKBLFxahBuBLs1WX?si=786a99e897f64ec2&nd=1

(Quick note: For my professional landing page, please redirect yourself here. For the abridged version, my vocational experience spans from group facilitation and leadership development to corporate sustainability work, journalism, catalyzing cultural projects in emerging markets, land-based conservation initiatives and storytelling consulting.)

Now… If you’ve made it this far… A story.

While I was living in Mexico City, a leather-bound red notebook came into my possession. Its cover was traced by thin gold lines, hot air balloons, compass points, maps and pyramids and exploding stars. Its pages were empty. I began to write. I wrote about marveling, about adventure, about seeing in unseeing. A leaf fluttered down and landed in my lap. I had sat below this tree every day. I thought I knew this leaf — how it breathed and grew and changed shape as water coursed through its veins. I knew what it looked like in its most virgin form; I knew what it would look like when it would crumble into new soil.

But now, I really took that leaf. I studied its rivers, its sinews, its lungs, its geometric patterns. It was heartbreakingly perfect. When you really look at a leaf, it’s a wonder it even exists at all. I began to note its shape without the need for words. Its feel. I inhaled its smell. I even tasted it. Was it now the same leaf as before? Probably not. And that’s what I mean about marveling.

Within each object are a million stories waiting to be told, and within each person lies an entire world – those are the stories I want to write and share. To love the questions more than the answers and to see the earth in its bright startling clarity. To travel to its furthest corners. To offer my life’s journey as a pledge towards its regeneration. That map holds promise, elation. People often look towards the moon and the stars and fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.

If I had a manifesto of sorts, it would go something like this… Let’s melt into and surrender into the our wild Earth, opening ourselves up to the infinite shimmering webs that connect us with all of life, every breath taken a homage to ocean phytoplankton and madrone trees, and from that place, do our part to witness and tend to the unfolding of its beauty for future generations.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you find something here that will make you smile, pause and reflect.