OUR TEAM
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CHOCHI ITURRALDE
Executive Director
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
Program Head
HUMANS FOR ABUNDANCE
María José Iturralde, better known as Chochi, is the Executive Director of Fundación Pachaysana. Chochi specializes in fostering connections and designing innovative systems to circumvent the oppressive and extractivist structures responsible for deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of indigenous culture, language, and cosmovision. In 2019, she founded Humans for Abundance, raising over $300,000 to carry out socio-environmental restoration with rural communities in the Amazon Rainforest and other areas of Ecuador. Her work has been featured by BBC News, BBC StoryWorks, and other international media outlets.
In 2022, she co-created the Forest School in collaboration with the women of an indigenous community in the Amazon, responding to their pressing need to keep the youth engaged in the village to learn how to protect their forests. She successfully secured the necessary partnerships and funding to execute this project, which now has 13 students enrolled. These students are learning in their own Kichwa language, with a curriculum that blends ancestral knowledge and wisdom with essential Western skills such as mathematics, English, and Spanish.
Previously, she founded and led three socially-oriented for-profit ventures, including one focused on women’s support circles and wisdom sharing. She began her career as a primary school teacher in Quito and later served as principal, where she gained valuable insights into human behavior and transformation by closely observing and learning from children. Chochi holds a Master's degree in Education from the University of Alabama.
DANIEL BRYAN
Director of Education and Outreach
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
An educator, activist and artist, Daniel specializes in the use of participatory theatre as a means of education and conflict transformation. Originally from the United States, he has lived the last 24 years in Ecuador, where he has worked with Indigenous and other frontline communities in both rural and urban sectors. In addition to teaching regularly in Pachaysana’s Rehearsing Change program, he is an active scholar-practitioner of Participatory Action Research, for which he applies a narrative/arts-based approach to co-generating knowledge with local communities.
In addition to his work in Ecuador, he regularly lectures and leads workshops at universities across the United States, most often focusing on Unlearning, Decolonizing Methodologies/Pedagogy, Epistemological Pluralism and Theatre for Social Change.
He has been a visiting professor, lecturer and scholar-in-residence at several institutions, most recently as a Visiting Professor and Baker Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College, Instructor in Graduate Education Studies at Providence College and a Maxwell Scholar at Washington and Jefferson College. He also regularly teaches at the University San Francisco de Quito. Previously he co-founded the internationally renowned cultural educational organization, Fundación Quito Eterno, and lectured/researched under a Fulbright Scholar Grant in Quito. He holds an MA in Education from the University of Tulsa and an MFA in Theatre from UCLA.
SARA LYON
Resident Director and Forest School Head
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
Sarah Lyon is an Art Historian who specializes in contemporary Andean textiles; she graduated from Williams College with a BA in Art History and a concentration in Latin American Studies. She recently completed a master’s degree in Cultural Studies with a focus on Cultural Policy at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador. Using decolonial and participatory action research methods, she studied the collective rights that the Quechua weavers of Cusco have to the intellectual property of their textiles.
Originally from the US, Sarah has worked and studied in Ecuador and Peru for nine years. In Peru she was the Coordinator of the Education Department at the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC), a non-profit founded and run by indigenous women where she continues to serve as board member. With CTTC, Sarah often served as a bridge between cultures, organizing projects that involved people from many different walks of life. Situated in this frontier position, she was forced to recognize the stereotypes, stigmas, and professional superiority that both national and international partners assumed when working with the weavers. Such experiences inspired Sarah to come to Quito and study alongside scholars and students from across Latin America. With Pachaysana she hopes to guide students in purposeful study with the Global South as opposed to treating the region as an object of investigation.
DANIEL ACOSTA
Coherence and Commuties Director
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
Daniel was born in Ecuador, where his parents instilled upon him the importance of working with the communities of his country. A communication specialist, community activist, and defender of Mother Earth, Daniel’s mission is to work with the children and youth, sharing the wisdom of the communities' elders to help bring them into a more intimate relationship with the earth, agriculture and the protection of seeds.He lives in Santa Teresa de Pintag where his community projects crossover between art, liberation pedagogy and agro-ecology. He is currently carrying out a "Land Bank" project, which seeks to create a greater awareness of local identity and the preservation of ancestral lands in Píntag. Somewhat of an Andan renaissance-man, Daniel has studied, both formally and informally, Communication, Political Law, Global Education, Local Empowerment, Theatre, Film, Permaculture and Agroecology.
Daniel works closely with our partner communities to coordinate the Rehearsing Change program and provide support for our many grassroots development and education projects.He also coordinates aspects of our coursework, assuring that they are effectively applied to community needs. Finally, Daniel assists with instruction in our Identity and Place and Design and Evaluation of Projects courses, which are currently based on working with theories of permaculture.
Paula is a conservation biologist, communicator, and nature lover. She has extensive experience in ecological research, particularly focusing on the effects of global change on species ecology from a biogeography perspective, based on her research during her B.Sc. in Ecuador and her M.Sc. at the University Francois Rabelais de Tours in France. Later, she broadened this perspective to include bioacoustics and physiology in her research, currently finishing her Ph.D. at Universidad de Costa Rica.
Throughout her career, Paula has actively engaged in securing funding for research projects and has always been committed to conserving Ecuador’s rich biodiversity. She has been involved in science communication and educational programs since 2018 when she became a Bat Conservation International (BCI) grantee and a National Geographic explorer. These opportunities have been decisive for her to work on multi-disciplinary projects that can combine her science, communication, and educational backgrounds.
As a research assistant at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, she developed social projects, creating biodiversity indicators for Ecuador and protocols to reduce conflicts between frontline communities and wildlife. She has also led the organization of virtual courses such as “Leaving Fossil Fuels Underground” and “Land Sustainable Management,” in collaboration with local and international institutions.
Her diverse experience has highlighted the importance of making biological research accessible and inclusive to people beyond academia. Her goal as a scientist is to inspire and enthrall people about the importance of science for conservation. To this end, she is dedicated to science communication, writing for the general public in both English and Spanish.
PAULA ITURRALDE
Head Scientist and Restoration Director
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
ANDRÉS LANDETA
Finances and Logistics Director
FUNDACIÓN PACHAYSANA
Andrés is, by profession, an accountant, but is truly a jack of all trades. Originally from the city of Tulcán in the province of Carchi in the north of Ecuador, he currently lives in Puembo on the outskirts of Quito where he is a student at the Universidad Central del Ecuador. His passion for local, grass-roots collectives led him to participate in forest restoration projects with programs such as Humans for Abundance (H4A) where he has been involved in both the administrative and accounting side as well as the sociocultural side, working alongside members of the Mushullakta community located in the Upper Amazonian province of Napo.
With H4A Andrés has been managing and coordinating reforestation efforts for more than three years. He has also worked with community leaders in Mushullakta to teach them how to manage their accounts, a computerized system for their finances, and how to manage the finances of the Forest School for community children. Apart from H4A, Andrés has also worked on the accounting and administrative end of such organizations as Terraformation.
Besides his office skills, Andrés is also a skilled - and self-taught - carpenter. When not working alongside community members or the Pachaysana team on administrative issues, Andrés is happy making furniture for community spaces. Many of his chairs, tables and desks now grace the new community café and Forest School classroom in Mushullakta.
OUR COMMUNITY EDUCATORS
MAY AIMACAÑA
SAÚL BAUTISTA
EDWIN PILAQUINGA
May Aimacaña, Saul Bautista, and Edwin Pilaquinga were all born and raised in Pintag (Mayra in the neighborhood of Santa Teresa and Saul and Edwin in Valencia).
May is an architect and project development specialist. Her areas of specialty are sustainable design and social justice education. She believes that education is like creating a family, and you will often see her come to class with her sons, Jemba and Kian.
Saul is a bioconstruction expert and self-taught artist, musician, sculptor and metal-worker. His bioconstruction, artwork and activism are inspired by the Andean world, his ancestors and the nature that surrounds him.
Edwin has dedicated his life to cultivating and preserving seeds for change. He is a graphic artist whose drawings are inspired by nature, human beings, and the relationship between the two. He is also a researcher who is published in an academic journal in the U.S. and is currently involved in various projects that promote community organizing, popular pedagogy and social change.
All three are active members of the Píntag Amaru Movement where they have participated in organic agriculture projects, environmental advocacy, theater for social change, and the different educational activities promoted by the movement. They have each played important leadership roles in our Rehearsing Change program, as students, facilitators, and community leaders.
