Ryland Englehart - Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kiss the Ground
Ryland Engelhart is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kiss the Ground, and is the producer of Kiss The Ground the Movie on Netflix. He has spent the last 15 years as an entrepreneur and love-activist, working in hospitality and building a family business of organic plant-based restaurants called Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre in Southern CA. He is also a co-creator of the award-winning, transformational documentary film, “May I Be Frank.”
Ryland joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:
The state of regenerative agriculture
The power of storytelling in sustainability
Corporate actions on regenerative agriculture
Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Ryland's Final Five Questions Responses:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
I think we've heard this before, but it really is about building, strong, real, authentic, not transactional relationships. Deep, meaningful, connected relationships, and building coalition and community, community around your ideas and your initiative, is the way to be successful.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
I'm excited that regeneration and the term regeneration is really eclipsing the notion of sustainability, which again, we admire sustainability and we oftentimes say that sustainability is ahead of its time because we need to regenerate the broken systems before we can sustain them. So I'm grateful and I'm excited about that regeneration, that the principles of regeneration are becoming so widely understood.
What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?
Project Drawdown. The hundred most substantive solutions to reversing global warming by Paul Hawken and others.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
Well, it sounds kind of trite, but I've loved becoming an organization that operates with Slack as a team communication tool. It's been really, really effective and powerful.
Where can our listeners go to learn more about you, the work of Kiss, the Ground and the movie?
Please go to kisstheground.com and find your path. It's kind of our lowest barrier to entry way to participate in the regenerative movement is go to kiss the ground and find your path. It's a little genie or search wizard that essentially you can put your interests in, and it kicks you out a couple actions and places to take next steps to support the regenerative movement. And so I recommend to go to kiss the ground, and find your path. You can follow me @lovebeingryland, that's my Instagram handle. And then @kisstheground is our Instagram handle. And then we have an amazing, amazing course. It's like a masterclass course for anyone who's into sustainability and wants to really be whip smart in this arena. It's about eight hours of content that you can take over time. And it really has you be a regenerative agriculture expert and advocate coming out the other end and you can really be a powerful voice for the movement. Lastly you can see the film Kiss the Ground on Netflix. It's available in 40 countries and 25 languages. And if you can't go to Netflix, you can go right to kissthegroundmovie.com and it's on there for a dollar on Vimeo.