Jennifer Atlee is a seasoned professional with over two decades of experience designing and implementing collaborative initiatives at the intersection of sustainability, systems change, and governance innovation.
For most of her career, Jennifer worked in green building and material systems—creating industry standards, translating complex research into practical resources, and coordinating multi-stakeholder initiatives for organizations including Mindful MATERIALS, Health Product Declaration Collaborative, BuildingGreen, and the Toxics Use Reduction Institute.
Now she’s bringing that systems expertise to deeper questions: How do we shift from collapse-driving systems to life-nurturing ones? Her focus has evolved toward collaborative governance and civic innovation—integrating stakeholder networks with community deliberative democracy for climate justice, housing, and regenerative development.
Jennifer brings research and writing, facilitative project management, strategic advising, and stakeholder coordination. She works as a independent contractor and is open to in-house positions and learning partnerships with experienced teams.
She holds a BS in Environmental Science from Brown University and a dual MS in Material Science & Engineering and Technology Policy from MIT.
My place of joy is where system change and practical action meet.
I’m a writer, researcher, climate organizer, hiker, dancer, gardener, regenerative homesteader, and parent.
For two decades I worked in green building—helping create transparency standards, translating technical complexity, coordinating multi-stakeholder initiatives. I loved this work. But I kept hitting the same wall: the solutions exist, but our decision-making systems can’t adopt them.
I started noticing how facilitation could unlock or squander collective wisdom. How our governance systems fundamentally shape what’s possible. So my focus evolved toward the underlying question: How do we make decisions together that serve long-term thriving?
This isn’t just professional. I’ve organized locally with Mothers Out Front on climate, Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, Valley Alliance for Land Equity on housing. I’ve worked with Indivisible protecting democratic institutions. I serve on the Co-Intelligence Institute board supporting deliberative democracy innovations.
What I see everywhere: brilliant isolated efforts. Movements without implementation pathways. Communities wanting transformation but lacking processes to work through differences. Networks identifying solutions but struggling to coordinate.
I want to weave these efforts together—particularly the intersection of civic processes (like citizens assemblies) and multi-stakeholder networks. Democratic legitimacy plus systems-level coordination could enable the transformative action we need.
I grew up steeped in my father Tom Atlee’s co-intelligence work. At 10, I joined the Great Peace March across the country. But I only paid deep attention after years of seeing how collective governance underlies everything else.
The analytical and the spiritual used to feel separate in my life. Now I’ve found my way to where they integrate—creating both internal coherence and more effective work. Time with more-than-human kin remains my non-negotiable counterpoint to systems work, whether the Appalachian Trail I hiked after high school or the land I’m learning to steward now.
I live in Nipmuc territory along the Quinnehtukqut (Connecticut River) in Western Massachusetts.
Following the sovereign logic framework developed by Sayra Pinto—understanding how land, lineage, learning, and life shape the lens through which we see and create.
Land
I live along the Quinnehtukqut in Western Massachusetts, on Nipmuc and ancestral Pocumtuc territory.
I’m most at home in nature—our tiny wild Oakland backyard, the Appalachian Trail, the mountains, the beloved peak south of my home. Land is my taproot to the sacred. More-than-human kin are my primary beloveds.
Lineage
I come from helpers and changers.
Helpers: doctor, nurse, teacher, social worker, rabbi.
Changers: activist, anarchist, economist, my father with his wise democracy work.
My ancestors: Jews from Austria, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wealthy Quakers from Rhode Island. Early working-class settlers, English or Scottish. Lines of displacement and seeking, privilege and struggle.
Journey
I grew up a changer—an imperative I couldn’t lay down. Underneath was the love song of Mama Earth, kinetic connection with living systems.
I’m less at home with people. Despite a welcoming family, I’ve hidden parts of myself to fit into spaces where I felt I had to work. I’m trying to change that.
My life oscillated between separation—education, technical career—and connection through land and spirit. Seeking impact, I found new fragmentation. I’m still inquiring, trying to tunnel underneath, to find community doing grounded practical work that’s also conscious systems acupuncture.
At 10, I joined the Great Peace March that sparked my father’s co-intelligence journey. Now, with an 8-year-old, my path converges with his. Because the things I’ve worked on won’t gain traction without transforming governance.
A new start. Another turn in the spiral.
This is the lens through which I see and do the work. If it resonates, let’s talk.