Sarah van Gelder

Sarah van Gelder is YES! Magazine Co-Founder and Columnist, a public speaker, and the author of the new book, The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000 Mile Journey Through a New America (Berrett Koehler, 2017). She is also the editor of Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference, and This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement (both with Berrett Koehler).

As founding editor of YES!, she led the magazine’s and website’s development from a scrappy start-up operating out of a rented basement to a publication that is nationally recognized for exploring leading-edge solutions to the major ecological and human challenges of our times. The magazine has won national awards for its coverage of such topics as the cooperative economy, mass incarceration, neighborhood sustainability, and personal resilience. She was also a founding board member of Winslow Cohousing in Washington state.

She speaks nationally and internationally, and is a guest on radio and television on topics ranging from cooperative economics, local foods, and solving the climate crisis, to alternatives to prisons, green and inclusive cities, and confronting racism.  Her article, columns, and interviews are picked up by Alternet, the Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, the Dallas Morning News, Truthout, and elsewhere.

Sarah van Gelder lives on the Suquamish Tribe’s traditional lands: she serves on the board of the Tribe’s Suquamish Foundation and paddles with the Suquamish canoe family on the annual tribal canoe journey. She has lived in India, China, and Central America, and is the mother of two adult children.