Jon is a father, husband and brother and works in education, enterprise and publishing. His underlying interest is our deepening affinity for the abundance, diversity and interdependence of life and cultures, and how this finds expression in our lives and livelihoods. Jon is an educational consultant and sits on the boards of Black Mountains College, Thoughtbox Education, Schumacher Society and the Deep Time Walk. In 2018, he joined the nascent Chelsea Green Publishing UK team as Commissioning Editor, where he continues to platform practical philosophers and storytellers playing out wild ideas in practice. In 2020, Jon partnered his wife, Ruth, to establish a vegetarian and vegan food business called Edgy Veggie Kitchen in Totnes, Devon.
Jon grew up in London, studied Business Administration and Development Economics on scholarship at Baylor University and then George Mason University, both in the USA. He completed his Masters in Environmental Management at Stirling University in Scotland, before working as a organic farm labourer for four years. He went on to win the Jacob Blaustein Fellowship at the Center for Desert Research in the Negev, Israel, and then a senior Fellowship position with the Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas in Aleppo, Syria. During this time, Jon completed his thesis entitled “tribe and state: management of the Syrian Steppe” and was award his Doctorate from the University of Oxford. He went to work on common property issues with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN for a number of years with one year seconded to the Middle East Peace Process.
In the UK, Jon initiated and facilitated a successful community bid to establish a Landscape Partnership Scheme, raising £2.5m ($3.5m) to fund landscape scale agro-wilding, nature based enterprise and skills development in Purbeck Dorset. More recently, he was made head of sustainability at the Dartington Hall Trust before becoming head of Schumacher College and a director of Dartington Hall Trust in 2011, leaving in 2018. He lives with Ruth and their teenage son, Jimmy, in Totnes, Devon.