Hello fellow traveler.
I'm glad you're here today!
My name is Ryan Anderson. After over a decade working at the intersection of environmental markets and food/farming systems, I started Solving for Pattern LLC in 2020 as a small act of honoring my agrarian mentor-in-another-watershed Wendell Berry.*
I have been deeply involved in complex program research, design, strategy, and implementation since 2007—but at the same time I'm just getting started. The common thread across my career so far has been to distill and share the best of what I (with many fellow travelers) learn to benefit the common good, in hopes of tipping a few of our complex adaptive systems in more desirable directions while we still can.
In addition to independent consulting work, I have provided part-time support to Sierra View Solutions on projects with American Farmland Trust and Argonne National Lab. Other recent collaborations include contract roles with Hummingbird Technologies (now part of Agreena) to expand their US presence and with The Carbon Underground around their international efforts to scale up regenerative agriculture. Since 2020, I've also served as an advisor to Geni Hub and the related CarbonDrawn Initiative in addition to being an active Steering Council member of the University of Minnesota's Forever Green Partnership.
In early 2021, I directed Green America's Soil Carbon Initiative before providing technical services as a consultant. In 2019 and early 2020, I co-led the US croplands pilot for Nori’s carbon removal marketplace as their first Supply Development Lead, most notably including the foundational work behind the first project verified and registered on the platform in December 2019. Being a 10-person startup at the time with a highly participatory culture, I also had the good fortune of being able to co-create and test dozens of ideas with the Seattle-based product and business development teams.
My career began at the Chicago-based Delta Institute, where (among various roles over 12 years) I managed a soil carbon sequestration program that returned over $2 million to farmers and forest landowners in 18 states. As that program wound down in 2011, my work at Delta quickly pivoted from a lean fee-for-service venture to a diverse grant-based portfolio ranging from multiple USDA Conservation Innovation Grants to watershed-scale demonstration projects for "pay for performance" conservation in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and Winrock International. I also cofounded the Artisan Grain Collaborative and served as a founding steering committee member of ReGenerate Illinois, helping them secure and deliver on over $1 million in combined grant funds from 2015-2019.
In terms of formal education, I have a BS in Finance from North Park University and an MA in Ecological Economics from the University of Leeds. From 2015-2016, I designed and taught Loyola University Chicago's first transdisciplinary course in ecological economics to over 50 undergraduate students across 2 semesters at the Institute (now School) of Environmental Sustainability.
After 15 years in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, my "home place" is now a few miles north in the tight-knit community of Evanston. I'm also the proud parent of a 6 year-old who is partially named in honor of Mr. Berry of Kentucky, and a 1 year-old named after a minor (but still great) prophet.
If what I've shared here so far is of interest and you want to explore a collaboration, feel free to learn more about my background/skills/connections here and send me a note to say hello back. As a fellow traveler I'm here to listen, learn, and walk with you as best I know how.
*You can read Wendell's seminal 1980 essay in full here, which is reprinted in The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural by Counterpoint Press.