Several of our team members are professional educators, corporate trainers, workshop facilitators, and even keynote speakers.

Education & Training

Colin Mangham is a keynote speaker who has been featured on CNN International and given a TEDx. He also frequently lectures at universities including most recently UCLA, USC, Loyola Marymount, DePaul, and Wooster College. He is currently Visiting Faculty at Reutlingen University in Germany, where he teaches his Biomimicry Masterclass at the ESB Business School. With Laura Erlig, he developed our educator-supporting curriculum focused on spider locomotion and hydraulics for Lockheed Martin and the Biomimicry Institute.

Laura Erlig, who co-chairs our education committee, is an experienced educator with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. She is skilled in secondary education, cooking, and teaching reading, with a Teaching Credential focused in Education from California State University, Northridge (CSUN). She has over the years also supported the Biomimicry Institute and its Youth Education Program, and with Colin Mangham developed our classroom activities focused on spiders and robotics with the support of the Institute and Lockheed Martin.

Anne LaForti, with a Masters in Biomimicry from Arizona State University, leads workshops and presentations, often with a focus on soil health, and alongside organizations including the Natural History Museum Los Angeles and NAHR (Nature Art & Habitat Residency) for which she is a Fellow.

Ilaria Mazzoleni, co-founder of NAHR (Nature Art & Habitat Residency) is an architect and the author of Architecture Follows Nature. She has taught at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) for six years
and previously taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) for over 12 years.

All and others including Andrew Paden, Devorah Brous, Marty Meisler, and Lara Hoad (Otis College of Art & Design) are available to speak at your event, inspire your K-U students, or level-up your team with a nature-inspired innovation perspective.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BIOMIMICRY + EDUCATION
The below provides a quick, compelling glimpse from our partners at the Biomimicry Institute, where our Founder Colin Mangham previously served as Chief Marketing Officer and co-authored the plan for the second evolution of the AskNature.org database (which recently upgraded to 3.0):

“Introducing biomimicry into the classroom bridges the boundaries between school and real world for students. Biomimicry is an inherently interdisciplinary way of encouraging students to be observant of the complexity of the natural world and our interconnectedness to it. Rather than just learn about living things, biomimicry requires us to learn from the natural world.

“AskNature provides a few different types of resources that can be useful to educators. In this Educator Resources section you will find curated collections of student- and educator-facing resources for teaching biomimicry concepts in the classroom.

“But AskNature provides much more than that. AskNature is a catalog of inspiring natural phenomena that are great examples of nature solving a problem. Designers and engineers use the Biological Strategy pages in this database for inspiration in solving problems–and students can too!

“Examples of biomimicry innovations, or engineering design solutions inspired by nature, are also cataloged on the site as Innovation pages. Check out the Biomimicry Stories links below to see examples of how different biological strategies inspired real innovations!”