My cross-system advisory supports leaders, institutions, communities, and funders working across different systems of knowledge, authority, and responsibility.
This work builds the relational infrastructure needed for systems to become living ecosystems: adaptive, relational, and able to move across cultures, people, and place.
Co-Founder & Strategic Advisor | La Fundación Biocorredores Amazónicos (Ecuador)
As co-founder of BioAm, I support leadership development, cross-training, product definition, and research strategy.
My work helps clarify what is needed to build understanding between NGOs working in Ecuador’s rainforest regions and the realities of local communities, territories, and leadership systems.
This is cross-system advisory in practice: translating between institutional goals and local realities so projects can become more viable, relational, and grounded.
Embassy Collaborator | Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab
With Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, Deakin University (Australia)
In collaboration with Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta and the IKSL network, I have contributed to long-form research, writing, and knowledge-building processes that require careful translation across Indigenous and Western frameworks. This work has shaped conversations on kinship, leadership, institutional behavior, and the conditions required for deeper forms of collaboration and sits at the intersection of research, governance, relational intelligence, and systems change.
Published & Public Work
June 2025
Published on Swamphen, a journal of cultural ecology of the University of Sydney, Australia
Keynote Essay : Indigenous Embassy
As Indigenous Peoples, our own orientation to boundaries is incompatible with oppressive constructs because, for us, borders are dynamic, semipermeable sites of relational increase. We will share this orientation from our unique experience of emergent embassy rituals between Cañari and Kara::Kichwa of the Andes::Amazon and Bama/Murri of Australia’s northeast (see Jacobs & Narváez; Yunkaporta).
Fall 2026
“Seeds and Structures”
By Tyson Yunkaporta, Gabriela Romero, and Stephanie Beck
Emergence’s seventh print volume will explore the role of seeds and structures in bridging the worlds and sowing a future where we embody an ontology of ecology. Central to this inquiry will be an examination of ancient and existing ways humans work with seeds and structures—spanning physical, cosmological and spiritual, and ecological knowledge systems that honor our sacred relationship with the Earth.
The Other Others | November 2024
Indigenous Borderwork, Kinmaking & Migration
With J.Gabriela Romero, Nkwi Flores, Amazon Andes First Peoples
A dialogue exploring the relationships between identity, migration, governance, belonging, and community formation across cultures and territories. The conversation reflects on Indigenous approaches to stewardship, kinship, and collective responsibility, and considers how different systems of knowledge inform the ways people organize, lead, and navigate change.