About
We are passionate about businesses and organizations that are forging a path of increased equilibrium and reciprocity with each other and with the Earth. This drives us to work explicitly within the fields of renewable energy and regenerative agriculture.
Our experience in each of these fields has led us to recognize the strong need and desire for increased connection, communication, and shared best practices among values-driven groups with related work focus and missions.
As independent consultants, we are in the unique position of working with a diversity of systems and approaches within separate businesses and organizations. This affords us the ability to leverage an accumulation of collective knowledge and experience within our specialty industries for the explicit benefit of each individual client we engage with.
Tanya Stickford
Optimizing operational systems in
renewable energy companies
Tanya has a passion for systems thinking. She excels in exploring the potential of how we do our work and the rich interface of those processes with the people who operate in, are impacted by and create those systems.
Tanya complements a decade of experience in the solar industry with prior work in science, earning and applying a Master’s of Science in Optical Science and Engineering, and serving as a wilderness instructor with Outward Bound. These distinct but complementary and overlapping careers have fostered a unique and diverse skill set adapted to her current consulting work.
Prior to co-founding PhotoNimbus Consulting, Tanya spent a decade with Positive Energy Solar, an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. During this time, she served in a wide range of evolving roles, beginning as a field tech and subsequently field lead, and ultimately culminating as the Chief Operations Officer, overseeing company-wide operations and participating in the company’s executive leadership team.
The common thread of contribution throughout her tenure with Positive Energy was to identify necessary adaptations and organize teams to work towards a future, more optimized state. From this work flows a deep understanding of the solar industry, the challenges and opportunities of EPC companies, countless iterations of company structure and focus, high level business guidance experience, and the process of transformation in the context of a rapidly changing industry.
Preceding her career in the solar industry, Tanya worked in the field of science. She earned her MSc. in Optical Science and Engineering from the University of New Mexico and applied her degree as an academic research associate in the field discipline of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Notable skill developments from this period include technical analysis, scientific thinking, deep inquiry and in-depth understanding of the Earth’s systems.
Concurrent with her work in science, she also served a decade of seasonal employment with Voyageur Outward Bound School as a wilderness instructor in the canoe country wilds of northern Minnesota. Outward Bound is a national (international in total scope) nonprofit devoted to character development, working in both urban and wild settings as a backdrop to motivate transformation. This work fostered an awareness of the interplay between systems, process and people, while simultaneously sharpening Tanya’s skills in individual and group dynamics, and risk management.
Tanya is an ardent believer in the rejuvenation and inspiration found in human powered movement through landscapes and can be found roaming the mountain landscapes of the Southwest on her mountain bike or enjoying the benefits of extended wilderness travel in the canoe country of northern Minnesota and southern Ontario.
Read more about Tanya’s professional experience.
Virginie Pointeau
Communications and facilitation
in regenerative agriculture
Wendell Berry once said, “you cannot save the land apart from the people, or the people apart from the land.” This sentiment has served as a guiding principle throughout Virginie’s career, and it is with this sentiment that she continues to seek areas of overlap between human ingenuity and regenerative Earth systems. Before co-founding PhotoNimbus with Tanya, Virginie dedicated two decades to nonprofit work—the former in the canoe wilderness of northern Minnesota, and the latter at the intersection of regenerative agriculture, habitat conservation and climate change.
Through her years in nonprofit work, Virginie has worn many hats, ranging from program and budget management to fundraising, group facilitation, outreach and communications. Through her communications work specifically, she has created content for web, social and print media platforms; managed the production of major publications and multimedia projects; and developed and implemented communications campaigns to promote specific issues or initiatives, among other tasks. She recognizes the importance of consistent style and branding, and brings to her work careful attention to detail as well as a sensitivity to presentation aesthetics.
Of equal importance is the context within which Virginie chooses to work. Years dedicated to land and soil health, most notably from within two organizations—the Quivira Coalition and Western Landowners Alliance—have helped her recognize that for either agriculture or conservation to thrive, the two must go hand-in-hand. Both organizations work at the radical center, where diverse stakeholders–ranchers, agency personnel, environmentalists, academics, consumers, etc.—are invited to focus on their commonalities rather than their differences, so as to implement win-win solutions to land health. Quivira’s central focus is the regenerative promise of holistic rangeland management. The Western Landowners Alliance, while similarly focused, also incorporates a focus on threatened and endangered species and wildlife corridors, thereby taking a much broader approach to land health and conservation within the context of a changing climate and diminishing wildlife habitat.
The regenerative agriculture movement addresses what Virginie believes to be the most critically urgent, inextricably-linked issues of this generation—agroecology and healthy, nutrient-dense food production; soil health and carbon sequestration; social justice and the celebration of global cultural diversity; human health and nutrition; ecosystem resilience and biodiversity—all within the context of climate change, and as part of a global movement.
Her communications and facilitation work through PhotoNimbus serves this movement and magnifies the efforts of those dedicated to regenerating vibrant soils, growing healthy food, and fostering resilient communities.
Read more about Virginie’s professional experience.