Education Sessions

Monday, August 10 | 3:00 - 5:00pm

Welcome by Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp

Finding Your Purpose, Forging Your Path: A conversation with Abra Lee and Ellen Zachos

Who are you and what makes you special? Why should people listen to you instead of the thousands of other voices out there? Each one of us has a well-developed specialty, a singular passion, a unique voice. Which means we each have something special to offer. But before we can reach our audience, before we can create our tribe, we have to understand our WHY. The WHY is the compass that gives focus and meaning to everything we do. Each decision you make is filtered through the WHY, helping you cut through the clutter and design your path. This isn’t a quick and easy fix. Finding your purpose takes time and dedication. But once you’ve defined your WHY, once you’ve discovered your purpose, work is no longer work. The joy of doing what you love is priceless. And when you’ve figured out your WHY, when you’ve found your purpose, your people will find you. And isn’t that why we all do what we do?

Meet the Speakers 

Abra Lee is the owner of Conquer the Soil a community that celebrates horticulture beyond plants. She has spent a whole lotta time in the dirt as an estate gardener, greenhouse assistant, garden shop employee, municipal arborist, county extension agent, and landscape manager for two international airports. Lee is a graduate of Auburn University College of Agriculture and an alumni of the Longwood Gardens Society of Fellows, a global network of public horticulture professionals. 

Ellen Zachos is a Harvard graduate and the author of seven books including Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn’t Know You Could Eat, and The Wildcrafted Cocktail. Her Backyard Forager calendar (for 2021) has just been published, and she writes a regular foraging column for Edible New Mexico magazine. Ellen shares plant profiles, recipes, and foraging tips on her website: www.backyardforager.com, and offers several online foraging courses at https://backyard-forager.thinkific.com/. A former Broadway performer (cast of Les Miz), Ellen was named a Great American Gardener by the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. She is also the co-host of the Plantrama podcast, with C.L. Fornari. Ellen is passionate about showing people how to use their wild harvests. She is currently working on a wild foods cookbook, and teaches wild cooking classes at foraging workshops and retreats across the United States. A long-time instructor at the New York Botanical Garden, she recently moved to Santa Fe, NM, and now splits her time between the desert southwest and the lush northeast.