James Ehrlich, Founder of ReGen Villages Holding, BV

James Ehrlich, Founder of ReGen Villages Holding, BV

Mr. Ehrlich is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford University School of Medicine Flourishing Project, Faculty at Singularity University, Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and (Obama) White House Appointee for Regenerative Infrastructure. 

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Overcoming challenges such as population growth, increasing urbanisation is crucial in the coming years. Regen villages holding company is helping deal with these challenges by creating communities about which we’ll know about today. 

And we have the founder to talk about all this in this conversation. James was the first entrepreneur in residence appointed at Stanford in its 128-year history. He shares his journey and talks about how he found a residential real-estate development group and software company/ that can build self-reliant communities. Let’s welcome James Ehrlich for today’s episode of TBCY.

About James Ehrlich

Based out of California, he is an entrepreneur in residence at the Stanford University of medicine. He is also a faculty member of the singularity university. He is the Founder of ReGen Villages, a Stanford University spin-off company creating a sustainable and regenerative neighbourhood with organic food, clean water, renewable energy, and circular nutritional flows. 

Discussion-

What is ReGen Villages and what is its mission?

Regen is a dutch holding company founded by James. It was founded as a for-profit impact vehicle to specifically address the urgent housing crisis globally. This project aims to connect and retrofit developments around passive homes with open space, organic food production, clean water, renewable energy, and waste to resource flow. James says that this allows these neighbourhoods to survive and thrive when the power supply goes out or during any other issue- which is similar to the way people lived until 1950. 

“Regen villages represents every single one of those 17 sustainable development goals, when you realise safe, efficient, energy-positive housing married with permaculture and water, and waste resource management and renewable energy that all of a sudden deals with education, children’s rights, women’s rights, culture adaptability-all of that is under one umbrella.”

Why of all the places did you choose the Netherlands to set up the holding?

 James after his undergraduate, moved to the north of Silicon Valley where he was surrounded by families engaged in farming. There he got to know about these farmers and their artisanal ways of production. This inspired him to start filming the case studies of these farmers which eventually turned into a popular American cooking show called Organic Living. They were moving around the world doing this show and one such trip was to the Netherlands. Their culture, living below sea level with incredibly low-tech solutions impressed them. Thus, when they decided to found the company, this place was selected.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

James credits all the people who contribute to this mission including his team who has been there since the company was founded. He says that his team has supported him through thick and thin because they believed in the objective of the company. 

What keeps you going?

To this question, James says that we urgently need to act and there’s no time to think of solutions. Plus, knowing that all this is possible and feasible encourages him to take action. 

James believes that “We ourselves are capable of living strong, healthy, flourishing lifestyles where we are connected to our natural ecosystems and not dissociated from them”

James Ehrlich is Founder of ReGen Villages Holding, B.V. a Stanford University spin-off company formed in the EU to realize the future of living in regenerative and resilient communities, with critical life support of organic food, clean water, renewable energy and circular nutritional flows at the neighborhood scale. 

Mr. Ehrlich is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford University School of Medicine Flourishing Project, Faculty at Singularity University, Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and (Obama) White House Appointee for Regenerative Infrastructure. 

Mr. Ehrlich Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages as a Dutch (EU) impact-profit company in 2016, with its patented VillageOS™ operating system software to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to define, design and autonomously manage regenerative neighborhoods that promote healthy long-term outcomes for residents and wider communities. 

ReGen Villages are planned for global replication and scale in collaboration with established industrial partners, universities, governments and sovereign wealth and pension funds, enabling an optimistic post-COVID green transition.