About Sueño de Vida
Sueño de Vida is Spanish for “dream of life.”
In 2016, we came to Ecuador and started as a makeshift campsite on a small 8 acre plot of deforested land. We shared a dream of transforming it into a lush garden, teeming with life where people can live in balance with nature.
Today the dream is a reality. Sueño de Vida is a fully operational regenerative farm, learning center, and 30-acre nature reserve where people, plants and animals thrive together.
We regenerate the rainforest, cultivate organic cacao and other nutritious foods, and provide opportunities for our local community. Through a variety of programming and content, we share our knowledge with visitors near and far to bring a healthier and more harmonious way of life to people everywhere.
Kristen Krash
Kristen is the co-founder and director of the Sueño de Vida regenerative agroforestry project in Ecuador. Prior to moving, Kristen was known for her guerrilla gardens — productive green spaces she created in any available space. Now an urban transplant in the South American rain forest, she has adapted her urban gardening and sustainability skills to landscape regeneration of degraded land.
A natural teacher and communicator, Kristen regularly writes articles and creates videos highlighting a practical and accessible approach to land regeneration from backyards to bigger picture projects. Kristen’s articles and interviews have been featured on popular sustainability platforms like Abundant Edge and The Mud Home, and in the Rainforest Regeneration Curriculum at the Ecological Restoration Camps.
Juan Santillan
Juan is the co-founder and on-the-ground project manager for SdV. Juan lived in the DC area with Kristen and always had a dream of returning to his native country. Once back in Ecuador and tasked with building a sustainable home from scratch, he honed his niche constructing ingenious, sustainable, earthquake-resistant structures with local bamboo and recycled materials. Now, Juan designs, plans, and builds all types of structures at SdV and for our new neighbors in restoration, in addition to co-designing and implementing agroforestry systems with Kristen. Juan also thrives on taking care of trees, baby birds, our horses, chickens, and our SIX dogs with love and attention for all.
Amy Malerba Hemingway
Amy is an advisor to Sueño de Vida farm, focusing on strategic positioning, messaging and communications best practices as the farm prepares to add a global dimension to its efforts.
Amy’s career has always required flexibility to move about the world, now even more so as she serves as the “trailing” spouse of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer.
Ever since serving a key role for the United States at the “Nature’s Wisdom” World Expo in Aichi, Japan, Amy has been keenly interested in the opportunities to do things better by learning from nature. During her 20-year career, she has focused on advancing innovative solutions in energy, agriculture, and the ocean, and now has turned her attention to forests—which suffer many ills, but, when properly harnessed, have the potential to address many pressing challenges from food security and nutrition to farmer poverty and climate change. Being posted in Quito, Ecuador led her to SdV, where she is excited to join the farm’s regenerative agriculture and agroforestry journey to bring nutritious food to more people, income stability and respect to farmers, and biodiversity and climate solutions to the world.
Luke Andahazy
Luke is the lead designer for all things Sueño de Vida and is responsible for developing the website, branding, packaging and product line. He joined the team in the autumn of 2019 to originally help Kristen bring her cacao to market.
He has known Kristen since her years in Washington, DC.
Today Luke is an active working artist based in San Francisco.
More examples of his work are available here.
Lizandra Vidal
Lizandra is a long time patron of Sueño de Vida and dove deeper into the project in 2021 when she did a three month in person internship at the farm. The experience inspired her to join the team as a strategic consultant and she became a US based supplier of SDV products.
She lives in sunny Sarasota, Florida and works intently as a Yoga/Tai Chi techer while she also grows her SuperFood business enterprise. For fun she visits the many natural parks and cultural sites on the Gulf Coast of Florida and she loves riding her bicycle for both fun and transportation.