Part of the joy of working with WiserEarth, whether as an intern (like me), a volunteer, a donor or a staff member, is not just explaining what we do but how we do it. We have 8 staff members and 6 interns - and they are spread out over 8 countries. And that doesn’t even include our incredible volunteer force that is spread out all over the globe. How exactly can a small organization run when its staff lives in more time zones than you can count on one hand? Step inside our office and find out.

The tour starts at the WiserEarth headquarters in Sausalito, California, USA.

Not your typical office space, we work in one large room where we can openly exchange ideas and comments all day. Most of our interns are based here, as well as our Executive Director, Peggy Duvette, and Program Director, Angus Parker.

Peggy often bikes to the office from her San Francisco home and gets right down to business answering emails and taking calls with board members, staff, interns and volunteers. While she discusses a new program development or communications strategy in the works, Angus will be helping sort out a technical issue on Wiser.org or developing a new partnership to assist in our SEO strategy with Victor Lin, our SEO Intern.

Antoinette Siu, our new Communications Associate, comes in 3 days a week to work on this very blog and all of Wiser’s social media channels – when you see a @WiserEarth tweet, it’s probably from Antoinette! While she broadcasts new content out, our Volunteer Coordinator Intern Laura Ross-Perry brings new people in – she recruits and manages our incredible team of volunteers, writes reports on our thriving Volunteer Program, and updates the volunteer group pages on Wiser.org.

That’s everyone in Sausalito! 3 hours ahead on the East Coast of the USA…

Gillian Gurish, the Grant Writing & Development Intern, is probably working on a new grant proposal or letter of inquiry, drafting the newsletter sent to Wiser’s thousands of supporters, or updating the Salesforce database.

A thousand or so miles south, our Online Training Program Intern Pablo Robles is working in Durham, North Carolina. He is working on developing and improving Wiser.org’s usability through training videos and a webinar program.

Now we hop across the Pond to Europe, where we find…

Camilla Burg, our Communications & Outreach Director, working from her home near Paris, France (though she is originally from the UK) on all things communication. Hey day might include anything from writing a new blog post about the latest successful story about a connection made on Wiser, to working on the site’s branding scheme and social media presence.

Not far from her is our WiserLocal Project Coordinator, Matthias Strotkoetter, in the Bavaria region of Germany. He coordinates current and new WiserLocal volunteer organizers and sends them all the information they need to keep their WiserLocal meeting fresh and productive. He also tends to personally welcome new members to the WiserLocal group on Wiser.org – feel free to drop him a line on his profile. ;)

Let’s go south to West Africa to meet…


Doudou Sy, the Regional Coordinator for West Africa, who lives in Dakar, Senegal. When he’s not speaking with Camilla or Peggy, he’s helping the volunteers he oversees and facilitating interactions between members online and offline in his area.

At the same time in Asia…

We find Wibowo Sulistiohard at work as our User Interface (UI) Designer in Jakarta, Indonesia. He focuses on redesigning, simplifying, and polishing the Wiser.org platform so it is as easy to use and helpful as possible. He also helps out in times of technical emergencies, like spamming issues or bugs. Luckily, those issues don’t come up too often!

In New Delhi, our Regional Coordinator for India Yatin Thakur is meeting new people and organizations working on a variety of social issues. He helps them utilize the groupware tools on Wiser.org to further their cause and connect to the global movement. He works with Aakriti Sinha, our India Online Community Manager Intern, who supports Yatin and those people interested in using the Wiser.org platform to further their cause’s impact. Aakriti comes from a corporate background, and particularly enjoys the contrast her work with Wiser provides.

We’re almost done! We head to China to meet…

Mobei Zhang, our Regional Coordinator Intern for China. Based in Beijing, Mobei keeps the lines of communication open with all Chinese volunteers (who have spearheaded the effort to translate Wiser.org into Chinese – they’re an amazing bunch!). Working directly with Camilla, she also works on publishing quality content around China on the site.

And finally “Down Under” is Celeste Salter our online Community Manager, based in Australia! She is regularly connecting with members encouraging greater connection, networking and engagement across our site, supporting the Wiser Editors and co-creating the online community all over the world.

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Thanks for joining us on a tour of the WiserEarth international office! We would also like to take a moment to recognize all of our incredible volunteers, who also span the globe and donate their invaluable time & talents to our cause.

We hope you learned a little more about us and what we do. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment!

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