Brook Le Van is an artist, rancher, alchemist, and a co-founder and executive director of Sustainable Settings. LeVan, with his wife Rose, created Sustainable Settings as a 501(c)(3) in 1997. Sustainable Settings is a Demeter Certified Biodynamic working ranch and Whole Systems Learning Center featuring a raw dairy, vegetable and herb CSA, Run-on-the-sun green design and built infrastructure, managing 244-acres in the Rocky Mountains near Carbondale, Colorado.

Le Van holds an MFA from NYSCC in Alfred, New York and is an alumnus of the Institute for Social Ecology, Plainfield, Vermont and holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute.

He has received two Fulbright Fellowships to research:

1.) the cosmological origin myths and manifested sacred sites as they inform village layout, the building traditions, the vernacular iconography and the physical products of the Gurunsi People of Northern Ghana and Southern Burkina Faso, West Africa.

2.) study the mytho-religious meanings of the iconography, layout and building traditions associated with the Hindi carved terracotta temples of West Bengal, India.

The LeVan’s conducted a 7-month-long expedition navigating the entire Huang Ho, Yellow River, across Northern China.  This was a 4,000-mile journey starting on the Tibetan Plateau at 15,000 feet elevation at the source of the river building traditional river craft along the way as they navigated their way out to sea level at Bo Hai Bay the Yellow Sea.

He has his two-year diploma in Permaculture design for education, community services, and resource development and is a consultant for Biodynamics, Permaculture, MIG/holistic management, and whole systems design and is a green design charrette facilitator. Le Van taught college and university full-time from 1990 to 1996. He has been a visiting professor lecturing internationally as an artist and more recently as regenerative/ sustainable agricultural farmer/rancher on small and large-scale biodynamics and beyond-organic food production and the development of living soil as a foundation for local food and renewable energy security.

LeVan is most recently a co-founder of Biodynamic Source a non-profit devoted to the preservation and evolution of Biodynamic Agriculture through our research, consulting, educational programing, and the production and distribution of Demeter certified Biodynamic preparations. He is founding partner in Biodynamic Botanicals, a new venture to grow high quality Biodynamic medicinal herbs for the alternative/ natural healing apothecary market.  LeVan is also an approved North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program Mentor Farmer.

He is founding Board member of Slow Money and the Thompson Divide Coalition, a board member of Grassroots TV and on the advisory board of numerous others.  LeVan hosts "Sustainable Solutions - Interviews with Practical Visionaries" on Aspen Grassroots TV, and is an advisor and writes a regular column, "Food For Thought," for Edible Aspen magazine.