The Weekly Change with Marjan from We Are Changemakers on Bioregions & REGEN
Many people know Marjan through her work at We Are Changemakers, but this is just one part of her work. Marjan is also the founder of REGEN, through which she brings together her work and vision around regeneration, entrepreneurship and education.
At the heart of Marjan’s vision is a simple but profound belief: nature already holds much of the wisdom we need to create a regenerative future. We just need to learn to listen, observe and remember that we are nature, too.
Marjan is fascinated by how nature works. Living systems thrive through diversity, relationships, and mutual support. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is part of a larger whole. She sees enormous potential in learning from these principles and applying them to entrepreneurship, education and the way we collaborate. For her, regeneration is about restoring the conditions that allow life to flourish, and learning to work with nature rather than treating it as something separate from ourselves.
This comes to life in her work in different settings. At Hotelschool The Hague, she teaches Regenerative Gastronomy and Regenerative Design. Her favourite workshops take students outdoors, where they explore permaculture principles and use biomimicry to develop solutions inspired by how nature works. These experiences create space for a different kind of learning: observing before acting, discovering patterns and relationships, and see the value that is being created at the edges.
Closer to home, in Alkmaar, Marjan is developing a living lab at food forest De Groene Oase, where she explores how regenerative entrepreneurship can be an integral part of the food forest. The goal is to duplicate these learnings in many other regenerative initiatives in the region and create a strong foundation for the bioregion Noord-Holland Noord. This project is used as a case study for Grassroots, a project with Wageningen University & Research about
Minimum Viable Ecosystems where she works together with researchers, designers and startups.
What makes Marjan's heart beat faster is seeing people discover new relationships with the natural world, and watching that experience change how they think, create and work together. She loves the moment when people step outside, look at a familiar challenge through the lens of nature, and begin to see possibilities they had not noticed before. And she is excited by what happens when that inspiration becomes collective action, new forms of entrepreneurship and ways of living that contribute to the health of the whole.
Let's chat!