EPI-Centers   Montgomery Norton   Tara Polizzi

We both have been holding this vision for 20-25 years. The world has finally caught up to our foresight. Now, we want to invite our people to join us in creating this vision… again. This is not the first time we, as individuals, have engaged in the development of EPI-Centers, rather the evolution has incorporated many iterations thus far. Each of us has had this vision all of our lives. It is our life’s work and purpose. When we met and started to get to know each other, we discovered that we were two people, but both have similar visions. One complimenting the other, completing the pieces we were missing (Jerry Maguire much?). As funny and fictional as it sounds, these are the facts. We laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and at the same time, it’s true. We both have had challenging parts of our lives, existential experiences that have coincided in an absurd way, as if the Universe was preparing for us to meet and collaborate.

Again, we have gone through many iterations of the same project. After taking many years off traveling and learning life lessons, Montgomery went back to school, attaining a MA in Urban & Regional Planning hoping to find the skills necessary to achieve his visions. He also lived and worked at different retreat/learning centers, started Cooperative movements, and started businesses/organizations as well as working with the governmental entities to create sustainable projects that are still going on today. Unfortunately, he has rarely been given any credit, in essence working in anonymity.

Tara has lived most of her early life on farms and in the woods with her family who strived to live sustainably and in harmony within the surrounding ecosystem. Being of Indigenous descent, she has learned a lot from her parents about the culture of being stewards of the earth and living with the land. Since living on her own, she has traveled the country and learned many skills and is educated in many fields of study through mentors, books and other resources. Having seen the Earth gradually decay in her travels, from what people have done or not done, Tara has had an intense desire to teach others about regenerative living and sustainability. Her purpose is to help heal us and the planet that we live on through the skills that she has acquired.

We knew that when we started living together, that we would be working on EPI-Centers. Little did we know how that would transpire and that we would often wake up in the middle of the night and brainstorm together. We wanted to create the space, and we did. Merely two weeks after having moved into the same house, we discovered the Keystone of our big, shared visions following the viewing of a PBS special on the dead and dying towns of the U.S. (4,000+). We realized that by creating the network of EPI-Centers, sharing an infrastructure of human, physical, and financial resources, EPI-Centers could actualize their purpose by regenerating, revitalizing, and creating sustainable dead or dying cities/towns, we would become the “Centers for Transformation” - EPI-Centers! 7