Marie Harding
From a young age Marie Harding has searched for new approaches to living, culture, and ecology. In 1964, while travelling around the world, she volunteered with Project Concern– a field hospital then serving the area near Dalat, Vietnam, during the middle of the Vietnam War. There she met John Allen, and together in 1969 they founded Synergia Ranch LLC., an intentional community with a large-capacity retreat center, organic garden, fruit-bearing orchard, and research facility located just south of Santa Fe, NM. In 1974, while at Synergia Ranch, Marie became a founding member of Institute of Ecotechnics Inc., NM, which went on to establish further cultural and ecological-minded projects around the planet.
To the present day Marie has co-founded and been a director and/or financial officer of a number of the IE projects, often serving as the location scout for establishing the initial properties that now make up the diverse ecological holdings of IE and its subsidiaries. After a brief interlude in Oakland CA, where she constructed along with the rest of the IE crew an 82’ Chinese junk made out of ferro-cement. Marie went on to captain the RV Heraclitus on its maiden voyage.
Aside from its own projects, the Institute of Ecotechnics also maintains many collaborative and consultancy-based relationships with people and organizations of diverse backgrounds from all around the world. Marie has been integral to many of these partnerships, including from 1979-94, when she served as a Director of the Hotel Vajra in Kathmandu, Nepal. From 1974 – 1981, Marie was a co-founding Director of the innovative adobe construction company, Synopco Corp. of Santa Fe NM; and from 1983 – 94 served as a Director of the Caravan of Dreams, Performing Arts Center, in Ft. Worth, TX.. In 1979, Marie co-founded and remains a Director of the October Gallery, London, UK.
Marie located and was a founding Director and CFO of Space Biospheres Ventures, the company that built the Biosphere 2 project near Oracle AZ, as well as serving on the board until 1994. In 1994, until present, Marie serves as Director, President, CFO of Global Ecotechnics Corp., Environmental and Eco-projects consulting, with offices at Synergia Ranch NM.
Marie remains Manager of Synergia Ranch LLC since 1969.
Marie has been a painter since 1960, with various exhibitions and a mural project for the Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth, TX on the History of Jazz and Blues, a Mural of Planetary Dances, and a Theater Mural of one of the Caravan of Dreams plays.
She is presently engaged in a painting series with the subject of endangered-species.