Amanda Harris
Playa Viva

Amanda Harris is a Permaculture Designer and educator living in Guerrero, Mexico with more than a decade of experience working with rural agrarian communities. She is entering her sixth season as the Permaculture Manager at Playa Viva, a regenerative boutique hotel in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero; and is on the board of consultants to ReSiMar, the Social and Environmental Impact program of Playa Viva and as part of the Red Regenerativa in Mexico.  

Amanda’s  commitment to the land and the people who work it is rooted in the understanding that holistic design and edible landscapes adapted for specific and local conditions are key to feeding some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. She earned her Permaculture Design Certification in 2013 at the Mesoamerican Institute of Permaculture in Guatemala; and earned a dual-Masters in Global Environmental Politics from American University in Washington, DC, and in Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Development from the United Nations-mandated Universidad para la Paz, in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2015. Today Amanda’s focus is on developing, launching and promoting regenerative agricultural businesses in Mexico’s micro-watersheds that empower communities to solve their own problems through the transfer of knowledge, skills, resources, and leadership training.