This month, we’re shining a light on the quieter dimensions of leadership—the kind that doesn’t always announce itself with urgency or command. Instead, it grows in the garden. It listens in the margins. It holds space when there are no easy answers.
In conversation with two of our thoughtful volunteers— Daniella Medina and Madeleine Charney—a shared wisdom emerged: leadership rooted in presence, not performance. In care, not control. What follows are reflections from each of them, shaped by their lives, their learning, and their love for the land and people — distinct in voice and deeply aligned in heart.
Daniella: Trusting the Space Between
Daniella Medina is a PhD student in political economy at UMass Amherst, where they study the intersections of poverty, power, and space. But their learning doesn’t stop in the classroom. A longtime mutual aid organizer and aspiring herbalist, Daniella finds healing in the garden and in the relationships we build with plants—and each other.
“In economics,” they say, “there’s often this assumption that people are only motivated by self-interest. But that’s not what I see in real life. Mutualism, reciprocity—those are the forces that really sustain communities.”
At PMP, where their currently an intern, Daniella spends their Thursdays in the garden and apothecary—blending teas, making tinctures, and preparing medicine for the free clinics. Their vision is long-term: a public herbal apothecary for organizers, frontline workers, and people navigating violent systems. Their inspiration comes from watching family members endure displacement, addiction, and incarceration—and from witnessing how even small doses of herbal care can support nervous system regulation and restore agency.
“There’s so much embodied and experiential learning that happens at PMP,” they say. “As a student, I read so much theory. But here, I’m learning from the plants, from the people. Watching herbs grow through their life stages, working with my hands—it stays with me in a different way.”
Daniella’s research draws on critical urban theory, especially the informal labor networks that sustain cities like New York—often invisibilized in mainstream narratives. At PMP, they find a living example of community care thriving in informal, relational ways: medicine as mutual aid; presence as resistance.
“Academia values a very narrow kind of knowing,” they reflect. “But herbalism connects us to something older—sensory-based knowledge, embodied wisdom. It’s not about mastery; it’s about being in dialogue with the world.”
Their love for herbalism began with mushroom foraging in the woods of New Paltz. That early practice—wandering, noticing, swimming with friends—planted a belief that we are part of a larger consciousness, like the mycelium: interconnected, unseen, alive. “There’s no way to know it all,” they say, smiling. “And that’s the point. I’m not trying to be an expert. I want to be part of the conversation.”
Madeleine: The Practice of Attentive Stillness
Madeleine Charney wears many hats—literally and figuratively. At the Science and Engineering Library (SEL) at UMass Amherst, she serves as the librarian for the Stockbridge School of Agriculture (and other environmental-related departments). Besides her library degree, she is also a graduate of the Conway School, which teaches deeply ecological approaches to land use. She has spent years helping the campus and greater community research and connect with seeds, soil, and the quiet rhythms of nature.
Now on a rare six-month sabbatical, Madeleine is using this time to deepen her study of herbal medicine. She volunteers with the People’s Medicine Project (PMP) and takes online courses with Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism. “I love it,” she says of her time with PMP. “This is the best choice I could have made… I learn so much just hanging out with you all, sharing knowledge.”
During her sabbatical she is also developing a collection of herbalism books and planning the installation of an “herbal library” at SEL to complement the Mass Aggie Seed Library. The public is welcome to borrow books/garden equipment and take seeds/pre-packaged plant materials at no cost. A fall workshop with People’s Medicine Project is in the works.
Madeleine’s journey into herbalism began with the documentary Herbal Aide. She was particularly moved by an interview with an herbal medic who helps on the fly at demonstrations. Inspired by the care and courage of plant people, she began reading, foraging and growing herbs. That passion took root when she connected Mothers Out Front, a climate activist network, with a four-year stint of growing and donating herbs to PMP in a community garden—while also educating the public about no-till practices and plant medicine.
Madeleine’s leadership isn’t loud or linear. It’s circular, seasonal, and deeply relational. Her work reminds us that libraries, like gardens, are spaces of quiet power—and that knowledge can be grown as well as gathered.
A Shared Light
Madeleine and Daniella are in different life chapters—one mid-career, the other mid-dissertation—but they meet at a shared threshold: the belief that healing is relational, and that leadership can emerge from slowness. From trust. From care.
Both are walking paths that resist extractive systems—whether those systems operate in agriculture, academia, or urban economies. They are learning from plants, from people, and from each other. They are planting libraries and foraging for futures. And they are showing us that wisdom doesn’t always wear a name tag.
Their work invites us to reconsider what counts as knowledge, what counts as care, and what it means to show up—open, grounded, and curious. As Daniella reminds us, “We can’t just stay in the system of the self. We must talk to each other. We must feel.”
Thank you, Madeleine and Daniella, for modeling a form of leadership that doesn’t rush to answers but listens for what wants to grow. That holds space, even in the dark. That trusts the headlights, one turn at a time.
