About Verdant Growth

You've done everything right. So why does something still feel off?

Maybe you hit the goal and felt nothing. Maybe you're living a life that looks right from the outside but sits wrong on the inside. Maybe you've started to wonder how much of what you're chasing was actually your idea.

That's what Verdant Growth is about.

About Me

I'm Eugene — Hawaii-based sustainability coach, podcast host, writer, and stubborn optimist about what people are capable of when they're pointed in the right direction.

I have a mechanical engineering degree from UCLA, but some of my most formative years were spent living abroad — nearly a decade between Korea and Japan. I wasn't on some spiritual journey. I was just living — teaching kids, getting around by bike, eating differently, existing inside a different set of cultural norms. And that distance from what I'd always considered "normal" did something useful: it made me question whether "normal" was actually "good."

Turns out, a lot of it isn't.

I believe most of us are living lives we didn't fully design — shaped by defaults we never questioned, systems built around someone else's priorities, and a culture that profits from us not stopping to ask is this actually what I want?

This is the place where we stop and ask.

What I'm Building

The Verdant Growth Blog is where I think out loud. Personal essays on the gap between how most of us are living and how we actually want to — covering everything from convenience culture and consumption to the small, quiet shifts that change how a week feels. Just honest writing from someone in the middle of figuring it out, for anyone else who is too.

The Solve for Nature Podcast isn't an expert interview show. Each conversation takes a guest on a journey through their own values and lived experience — to uncover a sustainability challenge that actually means something to them personally. The result isn't an expert talking at you. It's two people figuring something out together, in real time.

Rooted & Rising is my coaching methodology for people who are done circling. If you've been thinking about changing the way you live but haven't found the entry point, that's what this is for.

The Shared Table is a monthly gathering for people who want to go deeper. We bring a topic, you bring a meal (optional) and an opinion — we sit together virtually and do what most sustainability conversations don't: actually talk. No lectures, no tidy answers. Just a small group of people willing to discuss, debate, and open up about the hard stuff. If you've ever wanted a real conversation about how to live better — not a webinar, not a comment section — this is it.

If you've ever thought I should be happier than I am — you're in the right place. Start with the blog, catch the latest episode, or pull up a chair at The Shared Table. Wherever you begin — welcome.