Ayana is a lover and protector of wild nature. She was studying Ecology at Columbia University when the Occupy Wall Street movement began. Amid the burgeoning resistance in Zuccotti Park, she co-created the Environmental Working Group to help orient the movement to the realities of a suffering planet.

From there she moved West to her beloved Cascadian bioregion, and started an organic farm and wild foods cartel on an Oregon mountaintop. In Portland, she had the fortune of learning from the herbalist Cascade Anderson Geller before her passing.

Ayana is currently studying Restoration of Natural Systems in Victoria, BC, and creating an ecological research center and native species nursery in the Southern tip of the Cascadian bioregion. Along with the renewal of damaged landscapes, Ayana is committed to protecting intact ecosystems

In the summer of 2016 she lead a delegation of women to the Tongass National Forest in SE Alaska to spend time with the forest and learn from the local people to collaborate on a strategy to stop old growth logging. The Tongass film When Old Growth Ends and campaign will launch in 2018.