Jon Freise

Jon Freise co-founded the Corcoran GROWS Transition Initiative in Minneapolis Minnesota and helped transform it from a group of neighbors meeting in a living room into a 501c3 organization. Corcoran GROWS (Grass Roots Opens Ways of Sustainability) has put on fairs, hosted speakers, held neighborhood dances, created huge public art projects, and organized permaculture and reskilling courses. Jon now works city-wide raising awareness, helping new initiatives get up and running, forming partnerships, locating funding, and cross connecting people passionate about Transition- with a good dose of celebrating mixed in! Jon brings an engineer’s problem solving perspective to the coming energy transition. He enjoys learning and sharing ideas and innovations for powering down our need for fossil fuels. Jon has written articles for The Oil Drum on natural gas supplies and EROeI (energy returned on energy invested). Jon’s pre-transition career has focused on robotics and the design of commercial color printers. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science.