Valerie Simone is a process improvement and project management professional (certified by the Project Management Institute) with over 20 years in the real estate, financial services, healthcare, and automotive industries. She spent her first eight years in Mexico before moving with her family to the Washington, D.C. suburbs. After graduating from The College of William & Mary in Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in economics and math, she obtained her master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from the University of Michigan, where she founded the Business School Environmental Society. Her MBA studies and subsequent role in the automotive manufacturing industry introduced her to the Toyota Production System (TPS; aka “Lean”), which she observed was a superior system for allowing organizations to operate and grow while maintaining “best-in-class” levels of safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. After moving from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Atlanta, her studies continued at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she obtained a Six Sigma Black Belt and wrote a textbook for her Six Sigma professor. She joined a financial services start-up (eventually purchased by Goldman Sachs), where she developed and launched a continuous improvement training program with support from her TPS/Lean teacher and mentor, Steve Hoeft. Valerie taught hundreds of leaders and front-line professionals the value of “Respect for People” and “Continuous Improvement,” TPS’s two main pillars. She also taught Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0 to her students as part of documenting, implementing, and improving processes.
John Buhmeyer grew up in the southeast and spent over 20 years in the United States Air Force stationed in Montana, California, Idaho, and Colorado. He obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in business graduating Magna Cum Laude, as well as a business-related PhD that earned him Walden University’s Harold L. Hodgkinson Award for Outstanding Dissertation. During his military career, John worked in multiple Space and Missile commands, including US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), Air Combat Command (ACC), AF Space Command (AFSPACECOM), Air and Education Training Command (AETC), and North American Aerospace Defense Command – Northern Command (NORAD-USNORTHCOM in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado). He was an operations officer and program director in training, developmental, and operations organizations across the Department of Defense before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel to complete his PhD. During his retirement, he served nearly 10 years on the boards of multiple community associations. Together with his wife, Valerie, John has looked for ways to improve communities through sensible real estate development strategies, which included finding ways to preserve the natural environment while providing all of the elements people need to live productive and happy lives.
In 2020, Valerie and John were eager to redirect their skills toward helping people live happier lives in harmony with the natural environment. Together, they studied real estate development and ways to build off-grid, earth-friendly homes and communities. Their quest to find “best-in-class,” forward-thinking, and sustainable building design and construction techniques brought them to Pangea Design | Build and Jonah Reynolds, with whom they shared a common vision. In their roles as Pangea Academy Directors, Valerie and John hope to help thousands of individuals build sustainable off-grid skills, lifestyles, homes, businesses, and communities that bring positivity, peace, natural beauty, health, balance, longevity, and prosperity to the world.
In 2020, Valerie and John were eager to redirect their skills toward helping people live happier lives in harmony with the natural environment. Together, they studied real estate development and ways to build off-grid, earth-friendly homes and communities. Their quest to find “best-in-class,” forward-thinking, and sustainable building design and construction techniques brought them to Pangea Design | Build and Jonah Reynolds, with whom they shared a common vision. In their roles as Pangea Academy Directors, Valerie and John hope to help thousands of individuals build sustainable off-grid skills, lifestyles, homes, businesses, and communities that bring positivity, peace, natural beauty, health, balance, longevity, and prosperity to the world.
