Who We Are
Meet the Hazel Cooperative
Hello
Our Story in Brief
We are a collective of young professionals who care about people and the planet. Together we purchased a house in Littlemore, Oxford, and we run it as an ethical, environmentally conscious, multigenerational housing cooperative.
Katie (she/her)
Yoga Teacher
Katie is driven in both her professional and personal life, and she brings a strong set of skills for supporting teams effectively at the University of Oxford and beyond, with the aim of leaving the world better than she found it. Beyond her day job, Katie is a trained yoga teacher working to build inclusive, accessible spaces where people can practise yoga together. She is especially drawn to people-centred classes and to helping students find agency in their practice. Katie also supports a local yoga studio with its training portfolio and its vision of nurturing a community of compassionate, informed and inclusive yoga teachers.
Katie loves bringing people together to build community, work towards shared goals and projects, and share life's highs and lows. She is working towards low-impact, environmentally sustainable living, whether by growing food on the allotment or within the communities she belongs to. Katie sees the Hazel Cooperative as the heart of her life, a place from which ideas and love can radiate outwards, both individually and together.
Bradley (he/him)
Farmer at Oxford City Farm
Bradley hopes to make the world a bit better than he found it in the small ways that he can. Despite moving around through much of his adult life, he is making England his home and hopes to build and support a community and family by living his values socially and environmentally.
Bradley was born in the mountains of West Virginia in the United States and grew up sailing on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, leading to a lifelong love of nature and the water. He has lived in the UK for over five years after a few years in France and other countries before that. He spent 15 years in the U.S. Coast Guard serving on ships in Alaska and Hawaii and protecting marine resources, especially fisheries. After leaving the Coast Guard, he expanded on those skills working for an intergovernmental organisation and then co-founding a non-profit here in the UK to help countries and the private sector with intelligence on environmental and labour compliance in the fisheries sector, as well as supporting the protection of maritime war graves and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from ships, among many aspects of maritime monitoring.
He continues doing this work freelance but his true passion is now his new full time job, farming! Bradley now works as animal lead and head grower at Oxford City Farm, helping to expand their programmes to be more sustainable and teaching local residents about how to ethically care for animals and grow your own food.
Outside of work, Bradley tries to live a low impact life and contribute positively to society. He volunteers with political campaigns, tries to grow as much of his own food as possible, and explores new bread recipes. He is especially keen on encouraging a variety of vegetables along with companion planting and wildflowers that encourage local fauna (especially pollinators). He is keen to help grow the Hazel Cooperative to enable a low-impact housing community of socially and environmentally minded peers that can help each other grow together along with the community.
Orlando (they/them)
Researcher
A jack of all trades and a joyful master of none, Orlando – pictured here with their first ever hand-picked purple-sprouting broccoli – is an interdisciplinary scholar who wants to work in areas that improve the lives of sentient beings. Currently job hunting after finishing their master's and taking some time to learn how to code, watch this space to see how their career progresses!
Having searched for a home all their life, bouncing between homes in childhood and living in several countries in adulthood, Orlando has finally found their forever home. In this home they want to build community, focusing on making their house a safe and accepting space for people from all walks of the LGBTQIA+ community. This involves arranging craft nights, book nights, movie nights, DnD nights, and any other nights their heart desires (or their friends request). When not job hunting, socialising, or watching the chickens with a sense of awe that errs on the obsessive, Orlando spends their time writing and performing poetry with a healthy self-awareness of the absurdity of it all.
Claire (she/her)
Communications Officer & Artist
Claire is a creative problem solver who loves to work with her hands and work within a fun and ethical community. She was born in the Topeka, Kansas and has dual nationality in the US and the UK. She grew up in the mountains of Nepal until the age of 10, then spent the rest of her childhood in the Mid-West in the United States. She developed a deep love of music and artistic expression, getting her Bachelors Degree in Commercial Music before moving to the UK.
She pursued a professional career as a musician for several years before finding a new passion in helping to support small businesses and social enterprises in the Oxford area. She has worked freelance for multiple independent businesses and social enterprises, most notably Makespace Oxford as their Operations Manager, helping to support over 200 local socially conscious businesses and charities. She is passionate about helping others to achieve their goals which inspires her to constantly be developing new skills and growing her community.
Outside of work, Claire is very creative and is involved in multiple music and art projects and loves to cook and work in the garden. She helped to found an intersectional feminist poetry group and is working on developing her skills in art and graphic design. She enjoys working toward self-sustainability by growing food in the allotment, advocating for environmental and socially conscious policies, and supporting her local community. She is keen to develop the Hazel Cooperative into a hearth for forging creative and innovative ideas and developing a community of solidarity and mutual support.
