FROM MARKETING TO STEWARDSHIP:
Applying a Regenerative Lens to
Business, Communication, and Everyday Life
Maya Dentzel and I share a lived experience that is rare. We are both connected to the Soviet Bloc: Maya was born and raised in Moscow, while I am first-generation Hungarian American, born to parents who emigrated during the Revolution in 1956. In junior high, I spent two years at a Hungarian boarding school in Germany, with holidays visiting relatives in my parents' home country.
I'll never forget a particular day in Budapest, standing on a street corner with my aunt: looking up at her bewildered, I asked her how she "could live this way?" Instantly, she clamped her handover my mouth, raced us home, bolted the door, lowered the blinds, and sat in silence, terrified someone may have heard me.
That moment, and two years living abroad, taught me how immense our freedoms are in America. Maya, on the other hand, lived in that same fear every day for 19 years — an experience that left a far deeper mark, and ultimately fueled the same desire: to make the world a better place. I hope you enjoy getting to know this remarkable young woman, who is bringing a more authentic, compassionate approach to marketing, and to the relationships behind it.
Ventech Pitch Fest, April 2026
How has your cultural upbringing shaped your worldview and the work you do?
I was born and raised in Moscow and moved to the U.S. about 11 years ago, so much of my worldview took shape between cultures. Growing up in an authoritarian environment made me aware of fear as a force that shapes people and societies, and of how easy it can be to feel that our lives are determined by circumstances beyond our control. Living in the U.S. expanded my sense of personal agency and led me to explore what it means to live from the opposite of fear: from love, curiosity and choice. Over time, I brought these experiences and questions together in Regen Within, my project rooted in the belief that while we may want to change the systems around us, the place where we have the most immediate responsibility and ability to create change is within ourselves.
Ventech Pitch Fest, April 2026
What does Regen Within do, and how does a regenerative lens shape your approach?
Regen Within is my creative studio & communications consultancy, where I help purpose-driven founders and organizations communicate complex ideas, build strategic partnerships, and curate gatherings that bring together people and ideas that might not otherwise meet. I want my work to help transformational ideas travel further and help the people behind them build stronger ecosystems of relationships around their work. Having lived between cultures and gravitated toward fields like economics, technology, impact and communications, I naturally work across disciplines and perspectives.
My interest in regeneration grew from exploring what living systems can teach us about the systems we create: paying attention to relationships, context and the health of the whole rather than seeing things in isolation. Coming from a marketing and communications background, I became curious about what that could mean for my own field: how can communications create value for the wider ecosystem around a business, strengthen relationships and align message with behavior, rather than simply compete for attention?
Maya Dentzel, John Fullerton, Faye Cox
What are your organization’s mission and values?
My mission is to help regenerative ideas move from the edges into the wider culture, and to contribute to rethinking how we live, work and do business. Underlying that is a belief in interdependence: our relationships with ourselves, one another and the natural world are connected, and the quality of the systems we build reflects the quality of those relationships. I want Regen Within to support a shift away from extraction, fragmentation and short-term thinking toward reciprocity, responsibility and care, with nature as both something we protect and something we learn from. Our values are: Integrity. Curiosity. Connection. Reciprocity. Regeneration.
What are a few examples of how you put your values into action?
Connection is probably the most tangible in my day-to-day work. I’m constantly thinking about who might benefit from knowing each other, from making individual introductions and developing partnerships to bringing regenerative economics authors John Fullerton from Capital Institute and Faye Cox from Hourbooks together for an intimate salon here in Santa Barbara.
Curiosity and integrity shape both the questions I explore and how I communicate them. Through my work with the Regenerative Technology Project, for example, I support gatherings that bring technologists and other thinkers together to ask broader questions about technology: What values are we designing into it? Who benefits? What relationships and behaviors does it create? I then help bring those ideas to wider audiences through events, social media, articles and newsletters, while preserving their nuance and staying honest about the impact of the work.
What are some beneficial ways to apply a regenerative lens to one’s life and/or business?
I believe a regenerative lens can be applied to almost any area of our lives because it starts with seeing the bigger picture. Systems thinking simply means looking beyond one decision or outcome to ask what else it affects and how those things are connected. Nature is one of our greatest teachers here: a forest only makes sense when we see the relationships among its soil, plants, animals, water and climate.
Practically, that can mean asking: Am I adding more value than I’m extracting? Who or what else is affected by this decision?Am I strengthening the relationships and communities I’m part of, or depleting them? For me, regeneration is an ongoing practice rather than a pursuit of perfection. It means becoming more aware of how our choices affect the larger whole and making better choices where we have influence, from how we communicate and what we buy to how we run a business or show up in our communities.
