HeadOver Heels for Caring Sustainability™ mission is to help in the co-creation of communities that promote graceful, ecologically balanced lives through personal well-being. Through caring leadership, we work to build synergy and trust with others. By listening deeply, and by virtue of respect, we connect with the harmony in all of nature. We are a non-profit that fosters a sustainable future striving to lead communities to embrace social justice through the lenses of Caring Sustainability and earth-based practices. We continuously learn and grow by building and nurturing community relationships that contribute to social and environmental health.
HeadOver Heels provides innovative ways through collaboration for those who seek to be change-makers, transformers, and leaders for today and the future. We offer more than ten years of experience in collaborative education and leadership, and over forty years in earth-based ways of knowing.
Without caring, sustainability is not possible.
Caring Sustainability™ is more than a concept — it is a call to reimagine how we live, lead, and build community. We believe that sustainability begins in relationship: how we care for one another, how we honor the Earth, and how we cultivate systems rooted in justice and belonging.
At Head Over Heels for Caring Sustainability™, we design transformative workshops, webinars, and community learning experiences through caring science and earth-based traditions. We bring together leaders, seekers, educators, and change-makers to explore sustainability not as a technical solution, but as a relational practice grounded in shared power and collective responsibility.
Through intergenerational dialogue and immersive convenings, we nurture courageous leadership that recognizes social and ecological well-being as inseparable. Our work invites communities to move beyond extraction and hierarchy toward regenerative systems sustained by care.
We envision a future where caring is not an afterthought, but the foundation of sustainable societies.
Our Focus
Caring Sustainability
Leadership
Social Justice
Earth-Based Ways of Knowing
Caring Sustainability™
Without caring, sustainability is not possible. HeadOver Heels intends to provide workshops, webinars, and resources to people interested in sustainability through a caring science lens.
Leadership
Leadership through storytelling can reconnect us to ourselves, our cultural background, and our ancestral roots. These elements engage our senses and can connect us to others. It inspires us to listen to and understand the many voices of our communities. Now is the time to reimagine a more balanced and egalitarian world, creating leaders of today and tomorrow.
Social Justice
In these uncertain times, HeadOver Heels believes that communities must have the courage to meet each other where they are. To think about social justice in the future, we must carefully consider the issues our society faces today. There must be an element of social justice in all that is taught, learned, and done.
Earth-Based Ways of Knowing
HeadOver Heels adheres to a deep connection with the earth. Earth-based ways of knowing provide a perspective rarely taken by networks. We encourage our participants to trust their personal lived experiences and to engage in both rational and non-rational ways of thinking. Often, the drum’s heartbeat allows individuals to understand that both reality and vision are possible.
T.R.E.E.S.
Dr. Debby Flickinger is the founder of Head Over Heels for Caring Sustainability™, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating transformative leadership rooted in care, partnership, and planetary responsibility — grounded in the understanding that human flourishing and Earth’s well-being are inseparable.
Her work centers on Caring Sustainability™, a framework she developed that integrates sustainability studies with Jean Watson’s Caring Science Theory. At its core is a simple yet powerful premise: sustainability must be grounded in caring — for one another, for communities, and for the Earth.
Debby brings decades of experience as a scholar, educator, and mentor. She has taught doctoral courses in social justice, sustainability, and relational leadership, and continues to serve on dissertation committees supporting emerging scholar-practitioners. She is certified as a Caritas Practitioner, Eco-therapist, and Sustainability Coach.
She is also co-creator of the FIRE (Focus that Ignites Resilient Empowerment) leadership framework and serves as Managing Editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, advancing partnership-based models of transformative social change.
Through conferences, scholarship, and community gatherings, Debby invites individuals and organizations to move beyond extraction and domination toward partnership, reciprocity, and regenerative futures — where systems restore rather than deplete, leadership nurtures collective flourishing, and communities and ecosystems are supported to heal and thrive across generations.
Martha Brumbaugh, Ph.D. is a scholar, author, and educator whose work integrates transformative leadership and earth-based traditions to strengthen sustainable community practices. Her doctoral dissertation, Out of the Mists: An Organic Inquiry into Sacred Ways of Knowing and the Shaping of Reality, remains foundational to her scholarship and teaching. She serves as Director of Educational Programs for Head Over Heels for Caring Sustainability™ and has co-authored published articles and a forthcoming book chapter with Debby Flickinger.
