The Kingdom Company

Gwendolyn Hallsmith is a descendent of Mary Chilton and John Winslow, the younger brother of Edward Winslow, a main character in the story. Her interest in genealogy led her to England, where she spent many weeks in the Post Office files and libraries to try and find her ancestors. In the process, she uncovered stories of the early days of the Virginia Company settlements which were very different than the history people in the United States learn in school. This led to a long research project to portray the history of this pivotal time.

In addition to the stories of the early colonial profiteers, her genealogical research found ancestors that go back to a time in the British Isles before Roman conquest. This made her wonder about their pre-Christian worldviews, and through additional research she uncovered creation stories and practices from the Indigenous Neolithic and Celtic Peoples that have been lost to conquering patriarchal ideologies and beliefs. This new insight deepened her respect for the Indigenous knowledge that is still alive today.

Gwendolyn has an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Hartford College for Women, a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Colorado, and a M.A. in Political Science from Brown University. She did additional graduate work at the University of British Columbia, the Andover Newton Divinity School, and Concordia University in Montreal. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Social Innovation program at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, where she is studying the growing trend returning land to Indigenous Peoples and other Prefigurative Decolonized Post-Capitalist Practices.

Gwendolyn has served for 24 years as the Executive Director of Global Community Initiatives, a non-profit organization she founded in 2002. She is the author of six books, many articles, podcasts and videos on sustainable community and economic development based on systems thinking and global ethics and has worked with communities all over the world to foster caring communities, local economies, good governance, efficient infrastructure and services, and healthy ecosystems. This has included work in government at the local, regional, and state levels and on projects funded by bilateral and multilateral donors in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China, Japan, South Africa, Tanzania, and South Korea.