Patrick Hiebert

Patrick Hiebert is the co-founder and CEO of Autris and of Veritas Villages, companies focused on freedom and self-sustainability in community development, and has been designing eco-friendly, self-sustainable communities for two decades. After founding and selling several high-tech software companies, he and his son lived aboard a boat and sailed the ocean, honing their skills in self-reliant living (generating their own power and fresh water) before applying what they learned to building new communities on land.

He set out the standard his projects are built to as an acronym, F.I.R.S.T.: freedom, independence, resilience, sustainability and transparency. In practice that means a community generating its own power and water, holding clear title, and publishing what it is doing rather than asking residents to trust a brochure.

Veritas Villages now has communities designed or under way across Central America, from Panama and Belize to Nicaragua and Honduras, and he founded a charitable foundation more than a decade ago on the principle of a hand up rather than a handout.