Jenny Charlton is the owner of the land and daughter of John Charlton who started Roi Farm. Jenny graduated with a degree in Complementary Therapies over 20 years ago and has worked in this field ever since using aromatherapy, reflexology and massage mainly in hospice and palliative care settings. She is also a yoga teacher and teaches both floor based and chair yoga with the aim of making yoga accessible to all ages and abilities.

Theano Flemetakis has been working with natural farming, garden design, and permaculture since 2013. In 2018, she completed her Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Elena Symeonidou and Andrew Jordan on the island of Tinos. That same year, she joined the Roi project. In 2023, Theano began studying nursing, with a vision to integrate permaculture and natural farming with therapeutic and healing practices.

Mixalis (Mike) Flemetakis has extensive experience in woodworking, farming, and traditional stone building, developing a diverse skill set that blends craftsmanship with sustainable practices. He spent years working on woodworking projects before transitioning into agriculture, where he honed his skills as a farmer and stone builder.

He spent four years at Roi Farm, practicing permaculture with insights from individuals holding Permaculture Design Certificates (PDCs). His role involved maintaining the farm and managing key sustainability technologies, including photovoltaic and irrigation systems. This hands-on experience deepened his understanding of sustainable practices and their critical importance.

Additionally, Mixalis’ involvement in observing and harvesting olives and other crops over two years provided valuable insights into the natural resources that agriculture and nature can offer. Recently, he expanded his expertise by completing a part-time course in healthcare, further broadening his diverse skill set.

Sílvia Jiménez Català

Sílvia Jiménez Català was born in Barcelona and comes from a Catalan and Aragonese family (from Northern Spain). She has felt a strong connection with the natural world since a very young age, especially with forests and medicinal wild plants, as she inherited this passion and knowledge from her grandparents and great-grandmother.

When she grew up she graduated in Biology at the University of Barcelona and since then she has not stopped studying and experimenting, learning every day a little bit more about the plant world and its extracts from a holistic and integrative point of view.

She has worked both in plant research projects (University of the Azores in Portugal and at the Centre for Agri-Food Research and Technology of Aragon, Spain) and in LIFE conservation projects led by the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (SPEA, a Portuguese NGO partner of Birdlife International).

She also has extensive experience in Environmental Education. She loves working with children and accompanying them on this exciting journey towards caring for the environment.

Silvia and Kurt Michael Arruda are a couple and co-founders of Savia Íbera, a small family business dedicated to aromatic and medicinal plants and production of essential oils and hydrolats.

Kurt Michael Arruda

Kurt Michael Arruda, born in Canada, is native of the island of São Miguel, Azores, Portugal, although he has been living in Spain for several years. He shares the same passion for Nature, both terrestrial and aquatic worlds, as he used to spend his days surrounded by green mountains and the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean from a very young age. He has a real fascination for ecological systems and believes tenaciously that they are the true inspiration for sustainable living and production. After realizing that as a society we are “out of sync” with the living systems to which we belong, he began his personal quest to live in a more harmonious way, eventually finding what he was looking for, Permaculture and Regenerative Agriculture. As well as considering himself an eternal autodidact, he obtained the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC), Queensland (Australia) and a grade of specialization in Ecological Agriculture in Aragon, Spain.

Anna is a practicing aromatherapist and lifelong student. She is a student member of ICAN, AIA and IFPA. At the moment she is pursuing her Internationally recognized Professional Certification which will be followed by an Advanced Diploma in Aromatherapy, through EOTCHS. At the same time, she attends masterclasses and seminars which offer continuing education credits. She is a staunch supporter of safe use of essential oils, moderation in dosing and prioritizing the use of locally sourced essential oils derived from non -threatened plant species. She believes we are connected to endemic plants we’ve known all our lives and therefore using them in aromatherapy is like asking an old friend to help us out. Through Airmid Institute she aims to bring awareness to the fact that nature has provided what we need, so long as we respect this gift and ensure its sustainability.

Jacqui is a nurse consultant in Integrative Oncology at The Christie NHS Trust; an acute cancer hospital in the UK, where she has been working clinically with essential oils since 1997. Her clinical focus is the management of patients with complex physiological and / or psychological needs. The role includes maintaining a clinical caseload where essential oil preparations are used in conjunction with standard licensed medications to facilitate maximum healing / symptom support. In addition to her clinical duties, Jacqui leads on the department’s research programme as a central part of her role. Fundamental to her leadership is addressing the issue of sustainability when choosing essential oils, for use in both the clinical and research setting. Crucially, we look to use oils grown in a sustainable way, preferably using approaches, which are integral to and beneficial for a country’s innate ecology.

Kelly Ablard, PhD holds advanced degrees in Biology and Conservation and is a certified Conservation Aromatherapist™. As Founder and CEO of Airmid Institute, she focuses on the global education, research, and sustainability of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs), emphasizing their traditional uses in Indigenous communities. Her research spans conservation biology, evolutionary biology, and behavioral ecology, with projects around the globe exploring traditional medicine, and protecting threatened plant species. Notable work includes investigating Peruvian MAPs, individual chemical recognition in wasps, potential toxins in the endangered slow loris, and tool use in critically endangered orangutans. Kelly has delivered lectures across the globe on the sustainability of animal and plant species. She pioneered Vancouver’s first urban sustainability college program, established the Urban Apothecary Learning Garden at Vancouver Community College, and is the co-author of No Place for Plants. In addition to her role as Co-owner and Co-Principal of Essence of Thyme College of Holistic Kelly contributes her expertise as a member of the ARQAT board. Her leadership at Airmid Institute earned her the honor of outstanding alumnus from Simon Fraser University in 2022.

Ildiko Berecz brings 30 years of aromatherapy experience, transitioning from personal use to a career after naturally healing from endometriosis. Moving from Hungary to Greece, she pursued formal studies and became a certified healer in multiple disciplines. Ildiko combines interconnected areas as a holistic therapist, she is also a plant communicator, Earth steward, aromatic grower, forager, herbalist, artisan distiller and clinical aromatherapist. As a transformative teacher Ildiko offers guidance, coaching and mentoring through the plant world. Her work, spanning workshops, retreats, lectures, and articles, has been recognized globally.

Manolis was born 56 years ago in a small village in Crete and has strong experiences and childhood memories of a rural family and a purely rural society. He experienced, as a child, the transition from a variety of crops that made a family self-sufficient in food to monoculture, with all the consequences this had for the household economy and the biodiversity of the area. Manolis experienced and remembers people like his grandmother or mother having to look for food out in the wild, collecting wild grasses, herbs, and mushrooms. They taught him a lot, and he is grateful to them.

Manolis studied and worked for years as an electronics technician, traveling almost all over the world, for which he is grateful. In 2005, he returned to the village and worked as an electronics technician and on the farm he inherited from his father.

Since 2011, Manolis has been working exclusively on the farm, practicing organic farming with regenerative farming practices. The farm he inherited from his father, which was a monoculture olive farm, has now been transformed into an environment that hosts 35 different species of trees and 243 species of plants, including many rare and endemic Cretan plants.

Childhood memories and experiences led Manolis to seek, through literature and seminars, a deeper knowledge of the unique and rich Cretan flora and biodiversity, so that he could become a better person and a better farmer.

Valérie Bader, of French origin, is a former archaeologist who worked in Syria. She settled on the island of Crete 20 years ago, captivated by its amazing nature, flora, fauna, landscape, geology, and energy. Also passionate about the history, culture, and traditions of its inhabitants, she soon began guiding people along the paths to share her love and knowledge of the island. As a walking guide, she discovered more about the vast variety of flowers, became interested in their properties and therapeutic benefits, and gradually developed her knowledge in the fields of herbalism and aromatherapy by learning from the best teachers in Crete. Manolis, of Lagos Farm, is one of her mentors and a good friend. Together, they work on spreading the beautiful messages of the flowers to passionate individuals and new learners.