at oaktree
We believe our neighborhoods can be like the rooted networks of a forest. Our communities already have what they need: knowledge, care, creativity, and grit. What’s missing is the connection.
We’re here to build that connection—to turn homes into hubs, neighborhoods into networks, and ideas into action. Through community-grown infrastructure, shared resources, and rooted relationships, we help people take back control of the things they depend on: energy, food, livelihood, and information.
It’s about creating systems that hold us. It’s about growing power that stays. It’s about building a future where every generation can thrive—not just get by.
At OakTREE, we plant now so others can grow strong later. Our roots run deep. And they run together.
How we got started
OakTREE began when Crystal and Miles, each building bold community-centered solutions, brought their work together. Their ideas germinated at People Power Solar Cooperative’s laboratory for community energy ownership and evolved into something bigger. They turned parallel paths into one shared vision rooted in resilience and community power.
Crystal’s journey
has dedicated her efforts to building People Power Solar Cooperative’s mission into a reality: to create a just and inclusive transition to renewable energy by enabling everyone to own and shape their energy future. During those years, the Cooperative was a laboratory where members experimented with energy projects to help them shape the future they wanted to see, building community-owned solar installations, mutual aid battery networks, solar-powered community fridges, and so much more.
People who participated in the Cooperative’s work started seeing energy not as a bill, but as food, clothing, livelihood, and most importantly, relationships. Yet Crystal recognized that awareness alone wasn’t enough. Even shifting from consumer to producer (i.e. putting solar on your own roof) still leaves us isolated. We need to become community stewards, working together for our collective ability to survive and thrive. That requires infrastructure woven into our daily habits, not just tools for emergencies. Real change comes from improving people’s lives in tangible ways and creating spaces where everyday people practice governing their essential resources together.
People Power Solar Cooperative became the seed from which OakTREE grew.
Miles’s journey
has dedicated his work to the challenge of renewable heat through his startup MMCISolar, developing alternative approaches that could displace natural gas for large commercial applications, lowering costs while reducing emissions. His passion, however, was bringing this work to economically challenged communities.
He realized this meant reimagining energy architectures to be compatible with communities themselves. Not external expertise parachuting in, but building the capacity for organizing, educating, and motivating people to plant renewable solutions for their holistic energy needs — beyond electricity. Thermal microgrids emerged as a powerful tool: networks integrating greenhouses, heat pumps, and solar thermal arrays to link many homes together, sharing resources and building a collective economy for communities to steward together.
He submitted a well received proposal to the National Science Foundation, a proposal that was later refined and submitted to the EPA Community Change Grant with support from the Oakland City Council. Although not funded, that concept became the foundation upon which OakTREE has risen.
Building Together
A chance meeting between the two led to a conversation where they shared their conviction: Communities must deter harmful systems by building alternatives that let them rely on each other, while resisting corporate extraction.
Crystal brought the organizing vision for communities to collaboratively build and govern their own infrastructure. Miles brought the technical vision for thermal networks that could knit neighborhoods together physically. Together, they saw how technology designed with communities—not for them—could become the soil for collective survival and thriving.
Like ecosystems in nature, their vision centered on interdependence, resilience, and regeneration. From that seed emerged the idea of building robust, neighborhood-based systems of care. The concept of inter-structure was born.
Our Mission
We’re here to grow resilient ecosystems from the ground up – rooted in community, care, and community-owned infrastructure. Connecting neighbors and neighborhoods to thrive together.
OUR VISION: A NEW FORM OF GENERATIONAL WEALTH. BUILT FOR US BY US.
Beginning in Oakland and reaching far beyond, we envision communities everywhere cultivating generational wealth through vibrant local economies, shared resilience, and deep connection, like the roots of a thriving forest.
We are growing what we call inter-structure: physical infrastructure designed to strengthen interdependence among neighbors. It is a modular collection of community assets (e.g. thermal microgrids, energy resources, food systems, fiber internet, EV services, and more) that neighborhoods can adapt, expand, and govern together. In this model, the people who rely on these assets are also the ones shaping and managing them, creating resilient, self-sustaining communities where interdependence is not just encouraged, but lived.
Our vision is a resilient neighborhood where communities are no longer at the mercy of distant institutions. Instead, they build and benefit from their own neighborhood-based inter-structure, meeting daily needs, generating local wealth, and preparing for the challenges ahead. Through shared resources and rooted relationships, inter-structure gives people the tools to take back control of the things they depend on: energy, food, information, and livelihoods.
