Laird has lived 41 years in intentional community, mostly at Sandhill Farm, an income-sharing community he helped found in 1974. He launched a career as a group process consultant in 1987, and has worked with more than 150 intentional communities (including 70 cohousing groups), both as a trainer and as an outside facilitator to help groups navigate anaerobic dynamics and organizational snarls. His specialty is up-tempo meetings that engage the full range of human input, teaching groups to work constructively with conflict, and at the same time being ruthless about capturing as much product as possible.