About Joel

I’m Joel Beverly, I was raised in the head of a holler...

... with two beautiful parents, a bunch of siblings, a hand-dug well, and an outhouse (we just called it a toilet).

This holler is located in the second poorest congressional district in America and the one boasting the shortest life span. I was hungry at times, and this hunger created within me an urgency to create change.

Later I obtained a master’s degree in biology and at 28 started an environmental consulting firm. The business has been successful and with the money, I started the Central Appalachian Re-imagination Project (CARP) and a bar that serves cocktails and love.

The aim is to create a vision of something greater for us here in East Kentucky. In many ways, it worked and in others, it did not.

During this time, I worked with other business and government leaders.

These leaders had opportunities to make choices that would have a longstanding positive impact (generations), yet more often than not chose short term profits instead.

This experience was deflating and I better understand why many people say:

“There’s nothing that I can do to help”.

At the age of 40, all this business (or busyness) caught up with me and I experienced a world-class episode of burnout. For 12 years I had been running day and night (literally… I’m a bat biologist), and looking back now, with no clear vision of why I was running.

I was the same as the leaders that had disappointed me, stuck in my programmed reality with no vision of how to get out. The burnout forced me out. It brought me to my knees, and from this space, I experienced an awakening.

This awakening dissolved my programmed reality and opened my eyes to true reality.

For the last five years, I have dived headfirst into this newly discovered reality and my true self.

I have not looked back, but neither do I look forward. I am instead excited to create change in this moment.

This is my path. I’m excited to hear about your path.

The Artemes vision is a product of my life experiences (lack of economy and leadership) and my awakening (conscious revolution). I hope you connect with it in some way…