Marat Omarov
Visionary Founder of The ARK
Marat Omarov is the founder of The ARK, a regenerative village in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, built on the belief that a different way of living is not only possible, it is already emerging.
His path here was anything but straight. Born in Kazakhstan, Marat rose through the ranks of government and international development, ultimately serving as Director of Content and Events for EXPO 2017 in Astana - the largest project in his country's history delivering more than 3,000 events in 3 months of EXPO. He was decorated with the medal for “Outstanding labor” by the President of Kazakhstan for his work.
Then he chose to walk away.
What he witnessed during the 2020 pandemic - the extractive, profit-driven development consuming places like Tulum, that Marat chose as his home back then, pushed him to ask a harder question: what does it look like to build something that restores rather than takes? The ARK is his answer.
Founded in 2021 and funded entirely by Marat's own capital, The ARK is a living community rooted in five pillars: Health, Autonomy, Equality, Regeneration, and Togetherness. Residents steward 25 hectares of protected forest and eat from a 6-hectare permaculture farm on the land.
Marat's vision is simple and radical at once: that community, when designed with integrity, can heal both people and planet simultaneously.