Woolman Staff

Born and raised in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, home to well-known peace and justice organization Bread & Puppet, Emily is excited to be living in a community that values the natural landscape and broadening our understanding of stewardship and place in ways that address equity and access. Emily is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, where she studied Sociology and Anthropology and completed a senior study looking at the voices of environmentalists who oppose wind power development in rural Vermont. Emily has also studied and traveled in Mongolia, Mexico, and Ecuador with a focus on sustainable agriculture. In her younger days, Emily was a competitive cross country ski racer and devoted many early mornings to intense training sessions and frostbite. She still loves to escape to Tahoe for a more leisurely ski on the beautiful trails that roll through the hills at 9,000 feet elevation. Emily is excited to help bring the Woolman message into the wider world and connect people to the amazing work that happens here!

Over the past decade Emily has shown that she is deeply committed to the promotion of global-wide positive political, social, and educational change. Each of her experiences in North America, Central America, Asia, South East Asia, and Africa have significantly enhanced her perspective as she learned, volunteered, traveled and taught. Most recently, she is proud to have earned a Masters of Peace Education (education for inner awareness, humane relationships, global citzenry, and planetary stewardship) from The United Nations Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. Teaching Global Issues (since 2009) and Peace Studies (since 2011) at Woolman has been an excellent blend of her academic, employment, and life experiences. She also loves playing in rivers, improving her photography skills, playing mandolin, general silliness and spending time with her dog named Banjo and partner, Red. Emily's favorite part of this job is truly seeing the power and potential of youth as peacebuilders!

Raised in the woods of New England, Jacob joined the Woolman community with Masters degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Yale School of Forestry. As a dedicated place-based educator, Jacob has taught nature awareness, wilderness survival, ecological restoration, team building, and service learning, in a variety of places across the United States and abroad. Jacob's environmental science class blends traditional academics with hands on learning and field based exploration. Jacob is excited by Woolman's unique integration of ethics, academics, religious practice, communal life, and daily work all connected through the larger themes of social justice and sustainability. You can usually find him harvesting in the garden, building compost, climbing a tree, or down at the river. Jacob recently received a TogetherGreen Fellowship award from Toyota and the National Audubon Society. Read more about Jacob's Farm to Forest initiative on the Together Green Website or in The Union, our local newspaper.

After spending four years exploring outside the US, teaching, traveling, volunteering and learning about permaculture and sustainability, Red feels right at home at Woolman. A community member since 2009 he strives to continue learning the skills necessary for becomming self sufficient. Red's passions include spending time outdoors, hiking at the Yuba, playing music and soccer, and enjoying the satisfaction of a hard day's work.

Getting his start with summer camp in 2005, Matt worked for Camp Augusta for 8 years. After 4 of those, what was once a loved summer job became a career passion. He now holds an MS in Camp Adminstration and Leadership and has worked as Village Leader, Registrar and Challenge Course Manager. Though new to Quaker philosophy and custom, Matt has spent much of his life in community, trained extensively in NVC and holds a very compatible personal value set. He has traveled extensively---visiting 33 countries on 4 continents so far, and dreams of the day he will earn the use of the adjective "prolific" to describe his passion for writing. Following an undergraduate degree in Developmental Psychology, he has worked in the past as a preschool teacher, a climbing instructor and a children's ski instructor. He is a firespinning enthusiast, and loves to spend his Thursday nights doing flips and twists on a gym floor. His core vision is to create a summer experience so powerful that it will surpass even the descriptive "camp," and become a life changing, unforgettable event in the pathway of anyone who dances with it.