Our Staff

Ani McMannon

Raised in Vermont, Ani calls the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain her home. After completing her first year of college at Ithaca College in New York, she returned to Vermont to finish her degree in Spanish and Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont. Ani was constantly finding ways to diversify her college experience and see and do as much as possible. After a summer working as a field biology intern for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Ani headed to Montana for an experiential semester with the Wild Rockies Field Institute, combining her love for outdoor adventure and environmental studies, and sparking her interest in outdoor education. Two months later, she headed to Spain for 6 months of language immersion. Ani is a strong believer in always being curious because it leads to learning, gratitude, and wonder. Spending time learning with others in nature has been very empowering for her and she can’t wait to share that excitement with others! For fun, you can find Ani hiking and exploring new places, crocheting, snowboarding, or curled up with a good book. 

Claire Sponheim

Claire grew up in Minnesota and has always loved spending time outside. Some of her favorite memories are canoeing through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota and exploring the North Shore of Lake Superior. She graduated from Grinnell College, majoring in biology and French, with a teaching license in secondary biology and chemistry. After spending a year teaching in Minneapolis, she has been teaching at an environmental learning center in northern Minnesota, where students come for several days at a time to learn about ecology, teamwork, and outdoor skills. Claire is interested in finding ways to connect outdoor and classroom learning and strives to be constantly learning from the outdoor world around her.

Carolina Veenstra

I was born in Cuba and the river of life brought me to the Pacific Northwest. Here I found work and community and have set deep roots. I have always loved being out of doors and living here by the Salish Sea, between the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, I discovered a passion for hiking. I find time every day to be outside because being in nature calms and centers me. Sometimes this is a walk or run at the nearby woods or beaches; sometimes it is weeding in my garden or on the local trails. This daily practice has forged me. I am a book restorer, artist, mother, dedicated trail steward and a guide for Wild Society. When I am not outside, you will find me in the quiet harbor of home with my husband Nick.

Blake Shafer

Blake would prefer a dip in a beautiful mountain lake to a hot shower any day of the year. His love of the wild came from chasing his father around the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He relishes the simplicity and spontaneity of any outdoor adventure. A camp counselor for many years, he recognizes the confidence and creativity born from new experiences and a little hardship! Blake is a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker who has spent much of his adult life outside the US. He recently spent four years glacier guiding on the rugged west coast of New Zealand’s south island and is certified by the NZMGA. He loves birds, tree identification, mountain weather, and paying attention in general! He lives in Kingston and is always looking towards his next adventure.

Co-founder, Board Member

Myrna Keliher

Myrna co-founded Wild Society with Forrest Nichols in 2014, thanks to a lifelong passion for spending time in the Olympic Mountains and a grave concern for the future conservation of our wild public lands. She is deeply committed to mentoring both in her role as Director and as a guide. Myrna brings years of experience in teaching, community building, and business administration as well as expertise in communications strategy, implementation, and design. She is an artist and printer and also runs Expedition Press, a letterpress print shop in Kingston, WA focused on poetry and type.

Forrest Nichols

Forrest volunteers for Wild Society in addition to working as an engineer for Washington State Ferries, raising his two wild and enthusiastic boys, and rebuilding a wooden sailboat. During his middle and high-school years Forrest was exposed to an array of wilderness skills and experiences through the Tracking Project’s Hawkeye camp in northern New Mexico, through rich relationships with several mentors in the wilds of Washington state, and through independent learning opportunities at Eagle Harbor High School. Since those formative years, Forrest has been in love with the outdoors, continually studying and exploring the dynamic and living systems of the world around him. He co-founded Wild Society when he saw that the kids in his community didn’t have the opportunities to learn about the natural world that he had grown up with.

Board Member

Caroline Dempsey

For as long as she can remember, Caroline’s favorite spaces have been those without four walls. These special outdoor places have varied throughout her life. As she grew up playgrounds and sports fields were the perfect place to romp around with friends. From this chapter, the power of games and play still stick with Caroline as her preferred mode of interaction. She learned a lot about herself from athletics, as she played soccer through college at Washington University in St. Louis. After college, the desert became a sacred place to learn alongside teenagers at an outdoor therapy company where she worked as a guide for two impactful years.

Currently, Caroline is a Health and Fitness Specialist at The Meridian School in Seattle where she celebrates building community through movement with her students! 

Julia Bellia

Julia was born and raised in Washington and has a special place in her heart for the Olympic Peninsula. She graduated from Gonzaga University with a B.A. in environmental studies and an elementary education teaching certificate, with the dream of connecting students to the outdoors through science. She taught 4th grade for two years before moving to Bainbridge Island to attend the IslandWood Graduate Program through the University of Washington. She is working on completing her M.Ed. in Science Instruction and believes science should be filled with curiosity, wonder, and joy. When she is not teaching, you’ll find her anywhere outside, hiking, backpacking, paddle boarding, trail running, or with her 100 pound sheepadoodle.

Sarah Wyckoff

Sarah grew up on the East Coast but is happy to now call the Pacific Northwest home. She graduated from Emory University with degrees in history and public health. After several years working as a behavioral scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sarah followed her passion for the outdoors. She finds joy in exploring nature and connecting people of all ages to the wonders of the Salish Sea. In addition to her work with Wild Society, Sarah is a naturalist with the Seattle Aquarium and volunteers with local environmental groups. In her spare time, Sarah can be found kayaking or hiking through the beautiful and diverse ecosystems that Washington State has to offer.

Shevy Treichel

Raised on a ranch in western Montana, I was first drawn outdoors by my love of animals, wild and domestic alike. At 14, I spent a life-changing week in the Bob Marshall Wilderness with a group of young folks and an endlessly enthusiastic high school English teacher. The lesson was this: nothing fosters connection and fortifies a sense of self like spending time in nature. I’ve sought to live this conviction to the varying degrees that life allows. Sometimes this means full immersion, like hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with my husband, and other times it’s an evening walk with my pup through the park in our neighborhood. I tie my career in prosthetics into my hobbies through adaptive recreation, altering equipment and techniques to allow those with unique needs a full and empowering experience in the outdoors.

Mateus Da Costa

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I moved to South West Florida at a young age where I began exploring the gulf coastal waters with a fishing rod and a thirst for adventure. At 17, I attended Chewonki’s Maine Coast Semester School for high school juniors where I cultivated a passion for ecology, stewardship, and sustainability. While finishing my undergraduate in Environmental Science at Florida Gulf Coast University, I worked as a Campus Naturalist leading environmental field trips for university students into the sultry swamps and estuaries of Southwest Florida. My enthusiam for environmental education and connecting with people of all ages in the outdoors has drawn me further and further west, from the rocky coast of Maine to the sagebrush steppes of Wyoming. After spending one-year instructing youth groups in the heart of Grand Teton National Park with Teton Science School’s Graduate Program, I continued on my western migration and landed in the rich waters of Puget Sound.

Mark Darrach

Mark is a rare plant conservation botanist, geologist and musician who makes his home in Indianola. He recently retired from a position as a rare plant botanist for the U.S. Forest Service in northeast Oregon. Mark grew up in a series of steps across the western U.S. before landing in southern New Jersey for most of his formative years. His time spent exploring the magic of the Pine Barrens portion of the state ignited his love and never-ceasing sense of wonder for the natural world, and plants in particular. Mark is also a certified teacher and has taught at West Sound Academy, and as a long-time instructor for North Cascades Institute. During the winter months he works at the herbarium at the Burke Museum in Seattle where he is a research associate doing plant taxonomic research publishing species new-to- science and authoring and reviewing new technical keys for various plant groups. His passions are plants, songwriting and playing acoustic guitar, taking long floats on wild rivers whenever he can get away, and hanging out with his Bernese Mountain Dog, Tsuga.