Staff Bios

Administrative Team:

Laura Dickerson, Co-Founder/Director of Development
laura@Vveducation.org

Laura Dickerson hails from Paducah, Kentucky where she spent a lot of time playing soccer and enjoyed exploring the nearby Shawnee National Forest. She spent weeks every summer as a camper and later a counselor at a summer camp in the mountains of North Carolina. She graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Geology, and immediately joined Teach For America in 1999. Teach For America placed her as a high school special education teacher in Helena, Arkansas from 1999-2001. In addition to teaching, Laura has also coached a Varsity Gymnastics team and helped out with a local soccer league.  Laura has been the Co-Director of Vida Verde since its inception, and looks forward to a long future with the organization.

Laura loves living on the California coast, and spends her free time reading, gardening, playing soccer, running, knitting, and making food with friends.


Shawn Sears "B+ (or B Positive)", Co-Founder/Director/Instructor
Shawn@Vveducation.org

Shawn Sears grew up in West Saint Paul, Minnesota and spent a lot of time in his youth backpacking, canoeing, and swimming. He graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Psychology, and stayed a year after graduation as a paraprofessional the Psychology Department. In 1999, Teach For America placed him as a 4th grade teacher in Marks, Mississippi, population 1,500. Shawn excelled at consistency, fairness, and instilling a love of learning in his classroom. While there, he started the first-ever soccer league in the area. During the summers of 2000 and 2001, Shawn took groups of students from Mississippi to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota for camping and canoeing adventures. Shawn hopes to pass on his love for the outdoors to lots and lots of kids.

Shawn is a committed environmentalist who has a knack for construction. He can often be found working on his latest project in the workshop, filtering used vegetable oil from restaurants (with which he fuels his car!), playing sports with the Half Moon Bay community, or communing with the local bobcats.

Tim Ward "Mapache", Program Director/Development Assistant/Instructor
Tim@Vveducation.org

Tim Ward, born and raised on the Central California Coast, is a graduate of Environmental Studies and Economics at the University of California Santa Cruz. Tim has been a committed environmental activist for the last eight years with a specific focus on California forest and farming issues. When not working at Vida Verde, he often volunteers to help run a community bicycle project in Santa Cruz. Tim has spent the last 4 years since graduating college working in environmental education as both a naturalist, a wilderness leader, and as a camp nurse. Tim also has a keen interest in the Spanish language and the social issues around Latin American politics and immigration.

Tim’s passions outside of work include mountain climbing, cycling, gardening and surfing in all of the wonderful places California has to offer.

2007-2008 Instructor Team

  
                 2007 Staff Thanksgiving Dinner                                                    Happy Staff Members!

2008 Naturalist Instructor Staff:

         Nate Hausman "Stratus"                                  Hope Swank "Raft"                                      Melissa Morris "Pika"
                           

Former Staff

        
  Heidi Plowe "Tigerlily"          Shoshanna Krall "Nova"      Rachel Brand "Aloe"            Cameron Alexander "Duff"

                  

Substitute Naturalists

                          
     Katy Schutz "Honeybee"                    Sky Snyder "Tread Lightly"              Rachel Harris "Bay"
 

                        
      Liana Harp "Trilium"      Gavin Comstock "Gusano"

History

Laura Dickerson and Shawn Sears, the founders, both graduated from Colorado College, after which they served as teachers in the Mississippi Delta area with Teach for America from 1999 to 2001. After two years teaching in some of the most under-resourced schools in the country and experiencing the needs of low-income and disadvantaged youth in the U.S., Shawn and Laura decided to form Vida Verde Nature Education. They saw a pressing need for economically disadvantaged youth to be given exposure to the natural world. Vida Verde Nature Education was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in the fall of 2001.

Vida Verde spent its first four years at Tunitas Creek Ranch, a wonderful site, outside of Half Moon Bay, CA, donated for V.V.’s use by Jim Sheehan and Nancy Schaub. In the summer of 2005, Vida Verde opened a new chapter in its book by moving its programs away from the private residence of its conception to the site of a non-profit retreat center, called Venture Retreat Center outside of Pescadero, CA. Vida Verde currently operates all of its programs from this beautiful base adjacent to Butano State Park.

TIMELINE
 2001-2002: Vida Verde hosted its first students. 400 children came with their teachers to the brand new programs, one class at a time. All of the visits were one school day in length. 2,000 student hours were spent at V.V.

2002-2003 :  V.V. served over 700 students, again almost all exclusively single day trips. We strengthened our connections with the  teachers from the previous year, and met some very important partners around the Bay Area who have been supporting Vida Verde ever since. We also hosted 3 pilot overnight/2-day trips. 3,500 student hours spent at V.V.

2003-2004:  Our balloon year! Vida Verde designed an internship, built an intern cabin and hired 2 interns. We hosted 31 student groups, all of them for two-day experiences! This school year, because of the switch to overnight/2-day trips there was a significant and beneficial increase in the amount of exposure and lasting impact on the students. The student hours spent at Vida Verde quintupled from the previous year to 19,600.

2004-2006: This school year followed on the coat tails of the previous years’ hard work on program development and relationship building with all of the teachers and principles. It was a huge success. We also decided to hire two experienced naturalists from nearby outdoor education programs, in lieu of the internships. These two naturalists brought a wealth of knowledge fun to V.V. and let Shawn and Laura take a slight step back from instruction at times.

2005-2006 : V.V. once again reached its annual goal of providing overnight programs for 600 Bay Area Students!  80% of those students came from returning schools.  With the help of two wonderful naturalists and lots of volunteers, we easily transitioned to Venture Retreat Center and began using the adjacent Redwood Forest of Butano State Park for our nature hikes.  During the summer of 2006 we welcomed our new Assistant Director, Tim Ward.

2006-2007:  Wow, has it been 6 years already?!?  Vida Verde provided awesome programs for another 600 students this year.  100% of those students came with returning schools or teachers (wow!)  40% of the schools that attended V.V. have now made the Vida Verde experience an important rite of passage each year for an entire grade level of the school.  Also, Vida Verde introduced its new 3-day programs this year with great success.  We anticipate almost half of the groups next year will participate in these 3-day programs.  Finally, Tim Ward has agreed to stay on for at least another year as Vida Verde's Program Director! 

: