staff
Zach Brown, Co-Executive Director. Zach grew up surrounded by the wilderness of Southeast Alaska. With parents in the National Park Service, Zach had ample opportunity as a boy to explore the mountains and fjords of this region, experiences that gave him a lasting love of the natural world. Attending college in Southern California, Zach studied chemistry and biology. When the opportunity came to travel to the Arctic, his life changed forever. Zach spent a field season in the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, observing how seabirds are responding to a changing climate. This unforgettable experience led Zach to pursue a PhD at Stanford University, where he continued to study how changing sea ice affects the marine biological communities of the polar regions, especially the phytoplankton that form the first link of the food chain. During his time at Stanford, Zach was thrilled to undertake multiple research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. Completing his PhD studies in spring 2014, Zach set off on a 4-month, 2300-mile solo trek, hiking and paddling from Stanford to his Alaskan homeland, to spread the word about creating Tidelines Institute.
Laura Marcus, Co-Executive Director. Laura is committed to a vision of education that integrates the active life with the life of the mind. As co-executive director of Tidelines Institute, she has worked with her students to create experiential and liberal educational programs that prepare students to be thoughtful stewards of the world around them. Prior to founding Tidelines Institute, Laura worked at Deep Springs College and as a ranger with the National Park Service. Laura has her B.A. from Yale University, her M.Phil from the University of Cambridge, and is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. In her spare time, she is an avid backpacker, reader, and cook.
Tanner Horst, Good River Campus Director. Tanner is an educator who has worked at a variety of experiential and community-based schools as a teacher of manual skills, a maintenance person, and administrator. He is a graduate of Deep Springs College in California and Bowdoin College in Maine. He believes that learning to care for the physical world is more a feat of imagination than some type of knack, and that learning this care can help us to reimagine our habits, futures, and communities.
Phoebe Martel, Program Coordinator. Phoebe grew up in rural Vermont. Homeschooled, she spent plenty of time exploring the secret streams, meadows, swamp, and forest around her childhood home. After graduating high school, she chose to study Philosophy & History of Science and Mathematics at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Before coming to Tidelines, Phoebe combined her passions for outdoor education and humanistic inquiry by becoming a wilderness instructor and teaching philosophy seminars in the Northeast. She spends her spare time sewing, hiking, and cold water swimming.
Bella Kirchgessner, Local Foods Educator. Bella is driven by a deep passion for reshaping our food systems towards justice and sustainability. A graduate of Kalamazoo College, where she studied Anthropology, Bella spent her time in university working in outdoor and garden experiential education, engaging in independent research around the world, and strengthening local community building around food justice topics. Bella is passionate about good food (and continuously learning to grow it), the Great Lakes, vibey music, foraging for mushrooms, and long walks on the beach searching through tide pools. She hopes to live a life that will resonate with as many generations forward as she can imagine and continuously learn to be in good relationship with herself, her communities, and the land.
Kira Elliot, Garden Educator. Kira Elliott is a recent graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a BA in Political Science. Originally from Oregon, Kira loves everything to do with being outside. She is a deep believer in the interconnectedness of all beings and all issues, prioritizing intersectional understandings of the world in her thought and actions. She is also a lover of horses, restorative justice, running half marathons, and reading!
Larry Landry, Maintenance Educator, Good River Campus. Larry and his wife Jen live a subsistence oriented life in Gustavus and operate a market garden from which they sell vegetables, berry preserves and herbal products to the community.
Seth & Katie Michie, Inian Islands Campus caretakers. The Michie family are an outdoor-loving Alaskan bunch. Seth and Katie are new to Southeast, but have spent the last several decades exploring, studying, gardening, and harvesting in interior Alaska. Their two young kids, Brooke (4) and Oliver (2), are growing up as wild as possible. They all love walking the beach, harvesting wild food, and teaching folks about the peace that comes with the homestead lifestyle.
Celia Silver, Teaching Fellow / Kitchen Manager. Celia is an alumna of the 2021 Glacier Bay Program and a recent graduate of Harvard College, where she studied History & Literature. She believes strongly in the power of a liberal arts education, especially in the humanities, to help us grapple with how to live good and meaningful lives. She has previously worked at Tidelines as the program assistant. This year, as the local foods educator, she hopes to think with students about how our eating practices can transform our relationships with ourselves, our communities, and the land. In her spare time, she likes to read novels, read poetry, write poetry, and hike.
Deja Jarvis, Bookkeeper/Administrative Assistant. Deja spent her childhood near the very backyard of Alaskan wilderness that Tidelines Institute now resides. She is familiar with the Alaskan way of life and grew up on a float house. Her interest in nature, conservation, world peace, and education are what drew her to work for Tidelines Institute. She is a proud mother of two and her husband is a commercial fisherman. Deja can also be found in the early childhood classroom teaching Pre-K level children at the local school. Deja enjoys reading, learning, the arts, humor, kids, science, the outdoors, and adventure! When she is not busy working towards one of her goals Deja likes to spend time with family and friends. Deja is currently pacing towards her Associates Degree in Accounting/Business. She aspires to use her education to help nonprofits such as Tidelines be successful and hopes to help make the world a better place through this dedication and passion!
board of directors
Jessica Lindmark, President. Jessica began volunteering for Tidelines Institute in 2013, a year before the organization received its 501c3 designation. Back then she was helping to coordinate speaking events, launch social media presence and edit written communications. She later joined the founding Board of Directors, dedicating her focus to fostering the organization’s relationship with the Hoonah Indian Association and Huna Tlingit culture bearers. A mother of two daughters, she has worked and volunteered variously as an editor, writing tutor (for both native speakers and English Language Learners), social media coordinator, and as a communications intern with Sightline Institute in Seattle, WA. With her snatches of creative time she teaches yoga, gardens, and dreams up the next adventure with her family. To all those from the Huna Káawu and the communities of Icy Strait who have taken the time to teach her, Gunalchéesh and Thank You. It is an honor to work and learn together.
Dr. Amity Wilczek, Vice President. Amity is an evolutionary ecologist whose role as an educator and researcher has been shaped by attention to place, history, and student experience. Amity’s teaching career started at Harvard and Brown before transitioning to Deep Springs College, where over 10 years she served as Herbert Reich Chair of Natural Sciences, Academic Dean, and Vice President. As a teacher, she strives to emphasize the dynamic nature of scientific knowledge by inviting students to contribute to the process of building understanding of the natural world. Her work on plant responses to changing environments has appeared in Science, PNAS, Ecology, American Naturalist, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Nearly all of her research involves substantial collaboration with undergraduate and pre-PhD co-authors. Amity currently lives in Concord, Massachusetts and serves as trail steward of the Emerson-Thoreau Amble for the town.
Rebekah Contreras works as the Administrative Assistant for the Huna Heritage Foundation. She is of Yupik and Caucasian descent and has been adopted into the Tlingit culture as a member of the Shungukeidí Clan, Eagle/Thunderbird. Rebekah also works in various capacities with youth including a position with the City of Hoonah as a gym and youth center attendant and Middle School girls’ basketball coach. She enjoys volunteering on local and national levels and serves as the secretary/treasurer for the Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp 12. Rebekah also is a member of the Tongass Womens Earth Climate Action Network, and an Administrative Assistant at Huna Heritage Foundation. In addition to her passion for community service, she enjoys creating art and playing basketball in her free time.
Jerry Dzugan moved to Sitka, Alaska in 1979 with only his BMW motorcycle and a backpack, after teaching history in inner city Chicago high schools for 8 years. Soon thereafter, he rebuilt an abandoned home on an island and lived off the grid for 16 years while working as a commercial fisherman, land surveyor and wilderness/sailing guide between Sitka and Glacier Bay. He received his graduate degree in marine education at World Maritime University in Sweden. He has served on a dozen Alaska humanity Boards. Experiencing the high rate of marine fatalities in Alaska, he became one of the founding members of the Alaska Marine Safety Education Assn. (AMSEA) and served as its Executive Director for 36 years and continues to work as a trainer. Jerry believes in the importance of lifelong experiential hands-on training in tandem with developing a connection to the land and sea.
Elizabeth Hillstrom, Secretary. Elizabeth is a mechanical engineer in Juneau, AK, and a former Inian student and summer intern. She graduated with a B.S. from Stanford University, where she was first given the opportunity to travel to Southeast Alaska and participate in an Inian Islands Institute program, as part of a course entitled In the Age of the Anthropocene: Coupled Human-Natural Systems in Southeast Alaska. At her day job, she builds devices to mitigate methane releases from concentrated geologic methane seeps. She spends her free time fishing, gardening, hiking, and harvesting.
Molly Kemp, Treasurer. Molly fell in love with Southeast Alaska nearly 40 years ago and put down roots near the Chichagof Island community of Tenakee Springs. Recognizing the vulnerability of her forest home led to decades of political activism and the formation of the Chichagof Conservation Council. Recently retired from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game after 30 field seasons, Molly is thrilled to have an opportunity to help advance Tidelines Institute’s vision for place-based education.
Hank Lentfer. I believe the quickest way to connect with the land is to eat it. Gardening, hunting, and fishing transform food from groceries to gifts. Through writing, recording wild voices and mentoring new arrivals to Alaska, I’m dedicated to helping others sense their connections to each other and the earth. I’ve spent all of my 50+ years here. Along the way, I’ve learned to pound nails, smoke fish, and a suite of other homesteading skills. I’m eager to share them all with the students of Tidelines Institute.
Shubhra Murarka. Shubhra is an alumna of the Arete Project’s 2016 Blue Ridge Session. She has stayed involved with the Arete Project and Tidelines Institute with faculty hiring and alumnx advising. She has continually been drawn to Nunnian education because of her belief that community should be a central part of education. Shubhra has worked as a teacher both in the U.S. and abroad and has worked in education and public health. Shubhra has her B.A. from the University of Chicago, M.Phil from the University of Oxford, and is currently a doctoral student in Biological Anthropology at the University of California- San Diego. Her past and current research projects have focused on Indigenous education, critical race studies, and Indigenous health.