Ben Tettlebaum
Attorney and Director, Pinnacle Risk Strategies, PLLC
Senior Staff Attorney, The Wilderness Society
Ben Tettlebaum is an attorney and director of Pinnacle Risk Strategies, PLLC, a boutique legal practice focused on managing risk for the outdoor recreation and education industry. At Pinnacle, Ben assists clients in risk management, mitigation, and transfer, focusing on regulatory and business issues.
With over 20 years of experience in the outdoor industry, Ben has deep roots in outdoor logistics, medical response, operations, and systemic risk management.
Ben has worked with some of the most prominent organizations in the industry, including NOLS and NOLS Wilderness Medicine, Appalachian Mountain Club, Student Conservation Association, REI, and Second Nature.
JOSH OLSEN
Co-Founder and Program Director
Montana Wilderness School
Josh Olsen is the co-founder and program director of the Montana Wilderness School based in Bozeman MT. He was born and raised in Montana and grew up exploring wild spaces from the Bears Paw to the Beartooth Mountains. Josh has worked as an educator in many capacities primarily working with adolescents and young adults in the backcountry; instructing kayaking and climbing and spent some time teaching English in Tanzania, Africa. He is a former wilderness instructor for "at- risk" youth programs and worked as a field instructor for multiple wilderness adventure programs in the mountain west, in addition to working professionally as a sea kayak guide, avalanche educator and as a climbing instructor.
Josh has taught wilderness medicine courses for Aerie Backcountry Medicine for over 10 years teaching around the United States, India, China, Tibet and in Morocco. During the winters Josh has spent the last 15 years working as a professional ski patroller and avalanche rescue dog handler and currently works at Bridger Bowl Ski Area. Josh holds a Masters Degree in Education with a focus on place-based learning from the University of Montana.
Josh lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife, young son, and two dogs, trying to scratch out time to ski, hunt, and climb between working and learning to garden.
JAY A. SATZ (he/him/his)
Senior Director, Partnerships & Innovation
Northwest Youth Corps
Jay A. Satz brings over 30 years of nonprofit executive leadership, risk management design and implementation, program design and innovation, and youth conservation service/outdoor education program experience.
Drawn to this risk management work early in his career, he attended the very first Wilderness Risk Management Conference in 1994 and has been involved in a WRMC leadership / speaking role ever since, including receiving the conference’s highest honor for risk management service, leadership and innovation, The Charles “Reb” Gregg Award, in 2016.
He has built programs, created partnerships, solved problems, overcome challenges, and positively influenced many lives through his youth / conservation leadership at a local, state, and federal level across multiple decades.
Steve Kruger
Executive Director
Trailkeepers of Oregon
Steve has worked in parks and natural areas for nearly 15 years, around San Francisco, Milwaukee, WI, and Portland – connecting people to nature was integral to his passion.
Prior to TKO, he served 10 years with Oregon State Parks, spending his last 2 years with the Gorge State Parks management team.
AMBERLEIGH HAMMOND
Safety Systems Manager
The Sierra Club
Amberleigh manages safety systems for the Sierra Club at a national level. Prior to joining the Sierra Club, she managed safety systems and served as the national medical evaluator for the Student Conservation Association (SCA).
Her primary career focus is medical evaluation, leader training, development of and compliance with field standards, and incident management/response. She has more recently developed resources and presentations on larger organizational matters such as organizational culture.
Prior to the SCA, Amberleigh worked at Outward Bound for six years as the national senior medical evaluator for OBUSA. She is an Outdoor Emergency Care instructor, teaches wilderness medicine courses, and is an EMT, ski patroller, and Mental Health First Aid instructor.
LEAH CORRIGAN
Attorney & Founder
The Recreation Law Center
Leah Corrigan, (Founder, Recreation Law Center, LLC), is a lawyer who advises and defends outdoor recreation businesses and organizations. She is an experienced litigator, having represented outdoor industry clients in serious personal injury litigation in multiple states across the West since 2009.
She works with a diverse group of clients such as youth camps, river outfitters, equine outfitters, ski and climbing guides, and outdoor education organizations on a wide range of subjects - from liability waivers to sexual harassment, emergency response planning to OSHA. Leah spent ten years as a wilderness river guide before becoming a lawyer, and believes in providing practical, intelligent, and cutting-edge risk management advice to her clients.
DR. SANDY NEWES
Clinical Psychologist
Clear View Psychological SE/Peak Experience Training
Dr. Sandy Newes is a Licensed Psychologist in Asheville, North Carolina. Specializing in the integration of experientially based approaches with therapeutic and brain-based methods, she offers training, consultation, testing and evaluation for programs nationwide. She co-facilitates the Clinical First Responder (CFR) and Clinical First Aid (CFA) trainings for direct care staff and outdoor leaders, as well as other therapeutically-oriented staff trainings. In addition, she offers training in trauma informed care and resilience skills, and is a certified trainer of the Community Resilience Model (CRM) and Reconnect for Resilience (RFR) curriculums. Dr. Newes is active in AEE, OBH, and NATSAP.
In her private practice, Dr. Newes offers psychotherapy, assessment and neurofeedback and specializes in trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, addiction, and self-regulation issues. She is keenly interested in how neuroscience informs our day-to-day experience along with how brain-based approaches can shift deeply entrenched patterns of emotion and behavior. In her spare time, she enjoys paddling whitewater, skiing, and hiking in Western NC.
MOLEEK BUSBY
Senior Manager, Field Operations
Washington Trails Association
Moleek Busby (he, him, his) is the field operations senior manager for the Washington Trails Association. He started his career in trail work with the California Conservation Corps and the Student Conservation Association (SCA) where he worked for nine years in many roles.
During his time at SCA, Busby handled strategic recruitment and managed and created programs for SCA youth teams. Busby has also volunteered for Outdoor Afro where he aided in organizing meet-ups for hiking and various outdoor adventures in the San Francisco Bay area. Busby is passionate about advocating for marginalized people to have ownership in their space, and to feel safe while volunteering and recreating on public lands.
In 2020, Busby began serving as a member of the Wilderness Risk Management Conference(WRMC) Steering Committee.
TAYLOR FELDMAN
Outdoor Programs Manager
Mt. St. Helen's Institute
Taylor is wilderness instructor and environmental educator who is passionate about mountaineering, foraging, dancing, fermenting, and forest-bathing. Based in Portland, OR, she is the Outdoor Programs Manager at Mount St. Helens Institute, and has led teams up more than 50 peaks in the US and abroad.
Other recent accomplishments include co-creating "Building a Culture of Accountability," a workshop on how to repair after white people cause racist harm; co-authoring a chapter on equity in the outdoors as it pertains to Wilderness Risk Management (to be published early 2021); and being the Lead Guide and a feature narrative of "Who's On Top? LGBTQs Climb Mount Hood," a documentary that's premiered Fall 2020.
STEVE SMITH, M.A.
Founder and Lead Consultant
Experiential Consulting, LLC
Steve Smith has worked in the outdoor industry for over thirty years: in the field, in the office, in the board room, and in national conference leadership roles, specializing in field operations, mission delivery, program quality, risk management, and staff training. His career has encompassed leadership roles with national organizations including Outward Bound and The Student Conservation Association, plus three years as chair of the Wilderness Risk Management Conference (WRMC) and several more years as a WRMC steering committee member.
He served two terms as a board member for the Northwest Outward Bound School, where he continues to serve on the school's Board of Directors Safety Committee. In addition, he currently volunteers for The Gap Year Association's Standards and Accreditation Committee and the Washington State Recreate Responsibility Coalition Steering Committee. He is a regular speaker at national and regional conferences.
He has a master's degree in teaching English, along with four years of university-level teaching experience, and earned a Professional in Human Resources (PHR) certification from the Society for Human Resources Management, all of which help him view outdoor education through a variety of educational and administrative lenses.
Smith can usually be found exploring the mountains, forests, and coastlines of the Pacific Northwest with a kayak paddle, trekking pole, or camera in hand.
JOSHUA COLE
Owner, North Cascades Mountain Guides
Consultant, Experiential Consulting, LLC