Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Melissa grew up in Massachusetts, where coastal explorations and spending summers on an island in New Hampshire, led to her love of digging in the dirt, flipping over logs, and searching the beach for crabs. While spending her college summers at Massachusetts Audubon Society, she discovered her love for environmental education. Since then she has taken that passion and love, to many different places, from the Ponderosa Pine forests of Arizona to the shores of Carkeek park in Seattle. Through her experiences, she has learned that a classroom can exist almost anywhere and really does not need walls, and is always excited to take a new idea and turn it into a lesson that has students interact with the ecosystem around them. In her free time, you can usually find her on a deck of a boat with a good book, or wandering the coastline of Bainbridge Island.
IslandWood acknowledges that we live and work on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish people, who have been stewards of this region's land and waters since time immemorial, and who continue to protect these lands and waters for future generations, as promised by the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, the Treaty of Point No Point of 1855, and the Treaty of Medicine Creek of 1854.
While the majority of our work takes place on Suquamish (suq̀ʷabš) and Duwamish (dxʷdɐwʔabʃ) land, we also conduct programs on the land of the Snohomish (sduhúbʃ), Puyallup (spuyaləpabš), Muckleshoot (buklshuhls), Skokomish (sqoqc’bes), and S’Klallam (nəxʷsƛ̕ay̕əm) peoples.
IslandWood is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Our tax ID number is 31-1654076.
4450 Blakely Ave. NE, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 206.855.4300