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 the land on which we gather is within the ancestral territory of the suqʷabš “People of Clear Salt Water” (Suquamish People). Expert fisherman, canoe builders and basket weavers, the suqʷabš live in harmony with the lands and waterways along Washington’s Central Salish Sea as they have for thousands of years. Here, the suqʷabš live and protect the land and waters of their ancestors for future generations as promised by the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855. While the majority of our work takes place on Suquamish 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