Jenny Finn has designed structures that foster vitality in people, communities, and organizations for nearly 30 years. She holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education and is a co-founder of Springhouse. Jenny Finn’s research, mentoring, and teaching invites people to strengthen the relationships they have with themselves in order to serve the world with greater clarity, courage, compassion, and creativity. Her work has taken many forms, including non-profit leadership, trauma and hospice care, chaplaincy, clinical private practice, community-building through the expressive arts, and education. Jenny lives on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, Andy, and their furry friends, and she is the mother of Andrew and Lizzie. She loves riding the Peloton bike, running, taking a dip in the river, watching a good British mystery, and spending time with family and friends.

Sarah moved to Floyd in 2017 to get involved with Springhouse’s adult programming and became a full-time staff member later that year. She has always been interested in thriving and enjoyed studying religion at Colorado College. Before coming to Springhouse, Sarah studied permaculture design at Quail Springs Permaculture; completed an 18-month sustainable agriculture fellowship with the Allegheny Mountain Institute in 2016; and worked in the field of garden-based education. In 2021, she completed a master’s degree in Ecological Design Thinking at Schumacher College, where she loved meeting people from around the world and exploring where theory and practice meet. Currently, she is the Head of School at Springhouse, where she leads Springhouse’s school programs. In addition, she leads Sacred Dance and loves working on Springhouse’s sustainability efforts alongside dedicated teenagers.

Carolyn is a courageous lifelong learner, wife, and mother of four who has worked in the nonprofit arena for over two decades. Her work has spanned church communications and worship design, teaching step aerobics and pilates at the YMCA, as well as community organizing to protect the natural environment. Carolyn also has experience in co-creating an intergenerational family farm focused on regenerative practices and connecting people to nourishing, whole food. On staff at Springhouse since August 2019, she serves full-time, showing up wholeheartedly in the growth and development of the organization. Carolyn has a heart for community, specifically in connecting and empowering people to cultivate wholeness and deepen their relationships - with themselves, each other, the earth, and the divine.

Sarah Piper Pollock is a dedicated artist and mentor. With expertise in a variety of educational and creative mediums, she shapes experiences in the classroom, mentoring, on the dance floor, print shop, digital media, and beyond. She has been serving nonprofits for many years with a focus on education, environmental restoration, rites of passage for youth, dance, and youth mentorship. She is certified in Forrest Yoga, and has a degree from Clark University in Global Environmental Studies. She recently graduated from Antioch University with an MA in Social Sciences specializing in Transformative Learning Communities. Hailing from Colorado, she finds solace in nature, often wandering forests, cold plunging, and sketching tree roots.

Roxanne is a kinesthetic learner and values hands-on learning and the importance of living connected to the land. She is interested in how slowing down and turning inward can help us observe and become more conscious of how we move through our external environments. She believes in the body's innate wisdom to heal and transform and is passionate about supporting others in cultivating resiliency, learning from differences, and working to restore what needs repair.

Chris grew up in a Camphill community in Pennsylvania and attended the Kimberton Waldorf School. He followed an interest in cheese-making to a farm in France and then went on to earn a B. Sc. in Agricultural Economics from McGill University. Before settling in Floyd, Chris led canoe trips in the Canadian wilderness, taught English in the Republic of Georgia, and worked in food and farming in various capacities. Chris is currently in an ongoing psychodrama training based in Hudson Valley, NY. He is committed to service and interested in social forms that encourage authenticity and honor wholeness. Chris wears many hats at Springhouse. You might find him updating spreadsheets, writing checks, and reconciling bank statements in his role as Finance Manager. You could just as well find him leading teens in a new song or guiding a course in one of his many areas of interest. The breadth that each day holds is one of the reasons Chris loves his work with Springhouse.

Juan Pablo was born and raised among volcanoes and mountains in a village called Santa Ana near Antigua Guatemala, a Kaqchikel mestizo. He loves education, as well as the resistance struggles of the Latin American people and the green scenery that shelters them. Teacher by nature, but always learning. He studied chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala and laughter therapy at Fabrica de Sonrisas, whose organization supports emotional well-being in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and psychiatric centers in communities in his country. He still had time to learn the English language in Europe and Africa, connecting cultures and creating educational projects. He has taught in public, alternative, and progressive schools mainly in villages, towns, and regions with inadequate education. Juan Pablo has 13 years of experience in education and ancestral and contemporary scientific dissemination. He likes to make music, draw, cook, travel, and spend a lot of time in his garden watching how the fruits grow, where the fertilizer is love and the fruit is peace, and where there is coexistence between what surrounds him.

Ian Stabler is an artist, woodworker, and natural builder from Denver, Colorado. In 2013, he graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Studio Art. He completed his Permaculture Design Certificate from Quail Springs later that year and spent the next two years as a natural building apprentice at Aprovecho Sustainability Institute in Cottage Grove, OR.

Ian has a deep appreciation for the natural world and humanity’s place within it, and he uses his art as an access point through which to delve deeper into our environment and himself. He loves farming, homesteading, traveling, and teaching. Ian believes that art in education can be as expansive as the learners who participate in it as well as in the potential for art to teach us depth within ourselves and the world around us. Ian loves old things that carry the marks of hundreds of hands, student watercolors of dragons, and the satisfaction of a well-built stair.

Gigi Austin was raised an Appalachian Mountain girl and spent much of her childhood hunting, fishing, and farming in Southwest Virginia. Her dad instilled in her a deep love for Nature and its conservation. Her mother taught her social graces and grit. Gigi left her home after college and spent the next twenty years developing her career as a language instructor and facilitator of conscious travel communities. Some of the most treasured experiences she accrued during her seven years of wanderings include: walking the full Camino de Santiago in Spain, WWOOFing across Chile, working at a hostel while living in a tent on the Uruguayan coast, raising baby goats on a ranch in Texas, couchsurfing the south of South America, leading people-to-people exchange programs in Cuba, apprenticing as a Dream Quest guide, leading 70-day Gap Year programs in Latin America, teaching yoga at a silent retreat center in the mountains of Guatemala, and going on a safari in Tanzania. Of the 24 countries where Spanish is an official language, Gigi has experienced 20 firsthand. She has recently returned to the ‘hollers and hills of the Virginia that raised her and looks forward to contributing to a cultural renovation of the area. Gigi will serve as the Language Immersion Director beginning in the summer of 2024.

Chuck lives in Twisp, Washington, close to his two grandchildren (of six) who live in the United States. After thirty years working in corporate management, leading large organizations such as Amana Refrigeration and small start-ups such as Breakthrough to Literacy, Chuck’s last six years have been focused on generative education, particularly effective literacy environments for children ages 3-11. Generative learning environments enable both the leaders and the learners to maintain their wholeness and agency. For more background on generative education see https://bit.ly/2LSAjz2
While also active in leadership positions in many community organizations such as United Way, chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, and Junior Achievement Chuck has focused on education with 10 years as chair of Foundations in Learning, 27 years on the Coe College Board of Trustees (3 as Chair), 26 years on the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business Board of Advisors, several years on the board of the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, and three years as the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the University of Iowa College of Education.

Rebecca is an optimist and believes in hope.

Spending her formative years in Colorado, she found, from her early days, refuge and rejuvenation in the natural world. She has been making her way slowly east since then, first attending Grinnell College for her Biology degree, with opportunities to study ecology in Madagascar and work at Gobabeb Research Station in Namibia.

Her graduate work was in Midwifery at the University of Pennsylvania, leading her to work in a multitude of environments including urban hospitals in Philadelphia as a student, community based clinics in West Virginia as a National Health Service Corps recipient, and busy maternity wards in New Zealand as a Core Midwife.

Her daily work here in the New River Valley as a midwife requires her to honor the process of growth and transformation, build trusting and genuine relationships, and practice therapeutic presence. Having been supported by transformational educators in all aspects of her life, she sees, and is in awe of, the power of these values in action.