Coaches and Fellows

Shadiin (she/her) is Chicana and Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico and has worked for over 20 years as a teacher, as a public school administrator, researcher, a policy analyst, Indigenous education leader, and as a consultant.

She has a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University in English with a specialization in education; a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership and a PhD in Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education from the University of Oregon.  Shadiin has a huge extended family including high school- and elementary-aged children, 59 first cousins, and 19 aunts and uncles.   

Shadiin’s work centers on organizational change; culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum; diversity, equity, and belonging; educational and systemic equity; culturally appropriate research; and community driven systemic change. She served as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research at Oregon’s Chief Education Office where she helped develop a research agenda driven by culturally appropriate practices and Indigenous methodologies for improving key educational outcomes. She served as the Director of Educator Advancement Council leading initiatives to diversify the educator workforce and improve teacher educator systems. With funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, she launched Oregon’s statewide American Indian/Alaska Native Educational Professional Learning Community. Dr. Garcia is board chair of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon and is currently an Executive Vice President at the Metropolitan Group.

Through her work both professionally and personally, she has cultivated a network of amazing people who navigate across multiple systems and spaces – public, private, sovereign nations/tribes, non-profit, government, P-20, higher education and more.  She often collaborates within these networks of experts, thinkers, and advocates which bring multiple minds and approaches to bear on complex topics.  

In starting her own consultant business, Shorelines Consulting, she chose a name that is congruent with her values – sovereignty, solidarity, and community.  Shorelines reference a natural confluence of water and land. It evokes an ever-changing landscape that offers multiple access points to Oregon’s stunning geography. She believes that like our shores, our systems of education and organizations must offer myriad opportunities and options for people that honor the unique interests, cultures, languages, and aspirations of each individual and/or community.   Shadiin uses that concept to ground her work — by believing in co-constructing solutions grounded in equity and local context.

Jesse Maceo Vega Frey (he/his) is a teacher of Vipassana (insight) meditation within the broader context of the Theravada Buddhist tradition.

His teaching aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom and an exploration of the relationship between ethics, insight, and action. Jesse is a student of Michele McDonald and was authorized and trained by her to teach in a method rooted in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He is the resident teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i and when off-island teaches mostly in the US and Canada. Jesse was a co-founder of The Stone House, a center for spiritual life and social justice in Mebane, NC and was a long-time board member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

Carolyn Finney, PhD (she/her) is a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer. She is deeply interested in issues related to identity, difference, creativity, and resilience.

Carolyn is grounded in both artistic and intellectual ways of knowing – she pursued an acting career for eleven years, but five years of backpacking trips through Africa and Asia, and living in Nepal changed the course of her life. Motivated by these experiences, Carolyn returned to school after a 15-year absence to complete a B.A., M.A. (gender and environmental issues in Kenya and Nepal) and a Ph.D. (where she was a Fulbright and a Canon National Science Scholar Fellow).  Along with public speaking, writing, media engagements, consulting & teaching, she served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years.

Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors was released in 2014. Recent publications include Self-Evident: Reflections on the Invisibility of Black Bodies in Environmental Histories (BESIDE Magazine, Montreal Spring 2020), and The Perils of Being Black in Public: We are all Christian Cooper and George Floyd (The Guardian, June 3^rd 2020).  She is currently working on a performance piece about John Muir (The N Word: Nature Revisited) and is the new columnist at the Earth Island Journal while doing a two-year residency in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College as the Environmental Studies Professor of Practice.  You can find out more about Carolyn at carolynfinney.com.

Mohamad (he/him) grew up playing in the sand and surf on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula, and then on the edges of eastern forests and city streets in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

His intellectual and professional interests lie where the lines blur between East and West, cities and nature, art and science, and so on. Mohamad holds a Masters of Environmental Management with a focus on Urban Ecology and Environmental Design from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and undergraduate degrees in Religion and Biology from The George Washington University. He completed doctoral coursework at the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, with research into emerging urban landscapes in the modern Middle East.

Mohamad has followed his passion for working in nature and with people in parks and gardens across the US, with the Peace Corps in Central Africa, and the United Nations in Syria. He consults on environment and community development projects in both the US and the Arab Middle East. Mohamad was a co-founder of the DC Green Muslims network and is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program.