Small team, big hearts, hard work. Our staff works to care for this organization, its spaces and programs, and its future every day. Many hold multiple roles in our self-organizing system.
Cathy Buller
After many years as a Whidbey Institute program participant and volunteer, Cathy now works on our fundraising, database, and community event projects. Her past work in eco-outreach, workshop planning, and regulatory compliance helped connect businesses, communities, and agencies to practical changes that made a difference. Cathy’s workmates, friends, and family help ground her passions and hopes. She’s a board member at Sound Circle Center, a Waldorf adult education institute. Rowing on Seattle’s Duwamish River helps keep her happy. Engaging in ways to be a better human keeps her humble and inspired.
Madisun Elizabeth Clark
Director of Operations
Madisun is the Director of Operations of the Whidbey Institute after working with the team in a variety of roles since 2016. In these years, Madisun has gained the unique knowledge and skillset to maintain the functionality, efficiency and continuity that impacts every faucet of the Whidbey Institute.
Prior to joining our team, Madisun has had a vast range of experiences including venue management, large-scale festival production, wedding and event planning, dressmaking and costume design, sustainable agriculture, and has held various administrative roles for non-profit organizations.
In the community, Madisun is a well known event organizer and merrymaker. She is involved with a collective of local artists who create larger than life scenescapes and props using repurposed and up-cycled materials, which are installed as imaginariums at events around the region. In her spare time, Madisun cannot be found because she disappears into the forest, down a beach, or into her own garden.
Snow Dragonwyck
Bookkeeper
Snow Dragonwyck is the bookkeeper here at The Whidbey Institute, and is responsible for all of the internal financial tracking and reporting. She’s been an accounting professional for 10+ years, with a focus on small businesses and nonprofits. Snow has experience in a variety of fields—from working in construction to working for an art gallery—all of which have helped her build a professional knowledge base, as well as provided a great synergy, for her current role.
Andy Fling
Registrar and Logistics
Andy is a transplant from New Hampshire who fell in love with Whidbey Island the moment he stepped foot on it many moons ago. He is a writer, game designer, cook, actor, and can balance pretty much anything he can lift with one hand. He started at the Whidbey Institute in the kitchen and is very excited to take on his new roles in registration and administration.
Miles Harrison
Place Team Support Steward
Miles has lived on Whidbey for the better part of the last two decades and is very glad to be working among the community at The Whidbey Institute. Miles’ passions include culinary arts, theater, and service. Miles is proud the fruits of their labor will be sewn into this beautiful land.
Lety Hopper
Program Director
Lety’s professional interests range from science and marine biology to climate action and social service work. She is passionate about food security and affordable housing as it relates to homelessness, and explored both during a previous position with a community land trust on Orcas Island. She has extensive international living and travel experience, including as a translator for the Kuna Yala Indians in the San Blas islands during a colleague’s climate impact writing project. She is a proud mom who considers raising an amazing young woman to be her greatest accomplishment, and shares that her daughter is currently attending UW.
Timothy Hull
Land Steward
Timothy has had a long relationship with the Institute. For many years he worked on the land now called “Legacy Forest” building the trail system, the outdoor Theater at Storyhouse, and as the number one helper on the big remodel of Storyhouse itself. Over the years he has welcomed and worked closely with with groups as they arrived on the land including managing the Power Of Hope camps and as theater manager for the birth and first three seasons of the Island Shakespeare Festival among many other jobs and responsibilities.
Timothy is now the Whidbey Institute’s Land Steward as well as a songwriter and performer.
Nick Jackman
Lead of Housekeeping
Nick first came to the Pacific Northwest 49 years ago as part of the US Coast Guard’s icebreaking service. He has made four trips to the Antarctic and two trips to the Arctic, and has also served as a lighthouse keeper on Lake Superior. Since leaving the service, Nick has worked in the hospitality business here in the Puget Sound region, opening and renovating hotels. He and his husband recently moved to Clinton. He is a father to a 34 year-old son and shares his home with a four-year-old Australian Cattle Dog named Oliva. Nick enjoys the sea, traveling, and gardening.
Hillarie Maddox
Co-Executive Director
Hillarie is Co-Executive Director and wears many hats outside of this work including mother of two, community builder, entrepreneur, and aspiring farmer. She was born and raised in Black Hills, South Dakota and has a deep appreciation for sacred lands. She is the descendant of farmers and land stewards, and finds healing in working with the land.
She holds a BS in social work, MS in org development, and spent 10+ years building global, executive-level leadership programs for some of the biggest companies in the world including Amazon, Nordstrom, and Roche. In 2020, Hillarie left Seattle with her family for a homestead on Whidbey Island, and living close to nature changed the trajectory of her life.
She left her corporate career to launch Black Girl Country Living where she writes a newsletter and produces a podcast about rewilding as a path to healing. Hillarie is the co-founder of Heavy Nettle Farm Collective on Whidbey and is deeply invested in the wellbeing of local farmers. She continues to support her community through Rewilding Workshops that focus on breathwork and community wellness.
Nia Martin
Communications Manager
Having gravitated towards storytelling her whole life, Nia is excited to serve as Whidbey Institute’s Communications Manager. She has a background in various forms of storytelling, including in film theory and production, freelance photography, events and promotion, writing and editing for publications, journalism, working in development and communications at a literary nonprofit, and co-founding the former newsletter, Parts & Labor, which examined the often unseen, grassroots-level work that women and non-binary people do for their communities in Washington state. Outside of work, you can find her at the movies, on a walk with her husband and dogs, slowly working through her overstuffed bookshelf, attending a community event or performance, trying to figure out the secret to getting the perfect Polaroid picture, or enjoying a martini.
William Noble
Resident Host
Whidbey Institute Onsite Caretaker and Program Host. Manifesting works. The Universe listens. Everything that Will is has led him to everything that is Whidbey Institute — the serenity of nature, open and hopeful people, and a respectful symbiosis of both. Life is a journey (trite but true!), whether it be a leisurely walk alone in the woods or a deep conversation with fellow humans. Life as a routine is uninspiring. Will knows. Thirty years in advertising on the east coast was always exciting, sometimes routine, and often chaotic. Change is a positive thing if it makes life better. Then, the journey is fun and inspiring. Will loves to hike, assist others, foster optimism, and encourage smiles and laughter as much as possible. Life should always be fun and inspiring, for everyone. Manifest it. The Universe answers. Just ask Will.
Larry Rohan
Forest Steward
Larry brings a lifetime of interest in the natural world to his role as Forest Steward. He has spent years studying the interconnected relationship of the forest and soil, and how a changing climate is impacting this delicate balance. Among his duties as Forest Steward is the responsibility for maintaining the extensive trail system at the Whidbey Institute, and coordinating the amazing volunteers who help care for the trails.
Larry has a BS in Forestry from Purdue University and has worked throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska with the US Forest Service and Alaska native tribes. He has owned and operated Rohan Designs, a custom woodworking business serving Whidbey Island and beyond.
Larry is a longtime volunteer with the non-profit Hearts and Hammers, using his building and leadership skills to improve the lives of island residents. He has planted hundreds of conifer and hardwood trees on Whidbey Island and the Olympic Peninsula. He is married and is the father of two wonderful children. His interests include skiing, hiking, trail running, and calling to owls.
Joe Sendek
Facilities Steward
Joe is Whidbey Institute’s Facilities Steward. Inspired by the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, and paraphrasing the words and ideas of Evon Peter, a GWICH’IN elder and Chief of Arctic Village, Joe would say that he is “just a boy raised by a creek” in the eastern mixed hardwood forests.
This upbringing has led Joe through the cornfields of Indiana into the valleys of Southern California where he worked as a Materials Engineer in the hot glass container industry. A sharp turn of course led him to the foothills of the Rockies where science was transformed into the skills of a potter. Traveling into the Southwestern desert completed the preparation needed to pursue the career of a teaching artist and professional potter. Returning back to the mixed hardwood forests, this traveling current nurtured more than 25 years of teaching and working with students from preschool through university age.
Rose Woods
Co-Executive Director
Rose Woods ~ Co-Executive Director. Writer. Theatre director. Teacher. Former Founding Artistic Director of Island Shakespeare Festival. Former Artistic Director for Whidbey Children’s Theatre. She has served as Artistic Director for three theatre companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked across the country with both professional and youth theatre companies. She is a professional screenwriter and playwright. Believes in Art as Activism. Awarded a commendation from Barbara Boxer for her work in teaching tolerance with youth theatre and is the recipient of a number of awards for both her writing and directing, including the Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, Humanitarian Teacher Award from the Humane Society, and a variety of national and international awards for her writing.