New Cadet Curriculum Program Manager

I am incredibly excited and honored to be joining the National Cadet Team as the Program Manager for Cadet Core Curriculum. I have been committed to positive youth development work my whole life, starting when I was four years old and adamantly declared I wanted to become a teacher. I stuck to that dream all the way through college and the start of my career, until I discovered camps and the world of outdoor education back in 2015. Since then, I’ve been inspired by just how many ways there are to support and empower young people, and I’m thrilled to continue doing that work with CAP. 

My role as the Cadet Core Curriculum Program Manager will allow me to engage with the larger CAP community in an effort to keep our cadet curriculum as relevant and purposeful as possible. Creating experiences that our cadets can learn and grow from is pivotal to what CAP does, and I am so honored to be a part of the team that helps create those experiences. 

While I have not previously participated in CAP programs in a traditional sense, I was introduced to CAP by serving as a small group facilitator for the Youth Development Conference for three years. The commitment I witnessed to CAP, and particularly the young people in the program, during those conferences was incredible, and I was immediately eager to learn more. 

My professional experience involves a lot of program facilitation and curriculum development, a great deal of which occurred in my work with the American Youth Foundation. There I served in a variety of roles, but primarily as the Community and School Programs Director. This work taught me a great deal about tailoring curriculum and activities to the needs of specific groups and finding every opportunity to incorporate youth voice and leadership. My time with the AYF also cemented my professional philosophy, which is that community and relationships should always be the utmost priority. I truly believe that everyone - whether you are a 7 year-old away from home for the first time at summer camp, or a grown adult in a professional setting - needs to feel like they belong and have a genuine connection to another person in order to thrive. It is my mission in life to help as many people as possible create and foster those connections in a way that allows them to live their best lives. 

After a handful of years with the AYF, I moved back into the realm of public schools and served as an afterschool program coordinator for Kentwood Public Schools. Additionally, I serve as the Program Director for a small nonprofit, Ballet & Books, which provides free literacy and dance class to children ages 3-9 in an effort to help reduce the literacy gap. Sprinkled throughout my career I’ve also been a nanny, a trivia host, a freelance team building facilitator, and my first job ever was as a farm hand on a potato farm! 

I live in Grand Rapids, MI with my husband, Dalton, our dog, Monte, and our angsty cat, Bagels. We bought our first house in 2022 and love to spend our free time doing home improvement projects, cooking, gardening, and traveling across the country to visit loved ones. I also love reading, crafting, and consider the times that I’m in or around water to be some of the happiest in this life. I am grateful and excited to get started on this next chapter of my life with CAP, and to start making connections to more of you!