Why Work With Us

The multi-racial, intersectional training team at Green Wood & Duff has over 20 years combined experience as outdoor educators, facilitators, and racial justice practitioners. We have worked for or currently work at standard-setting institutions, and have refined the practices we use at Green Wood & Duff with some of the best outdoor educators and recreation facilitators in the industry.

Our identities enable us to support and challenge white folks and BIPOC folks in our antiracism work. Because of our lived experiences, we approach issues with a wider lens from oblique angles – allowing us to challenge each other to be more compassionate, build a fuller analysis, and perpetually evolve in our work together. We facilitate in multiracial spaces for collective material changes, and separately in racial affinity groups where white and BIPOC participants can dissect their own internalized racism and racial identity development – a very different task for each group.

We know the outdoor industry

We are fluent in the particular needs of the outdoor industry, such as:

  • seasonal work and the needs of a young, shifting workforce
  • divisions that can grow between field and administrative staff, or between generations within the same organization
  • meaning-making at legacy organizations and what happens when old mythologies are challenged
  • everything that goes into organizing and leading several different types of overnight outdoor expeditions
  • living and working in small, tight-knit communities
  • land- and place-based activities
  • risk assessment and emergency response (medical and behavioral)
  • parent engagement
  • specifics to different programing: youth, adults, military veterans, team building, professional development, education, and recreation

Steph and Ella have worked or currently work at standard-setting institutions, including: the Colorado Outward Bound School, Desert Mountain Medicine, Eagle Rock School, High Mountain Institute, University of California Santa Cruz Recreation, Harvard Divinity School, and Firefly Inclusion Solutions.

We have learned from leading antiracism and social justice organizers and educators, such as: Abigail Ortiz, Dennie Butler-MacKay, and Bashier Kayou of The Racial Reconciliation and Healing Project, Donnae Smith of UC Santa Cruz, Parker McMullen Bushman of Ecoinclusive, Stephanie Carrillo of Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, Autumn Brown and the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance, somatic abolitionist Resmaa Menakem, Carlin Quinn and Jennifer-Lee Koble of Education for Racial Equity, Robin DiAngelo, and the Racial Equity Institute.

Learn more about Steph and Ella by clicking on our field photos below.

Steph working dinner magic while leading students in Utah canyon country.
Steph working dinner magic while leading students in Utah canyon country.
Ella picking the chocolate out of the gorp on a course in the Colorado Rockies.
Ella picking the chocolate out of the gorp on a course in the Colorado Rockies.