05/25/2026
😎Time to get to know our Education Team and Summer Nature Camp Staff!
🥾🌄Maria is the Education Director here at the Highlands Center and facilitates most of our adult education programs. She enjoys the sound of Canyon Wrens, has a collection of squirrel sticks, and will only drink water if it has bubbles. Her trail name is Groceries.
🥭🐌Jules is the Highlands Center's Education Manager and uses her years of camp and teaching experience to keep everything running behind the scenes (not easy!). Her favorite living thing is a snail, especially spring snails. She could survive off of dried mango, can not and will not dance to save her life, and she prefers her marshmallows burnt.
🌼🐻Hannah works as the Highlands Center Schoolyard Habitat Coordinator during the school year, and we are lucky enough to have her join us for camps, too! She once made lip balm from bear fat and will not eat pickled artichoke hearts. If she could freeze anything in a block of ice it would be her phone (she probably wouldn't notice the difference!), and she routinely grow sunflowers taller than she is!
🍝🐝Noodle is the Early Childhood Education Coordinator here at the Highlands Center, and runs all of our Seedlings Camps! She has formed a love for bugs as an adult (the scary ones are better from a distance), considers frozen waffles with brown sugar a special treat, and is originally from MN/WI. Oh, and her name isn't really Noodle (shhh).
🦎🌴Chrissy's favorite animal to see in the Central Highlands is any lizard or reptile, her favorite snack is anything sweet, especially chocolate, and her favorite place in nature is the beach!
🏠🍫Nick P. wants to go to Antarctica, will hammock in any weather, renovates houses, and spent a summer making chocolate!
🏂🎻Nick J. is from Baltimore MD. He climbs, snowboards, has a commercial pilots license, and plays the Irish fiddle! His favorite snack is Life Savers gummies, which he once spent 24 hours eating exclusively on a climbing excursion gone wrong.
🐶🌶Madison has three large dogs: a Basset Hound, a Black Lab, and a Pit Bull. She is obsessed with all things Disney, is a vegetarian and loves savory foods — especially spicy ones! Her favorite National Park is Mount Rainier in Washington.
🌿🎨Camille is an herbalist and an artist who, if given the opportunity would transform into a hummingbird for 24 hours just to see more wild flowers. Likes: gardens, hula hoops (she can hula hoop on her face!), homemade salsa, animal facts, and puns.
🐱🦌Rachel loves hiking and nature! She has two cats and loves to cook. She has been to three continents, likes to eat raspberry sorbet, and loves to go to the movies. If she could pick a Central Highlands animal to be, she would be a mule deer.
🐢👨🍳Jackson would love to be a ringtail if he could choose any animal in the Central Highlands. He also loves turtles, spicy Thai food, bouldering, cooking elaborate meals, and hanging out outside when the mountain mahogany is blooming.
