Meet the Executive Director

Jamie Lewis Hedges

Jamie's a Hoosier by upbringing. He spent the last twenty years living everywhere from Florida to the Pacific northwest, and the southwest. He's a blend of hook and bullet, on one hand, tree-hugging dirt worshiper on the other. 

Jamie has an interdisciplinary master’s degree in community development and natural resource management. He’s been an educator since 2001, focusing on outdoor recreation and environmental education. 

Jamie launched the outdoor adventure program at Indiana State University, founded the University of the Ozarks’ outdoor and environmental program “Ozarks Outdoors” in Northwestern Arkansas, and stewarded a 500-acre land conservancy easement in Northern Michigan. Currently, he’s also Chair of the Wilderness Education Association, an organization which aims to advance professionalism of outdoor leaders through standards, training, and credentialing. 

His experiences include video documenting Maasai ethnomedicine in Kenya, swatting mosquitos in the Colombian Amazon, drinking Guinness in Ireland, enjoying bánh bao in Vietnam, and traveling in 42 of these United States.