Board of Directors
NFTC is led by a group of dedicated volunteers.
Meet the members of the board of directors below.
Haida Bolton
B.C. / North Representative
Regional guide representatives facilitate community in their region through calls, gatherings and communications activities and act as a voice of their region in Board discussions.Haida Bolton, a Certified Forest Therapy Guide with ANFT since 2016, is the owner of Nature With Haida on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. She has led nearly 200 forest therapy experiences in BC, Costa Rica and Uganda. With inspiration from Jane Goodall, she founded and ran a conservation education camp for Ugandan children in Uganda from 2007-2011. Her love of writing has led her to publish two works: a juvenile fiction, “Aida’s Adventures in Africa” which nurtures a love for adventure, animals and hollow trees in its readers; and a collection of poems in “My Poetic Journey Through Separation Among The Towering Trees.” Currently, Haida is writing a memoir on her forest therapy journey. After facilitating four forest therapy retreats, Haida created a new set of retreats recently with a focus on Empowering Empaths, the first of which was a great success. The second is coming soon. For further information, see NatureWithHaida.ca.
Tara Tiger Brown
Board Member at Large
At large Board Members contribute ideas and energy to Board activities and policy development and help build the Guide community through holding space or facilitating community calls and webinars.Tara Tiger Brown (she/her), PhD, is a Certified Forest Therapy Guide with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (2021). She grew up across British Columbia and now lives in Vancouver. Tara spent more than 15 years in technology, first at Microsoft and then as co-founder of education startups and the Los Angeles Makerspace. In 2019, while living in Japan, she trained in forest medicine with the International Society of Nature and Forest Medicine (INFOM) with the first researchers, and forest bathing became what helped her manage technostress. She left tech and came home to study it. Because Canada’s geography, flora, fauna and culture differ from Japan’s, she wanted to know whether forest bathing would have the same effect here. Her PhD in Forestry at the University of British Columbia tested this through a randomized crossover study comparing guided and self-guided forest bathing with 106 participants aged 20 to 86 across four Metro Vancouver parks and four seasons, measuring heart rate and mood alongside vegetation, light and sound. That work produced Silent Trails, a standardized method for assessing and monitoring urban forest trails for nature-based health programs. She also founded Sit Spot Club, a daily nature practice, and is a PaRx Connector with the BC Parks Foundation. On the board, she wants to help guides across Canada use research to strengthen and grow their practices.
Beth Foster
Ontario Regional Representative
Regional guide representatives facilitate community in their region through calls, gatherings and communications activities and act as a voice of their region in Board discussions.Having wandered in the woods, waterways and tundra all her life, Beth has learned that, sometimes, you can go further by being quietly in one place and listening, smelling, touching, tasting and watching the wonder unfold. Beth believes that, in order to restore balance to our planetary and emotional health, we must reignite a deeper and sustainable connection between humans and the earth. As an ANFT Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and Trail Certification Consultant trained in 2018, she delights in guiding others to an awareness, understanding and deeper appreciation of the healing power of nature as a tool for peace and prosperity. Though Beth loves to guide in all seasons in the woods near her home in Barrie Ontario Canada, she especially embraces winter. As a Trail Consultant, she has designed self-guided trails at Scandinave Spa, Blue Mountains, and YMCA Geneva Park Conference Centre, Orillia. Pivoting to remote guiding, Beth meets with clients from all around the world, including students of Nature, Place and Restoration in the Recreation and Leisure Studies Department at Brock University, staff and volunteers at Simcoe Muskoka Palliative Health Network, students and staff at the Simcoe County Board of Education, and stakeholders at the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust. Most recently Beth has become very involved in protecting the Catchacoma Old Growth forest, north of Peterborough, Ontario, and in delivering Forest Bathing staff retreats to various Mental Health and Wellness organizations.
Beth loves time on the water as much as time near it. Her favourite place to paddle locally is the Minesing wetlands, though her chapter in Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape, tells the tale of a surprising paddling adventure on Hudson Bay.
Beth holds a Master of Education and is a member of the Ontario College of Teachers.
Chris Jenik
Vice Chair
Regional guide representatives facilitate community in their region through calls, gatherings and communications activities and act as a voice of their region in Board discussions.Chris retired 2 years ago from the Calgary Public Board of Education, where she enjoyed working as a teacher and school administrator for over 34 years. Prior to working full-time in schools, Chris worked at an Outdoor School where she piloted and facilitated outdoor environmental programs for schools in Canada and the United States. She has been involved with developing curriculum and facilitating professional development opportunities for teachers and schools. Chris believes that nature continuously provides lessons, inspiration and support, which she has witnessed first hand through her work on the Crisis Team supporting families and students in trauma.
After retiring she did the training with ANFT to become a certified Forest Therapy Guide. She has been bringing Forest Therapy walks into schools for staff and students and has created partnerships with regional consortiums and a local Conservation Centre. Facilitating experiences that foster deeper connections with nature and enrich the well-being of others continues to be a privilege and passion for Chris. She looks forward to supporting and learning with other guides as the Prairie Rep.
Stana Luxford Oddie
Board Member at Large
At large Board Members contribute ideas and energy to Board activities and policy development and help build the Guide community through holding space or facilitating community calls and webinars.Stana Luxford Oddie (she/her) trained with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs (ANFT) and became a certified Forest Therapy Guide in 2016. Stana has been training and mentoring guides around the world since 2018. Stana is a certified teacher (OCT) and Queen’s University Outdoor and Experiential Education (OEE) grad from 1999. Since 1999, she has been in her “dream job” as the Senior Conservation Educator with Cataraqui Conservation. Her passion is to support people to experience wellness and to build their relationship with nature with their head, heart and hands. She is grateful for her continued embodiment practices along with wild swimming and exercise, yoga and mindfulness practices. You will most likely find her running and or sitting spotting in the forest or by a lake with her adventurous Cockapoo pup, Theo or adventuring in the good company of her partner, Lachlan and their teenaged son, Asher.
Milena McWatt
Prairies / Mountain Representative
Regional guide representatives facilitate community in their region through calls, gatherings and communications activities and act as a voice of their region in Board discussions.With a background in biology and environmental management, Milena McWatt (she/her) has worked across Canada and in Latin America in environmental education, climate resilience, stewardship, and project management and is fluent in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. Since her early childhood in the forests of the Peace Region of northwestern Alberta (Treaty 8 Territory), Milena has always been drawn to slow saunters in the woods and immediately decided to pursue certification as a forest therapy guide and found Wild Calm Forest Therapy the day she learned about the practice in summer 2018. Since her ANFT training in 2019, Milena has been guiding in the amiskwacîwâskahikan region (ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ, Edmonton, Treaty 6 Territory) and virtually through her company, Wild Calm Forest Therapy. Milena is very passionate about forest therapy, both as a guide and as a proponent of the broad-ranging benefits of the practice, its underlying ethic of deepening and healing relationships to nature/the land, and as a foundation for community building and unlearning colonial ways of thinking.
Susan Reid
Secretary
The Secretary oversees the scheduling, conduct and recording of Board meetings as well as facilitating communications amongst Board members between meetings.Susan brings over 20 years experience working with not-for-profit, environmental education organizations in Ontario and is excited to grow the community of guides and offer support to forest therapy guides across Canada. As a teenager she worked as a Junior Forest Ranger, stationed outside a small northern Ontario town near Thunder Bay, working in the forest, planting trees, clearing trails in Quetico park, paddling through nature in a canoe. After studying Forestry at Lakehead University, she worked in environmental education focused on water, and then back to the forest, where she worked with a team to develop a forest festival education program for youth in southern Ontario. Sensing the call of the forest, she took the opportunity to help people take time for themselves in a positive natural environment as a Certified Forest Therapy Guide with ANFT (Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides & Trainers).
Ronna Schneberger
Chair
The Chair of the Board of Directors provides leadership to the Board, oversees our legal and organization commitments, and leads efforts in strategy, advocacy, and partnerships.Ronna been a professional guide and naturalist in Banff National Park for over 25 years. She became a forest therapy guide in 2016 and is now a Trainer with the ANFT. For the past 15 years she has been delivering leadership development programs for private groups and through the Leadership Development program at the Banff Centre. Along with colleagues she developed leadership programs using the ANFT model which is turning out to be not only restorative but very powerful for today’s exhausted leaders. Recently, she pursued a long-time goal of becoming a professional coach with CTI. Today she brings all her talents together by taking groups and individuals out into the beautiful areas of Banff to re-calibrate, recharge, and tap into the gifts they bring to the world.