Mike is a founding member of the Center’s staff team, with more than 25 years’ experience in rural community development, conservation, and cultural heritage work across the Northern Forest region. He leads the Center’s outdoor recreation economy strategy with a focus on sustainable tourism and creating opportunities for all community members to benefit from healthy outdoor activities. 

Mike was instrumental in leading the Center’s foundational regional programming – serving as principal researcher and author of the Northern Forest Wealth Index and leading development of Ways of the Woods: People and the Land in the Northern Forest, a mobile forest heritage museum funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  In 2014, he coordinated the Thoreau-Wabanaki 150th Anniversary Tour – a 325-mile canoe expedition celebrating the 150th Anniversary of publication of Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. 

Mike holds a B.A. in Journalism from James Madison University and a master’s in Natural Resource Management and Administration from Antioch University. Mike lives in South Portland, Maine, with his wife Carolyn and his kids Tom and Yenenesh. He is an avid canoeist and enjoys spending time in the log cabin he built with his family on their land in western Maine.