Jill Packard has been running nonprofits and small businesses for over twenty years and is passionate about rural communities, our capacity to connect, and how our values shape our systems. She received her Master's in Environmental Studies from Ohio University, where she studied a residential environmental education center to determine whether it was educating for strong or weak sustainability. Upon moving to Maine in 2007, her family started a "mini-farm," she co-founded and led a state-based health nonprofit, ran a lumbering history museum, and opened an earth-centered small business in Brewer, Maine. She is committed to supporting the sustained growth and capacity of the Ecology Learning Center as it works through a student-centered, community-based approach to facing our local ecological challenges.