STEVE CONWELL
A lover of food and nature, Steve Conwell has cultivated a knowledge of the things he loves. Mushrooms have always been a big part of his life, picking his first morels over 30 years ago. Along with growing Australian Finger Limes, Bonsai, and rare fruits & vegetables, Steve enjoys fishing and foraging the Sonoma Coast. He works in Entertainment Production. You might find him setting up a festival or mixing sound or lights for a band. Creating and showcasing unique foods are a passion, recently hosting a trio of famous chefs on a culinary adventure across America for German Television. Steve is also a Fawn Rescuer, and rehabilitates and releases orphaned Black-Tailed Fawns.
MAYA ELSON
Maya Elson is a teacher, naturalist, mycologist, organizer and lover of the wild. Maya has been co-directing CoRenewal since 2016, where she is dedicated to enacting effective and just solutions to environmental and social crises by working in collaboration with fungi. As one of the founding members of the Radical Mycology network, she’s worked on various fungal cultivation and educational projects in Olympia, WA and the San Francisco Bay area.
She’s worked as a campaign organizer with a number of climate justice and wilderness defense struggles over many years. Maya is the founder of Wild Child Santa Cruz, a nature immersion program for homeschoolers. As an instructor of Mycopermaculture, Fungal Biology, Mycorenewal and Mushroom Identification for both adults and children, she has experience writing curriculum and giving mycology-related workshops. She is currently studying Ecopsychology, leading mushroom hunts with ForageSF, leading rites of passage programs with Gaia Girls Passages, and raising an enchanted toddler.
PATRICK HAMILTON
Patrick Hamilton, known also as the “Mycochef,” has been mushroom foraging and cooking for over 40 years. He has been a corporate chef, executive chef, catering chef, guest chef at the Breitenbush mushroom gathering, a guest chef at Telluride Mushroom Festival, chef for the Mycological Society of San Francisco, and for years he was the executive chef at the Sonoma County Mushroom Association Wild Mushroom Camp.
He has an extensive background in wild mushroom foraging, identification, and preparation. He writes a monthly column for the “SOMA News” and has been a food and mushroom columnist with several other publications for over 20 years.
HEIDI HERRMANN
Heidi Herrmann is a farmer and the owner of Strong Arm Farm in Santa Rosa, CA. She teaches Native Plant Restoration at Sonoma State Univ. and Sustainable Agriculture at Santa Rosa Junior College. Heidi is an avid seaweed harvester, and has been sustainably collecting and selling seaweed for over a decade. She sells her hand harvested seaweed to bay area chefs and retailers.
ALEXANDRA HUDSON
Alexandra Hudson is a California-born clinical herbalist and wild foods chef with a passion for empowerment through delicious education. In 2013 she founded the bone broth kale chip company Kaleidoscope Foods to supply her community with high vibe snack foods and support organic farmers and wildcrafters to get their foods to market. Alexandra trained as a clinical herbalist at the Berkeley Herbal Center where she oversaw clinicians as Clinic Supervisor in the school’s community herbal clinic; she currently teaches classes to long-term program students and to the public. Alexandra’s primary goals in teaching are to facilitate students’ self-empowerment through knowledge of the plant world, to support understanding of connectivity, and to rise together in collective stewardship of the wild world around us. She and her partner live part-time on an urban farmstead in Oakland and part-time on their off-the-grid homestead in the Santa Cruz redwood forest where she teaches classes and hosts immersive experiences for students. For more information visit Alexandra’s website.
ERIN MCKINSEY
Erin McKinsey is an herbalist, natural products scientist, and educator who lives in Sonoma County. She currently works as a scientist for Traditional Medicinals Tea Company. She has taught field herbalism and foraging courses for over a decade for various organizations in Southern Oregon, including Siskiyou Field Institute, Search and Rescue, Ashland Parks and Recreation, as well as many others. She also worked as a clinical herbalist for the Mederi Center in Ashland, Oregon, for over four years. When she isn’t working in the lab or scoping out plants on a hike, she enjoys taking ceramics classes and seeing live music. She also has an 11-year-old daughter named Lily that she likes to adventure with.
KEVIN SMITH, PHD
Kevin is an archaeologist with an emphasis in the material culture of forager societies, the relationship between Indigenous hunter-gatherers and aquatic environments, and the evolution of the human species. He posts weekly foraging content on his YouTube channel "Catch N Cook California" and is a lifelong forager. His earliest memories are of digging clams and picking berries with his family in northern California where he grew up. In addition to foraging for berries, plants, and mushrooms, he is an avid angler, freedive-spearfisherman, and general outdoors enthusiast. His classes focus on bridging gaps between people, the natural environment, and local seasonal foods. His outings offer productive and hands-on experiences where foragers learn to harvest local wild foods with no carbon footprint. All outings proceed with a special emphasis on safety, respect, and how to forage to ensure a sustainable harvest, so that we may enjoy for generations to come as it has been done for thousands of years.
TANYA STILLER
Tanya Stiller is a Clinical Herbalist, Nutrition Consultant, and Health Coach who is currently studying Functional Medicine and Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy. You can find her teaching classes on botany, nutrition, ethical foraging, seaweed identification and intertidal ecology at Ancestral Apothecary, Scarlet Sage School of Traditional Healing Arts, Healing Tide, Airbnb experiences, and at many other schools and organizations. Tanya has been teaching for over 25 years as an herbalist, nutritionist, gardener, permaculturalist, and ethnobotanist; 18 of those years in the public school system, BUSD, and with The Edible Schoolyard. She received her herbalism certificate in 1994 from The Oregon School of Herbal Medicine, ran a tincture and lotion-making company called Pixie Plants and has since been teaching herbal and foraging classes in Oregon and the Bay Area. Tanya attended the University of Oregon and received her Bachelors of Science in Environmental Studies, where her thesis was focused on “The Ethnobotany and Ethnomedicine of the Oregon Native American.” They live at an Intentional Community house called Brigid Collective in West Berkeley. Their non-profit website is www.healingtide.org
AUTUMN SUMMERS
An avid wild foods forager, herbalist, gardener, and ethnobotanist, Autumn is passionate about sharing her 35 years of experience in an accessible and empowering way. She teaches botany, medicinal plant cultivation, and how to safely and sustainably gather and use abundant wild edibles including seaweeds and mushrooms in Northern California. She currently teaches at the California School of Herbal Studies, Berkeley Herbal Center, and Gathering Thyme herbal schools and is the lead herbal educator for Herb Pharm.
