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The Team

Valerie Quirk Post Pigeon Co-Founder Headshot
Valerie Quirk

Founder/Executive Director

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? 🧗🏻‍♀️ ⛷️

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Eldorado Canyon State Park

My focus areas: growth strategy, curriculum, and impact.

Valerie's Bio
Bryce Peterson Post Pigeon EDU Co-Founder Headshot
Bryce Peterson

Founder/COO

(he/him)

Best ways to get outside? 🚵 🏄‍♂️

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Yosemite National Park and North Fruita Desert Recreation Area

My focus areas: capacity building, funding, and program management.

Bryce's Bio
Evelyn Haskins

Data Science Intern

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? 🏄‍♂️🚣‍♀️🌻

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Arches National Park, Lake Travis, and Lady Bird Lake

My focus areas: research and tech related tasks like data collection/manipulation

Evelyn's Bio
Adella Daigle

Summer 2024 Intern

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? 🥾⛷️🏔️

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

White Mountain National Forest and Canyonlands National Park

My focus areas: environmental policy change, program management, writing, community organizing/management

Adella's Bio

Board of Directors & Advisory Board

Peggy Campbell - Rush

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? 🏖🌊😎

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado and Maroon Bells in Aspen, Colorado

My focus areas: K-12 national and international education strategy; K-12 administration; professional development, coaching, and mentoring for K-12 teachers

Role: Board Secretary

Peggy's Bio
Ashley Nichole Kolaya

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? 🧗‍♀️🏂🏊‍♀️

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Silver Fork Ranch in Kyburz, California

My focus areas: Social impact storytelling

Role: Board Member

Ashley's Bio
Valerie Quirk

(she/her)

Role: Board President

Steph Ng

(she/her)

Best ways to get outside? ☀️🌊🏝️

Favorite National Park/outdoor area? 

Any place with water is my favorite! I also like hikes in Malibu, California.

My focus areas: nonprofit program management, strategic planning, DEI learning

Role: Advisory Board Member

Steph's Bio
Valerie Quirk Post Pigeon Co-Founder Headshot

Valerie Quirk serves as the Executive Director of Post Pigeon EDU, a nonprofit organization she co-founded during her time at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education where she earned her Master’s of Science in Education. Before running Post Pigeon EDU, she spent much of her career at TED on the TED-Education team where she helped students in over 130 countries share their best ideas. A lifelong adventurer, she has also sailed around the world twice with Semester at Sea and spent a year driving from New York to South America in a van, taking classrooms along with her. Valerie is excited everyday to help turn student curiosity into real-world learning connections and improve access to some of our most treasured places.

 

Valerie is a lifelong learner and devoted adventurer. She loves following her curiosity to explore new places and is always excited to learn something new! While she didn’t grow up doing many outdoor activities,  after living in Colorado for a few years, she’s spent much of her adult life pushing her physical courage by leaning into a wide variety of extreme sports like rock climbing, mountain biking, surfing, skiing, and others!

Bryce Peterson Post Pigeon EDU Co-Founder Headshot

Bryce Peterson serves as Post Pigeon EDU’s COO and Co-founder. Prior to joining Post Pigeon he has spent his career building, improving, and scaling tech-based programs and products as a VP at Citigroup, working in their Innovation division. Bryce leads with a customer-centric approach, and is an expert at gathering and implementing customer feedback. Leveraging his experience in digital product management, Bryce is passionate about creating innovative digital solutions in education. He is on a mission to to spark inquiry-based learning and broaden access to National Parks and the outdoors.

 

Beyond his professional experience, Bryce grew up in the mountains of Colorado where he grew up skiing, riding motorcycles, wakeboarding, mountain biking, and eagerly participating in other high-adrenaline sports. These early experiences outside have led Bryce to become a dedicated outdoor adventurer and steward.

Evelyn Haskins grew up in Colorado, where her love for the outdoors was sparked by activities like mountain biking, hiking, skiing, and whitewater rafting. She has a passion for active exploration, whether it’s hiking through a new area or camping under the stars. Recently graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in life science, Evelyn has always had a fascination for learning about the world around us.

 

While she devotes much of her time to her computer and harbors a passion for technology, she always carves out a moment in her day to step outside and revel in nature’s beauty. Though she hasn’t had the chance to visit many National Parks yet, Evelyn now aims to immerse herself in the wonders of these natural landscapes, eager to embrace the beauty and adventure they offer.

Adella grew up in the New England outdoors spending summers on the beaches of the north shore and winters in the mountains of northern New Hampshire and Maine. In 2023 she made the move to Colorado to study Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. With a background in tackling city-wide environmental issues such as composting and storm drain waste management at the local level, she was ready to take on the larger systemic issues regarding Environmental Justice. With a new focus on Environmental Justice she is excited to tackle problems such as equity, diversity, and inclusion in outdoor spaces; joining the team at Post Pigeon which works to address all of these areas seemed like an intuitive choice!

Peggy Campbell-Rush has served as an educator and leader in the education space for nearly 50 years. Peggy has worn many hats during her 48 year career including Head of the Lower School in New Jersey and Florida and serving as an administrator and teacher in both the United States and England.

 

She is also a nationally and internationally recognized education expert who has presented keynotes, professional development, mentoring and workshops at schools and conferences around the world for over 37 years. As an education consultant in the U.S. and abroad, Peggy offers teacher coaching, mentoring, and instructional support for teachers and students, in addition to programs for aspiring and new administrators and parents.

 

Peggy has been appointed by the US government as a US Fulbright Education Specialist helping strategize and support the educational needs and issues of over 150 countries. Peggy has sailed around the world twice studying global education on the Semester at Sea Program. Peggy has been honored as a Fulbright Specialist, Fulbright Fellow, is a two-time National Teachers Hall of Fame recipient, USA Today All-American Teacher Team award winner, two-time New Jersey Teacher of the Year, and was named Walmart Teacher of Year twice. Peggy is also the author of seven books for teachers.

Ashley Kolaya is an audience engagement expert, mental health advocate and youth voice champion with more than 15 years of experience building and growing social impact programs in media, education, and pro-democracy spaces. She currently serves as the head of the Mental Health Storytelling Coalition at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. 

 

Ashley spent the last decade exploring how to meaningfully connect with and inspire audiences. At TED, she built and scaled programming for the global youth voice initiative, TED-Ed, and was the founding Director of Curation and Coaching for TED Masterclass, serving as lead Speaker Coach, event and series producer, host, facilitator, writer and editor.

She has worked in academia (lecturing at NYU), spent time as a consultant in the tech and public service sectors, and she has a deep background in community building, learning design, coaching and facilitation. 

Steph Ng is currently a consultant at Wooks Consulting, and organizational develop consulting firm focused on systems change with diversity, equity, and inclusion implemented in everything we do. Steph also serves on the Board of Directors for Vocal Justice, a non-profit that positions youth proximate to injustice as leaders for social change. Previously, Steph was the Director of Programs at TED-Ed, TED’s education initiative, where she oversaw programmatic strategy, operations and partnerships. TED-Ed’s global learning programs help students and teachers identify, develop and share their big ideas in education. Prior to TED-Ed, Steph was a K-3 lead teacher, teacher coach and DEI trainer in Louisiana and New York. Steph resides in Los Angeles and is a big fan of breakfast foods and outdoor activities.