People

Rooted Emerging is a nonprofit project of 4-H, Celebrating Youth Rites of Passage.

Vanessa Osage, Founder/Executive Director

Vanessa Osage was first captivated by the vision for Rooted Emerging after the birth of her daughter in 2008. As a former doula and childbirth assistant, she marveled at the similarities between the second passage, into motherhood, and the first, through adolescence. She started dreaming of a similar support program, to honor the puberty transition with education, recognition, and community celebration. By 2010, Rooted Emerging was born. Vanessa is continually inspired to find this vision so beautifully met and encouraged in this place.

Vanessa is trained as a Sexuality Educator through Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Boston and holds a BA in Humanities, with a concentration on Gender & Ecology. She is a trained facilitator in Teen Talking Circles, a Coming of Age Mentor through Rite of Passage Journeys in Bothell, Washington and a 4-H Youth Leader. She left Massachusetts at 18 to explore new worlds through education, activism and travel. Her adventures have led her to service with Hostelling International, Redwood National Park and the French Quarter of New Orleans. She has traced her roots through Appalachia, the plains, back up to New England, and explored every region in between. After years of discovery, with twelve cross-country journeys in all, she is thrilled to call the northwest home.  She holds a love for dancing, singing, creating giant puppets, exploring wild rivers and bringing people together for joy.

Vanessa Osage offers comprehensive sexuality education to young people ages 6 & up, in schools and small group settings. She is a published writer, workshop facilitator, Professional Relationship Coach and a speaker at regional conferences and gatherings. She works individually with clients, and groups, supporting the journey of healthy sexual maturity and beyond, through her social enterprise, Love & Truth Rising.

Kelly Holmes, Ceremonial Guide

In 2003 Kelly arrived in Bellingham from Buffalo, NY and has spent the last ten years working with children and families in a variety of teaching and social work roles.  She is passionate about supporting youth through transitional adolescent years and providing positive encouragement towards discovering their authentic selves and creative pursuits. Currently she works as the Family Services Coordinator at Mt. Baker School District and as a Student Mentor for the Graduation Alliance program for teens who are returning to school after dropping out of high school.  She also facilitates WSU’s Strengthening Families Program in different locations throughout Whatcom County. She has a BA in English from Fredonia State College, an MA in American Studies from the University at Buffalo and a teaching certification from WWU.  Her passions outside of work include outdoor adventures, yoga and playing mandolin.

Kelsey Maloney, Dance

Kelsey Maloney spent the first nine years of her life in South Lake Tahoe, CA.  Here she tromped through streams, played in woods and meadows, and became enamored with the natural world.  Since graduating from the University of Arizona with a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, she fell in-love with birds and worked as a field biologist on bird studies in Minnesota and Oregon. She was a naturalist/mentor at Green River Preserve in North Carolina, teaching dance, writing, and birding classes and taking kids age 9-16 on hikes and camp-outs. In between her adventures in employment, she has traveled extensively. In 2009, she spent a year in Australia. There, she volunteered with the Otesha Project and bicycled around Victoria with 13 other young adults presenting an environmental/social justice skit and workshop to school aged children.  She also worked with high school students at Mittagundi Outdoor Education Center, a remote, working farm with no electricity.  While in Australia, she discovered 5Rhythms dance and has been dancing ever since, studying with local and international teachers.  She is interested in how movement and dance help us connect to our bodies and express ourselves genuinely.  If she’s not dancing, she loves to be out backpacking, writing by the bay, or drawing.

Ed Winter-Tamkin, Parent Support & Life Skills

Ed Winter-Tamkin, M.S, moved to Bellingham in 2013 from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He spent his most of his career teaching high school and junior high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and developed and taught a class entitled “Living Skills” to all freshmen at Reseda High School for more than 10 years. Ed has been involved with men’s movement in New Mexico and was in a men’s group for 10 years in Santa Fe. In raising his eldest son as a single parent, he became very aware of the importance of men in the lives of boys.  In addition to serving on several non-profit boards, he founded dad’s groups in two schools.

With his second wife, Ed co-founded non-profit organization  “The Stepfamily Specialists.” Together, they provided counseling and classes to help people create successful stepfamilies. Ed has also been involved in the creation of two for-profit businesses.  He has been happily married for more than 30 years, and is the father of two grown sons and grandfather of three.

David Goldman, Health, Sexuality & Wilderness Skills

David Goldman is a teacher, parent, activist, family farmer, and birth doula with a love for traditional homesteading and wilderness skills. David has been a teacher for over twenty years, including time in a very open and affirming student-led high school health program. As a teacher, parent, facilitator and friend, David draws from his comfort and familiarity with various genders, sexual orientations and an excitement for learning about the spectrum of human experiences. He parents children who came from adoption, blending families and birth. He spends a lot of his time learning about family, healing, communication and education. David was part of the original visioning meetings that first brought about the creation of Apollo’s Crossing.

Keith Poynter, Mentor

Keith works as a private mental health counselor within the Bellingham group, Associates in Mental Health. His roots in the counseling field are firmly planted within the Wilderness Therapy/Outdoor Ed field. He continues to draw on his connection with the natural world in his professional and personal life. Like the bond children form with parents, Keith believes it is essential that children also form a healthy bond with nature; and that it becomes a relationship that they can turn to over the course of their lives for support. Utilizing imagination, wonderment, and creativity to form this connection is a key ingredient he looks to inspire in his clients.

For the past 15 plus years, Keith has focused on guiding youth and young men struggling with significant life transitions. He strives to serve those who are seeking meaning in a confusing world that sends mixed messages which often run counter to the healthy development of mind, body, family, earth, community, & soul.  Keith returns to Rooted Emerging after being part of the original visioning group of men back in 2011.

Meghan Yates, Performer & Collaborator

Cayley Schmid, Performer, Musical Accompaniment