People

Rooted Emerging is a network of caring adults who are passionate about supporting youth. It consists of an Executive Director, a four member Board of Directors, two Collectives, one for each Coming of Age Program, and up to 6 Interns.

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 Women & the Environment. 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, exploring wild rivers, singing, creating giant puppets, bringing people together for joy, and most of all cherishing her eight year old daughter.

Vanessa Osage offers soulful sexuality education to young people ages 6 & up, both in schools and small group settings. She also works individually with clients, supporting parents & children on the journey of healthy sexual maturity, through her business VEO Consulting, LLC.

Kimberley Bauer, Board Chair, Board of Directors

Dr. Kimberley Bauer, ND LM CPM came to the Pacific Northwest to attend Bastyr University in 2000 and has happily called the beautiful northwest home ever since. As a Naturopathic Physician and Midwife, Kim specializes in healthcare for the whole family, from infanthood to elderhood. Dr. Bauer often says if she lived a century ago, she would have been a country doctor, traveling by horse drawn carriage from home to home. In these modern times, she still brings a kind, open, comprehensive view of health to her work with patients of all ages. In all of her endeavors, she seeks to empower, educate and support people in becoming their best selves. Dr. Bauer is excited to support the work of Rooted Emerging through service on the Board of Directors.

Amy Hockenberry, MPH grew up in Western New York, and has been traveling and exploring the world for the last 16 years. She graduated from Northern Arizona University with a BS in Parks & Recreation Management which led her to several years of guiding in Alaska. Over the years she received training as a family herbalist, and weight management and life-style coach and eventually returned to school to achieve a Masters in Public Health from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She is the former Prevention Coalition Coordinator for the Whatcom Prevention Coalition, and currently works for the Whatcom County Health Department. It is through this work that she provides opportunities for youth leadership, empowering young people to choose healthy life-styles and to be positive peer role models.

Jeff McKenna, Board of Directors

Jeff McKenna, Prevention Specialist, Bellingham Public Schools. Jeff McKenna has worked with the Bellingham School District for nearly 30 years, initially as a private consultant and later as an employee. During the 1960′s and 70′s, he worked with the Nooksack and other tribes to support access to health-related resources. He is credited with establishing the first drug and mental health treatment facility on the reservation and remains active as a supporter in the community. In the late 1980′s, he worked to create STAR, Straight Talk About Responsibility, an effort to involve businesses and community groups in drug use prevention. He understood that “school problems” were actually reflections of larger social issues at play in the lives of young people outside school walls. Working with high school recovery groups at the time, he initiated creation of the Ropes Course at Gordon Carter Conservation Site near Lake Whatcom. For 16 years, the site hosted kids striving to challenge their own thinking and comfort zones, while inspiring personal transformation.

Since then, Jeff has facilitated a number of Youth Driven Coalitions to support prevention efforts and aid in public health. He is a founding member of the Whatcom Prevention Coalition, the most recent evolution of efforts that began with STAR in the 1980′s. He is Team Leader of the Mobile Response Team for the school district, responding to crisis situations when there has been a death among either the faculty or student body. In this role, he provides crisis counseling and has done so for more than 25 years. He is also active in the Prevention Coalition’s suicide prevention project, training both kids & faculty in how to recognize and respond to suicide and substance abuse situations. He is proud to be the advisor of MAD HOPE – an intervention team of kids and parents “Making a Difference, Helping Other People Everywhere” 

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.