Meet the Spillian staff! We have a growing, wonderful crew who make everything run effortlessly.
We’re delighted to introduce you to them.
Spillian Founders Leigh Melander and Mark Somerfield have been best pals since college. Along the line somewhere it occurred to them to get married, so they’ve done that for a while, too. They are building a remarkable crew at Spillian to create the retreat center of their — and hopefully your — dreams.
Spillian Founders
Her undergraduate degree is in performance, literature, and history and she studied writing by invitation with Nobel Poet Laureate Derek Walcott at Boston University. She has a doctorate in cultural mythology and psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and wrote her dissertation on frivolity (yes, really!) as an entry into the world of imagination.
Leigh oversees all of the visioning, marketing, and outreach for Spillian, presenting workshops and events and working with creatives from around the world to dream forward programs that inspire imagination. She also hosts the podcast Myth America. Her first book, Psyche’s Choice: The Frivolous Revolution, was published in 2019, and she has two more slated for 2023 release. Leigh was seen as a mythology expert on the True Monsters series on the History Channel. She is proud to have served on a range of regional and national boards, including Spring Journal & Books, and the Joseph Campbell Foundation.
She works with clients around the world, helping them to imagine and leap into their wildest ideas. You can find out more about how you could work with Leigh here.
He spent over a decade as the Production Manager for the University of California Santa Barbara Music Department, and has worked with New York City Opera, the First National Tour of the Broadway show, Smokey Joe’s Café, the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway Theater, and many other touring, regional, and academic performance organizations. He has a Master of Fine Arts from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in lighting design.
Before moving to New York, he completed several major residential renovation projects, including renovations of a postwar house in California into a handcrafted modern version of an Arts and Crafts bungalow, designing and building all custom woodwork, tile work, stained glass, etc. And he is responsible for the sparkling house that Spillian now lives in, spending an entire year bringing the old Fleischmanns mansion back to life. He now serves as Spillian’s Site Designer and General Manager, managing all of the private events on site and providing the lead on all of the ongoing renovations and development of the property.
Spillian Staff
Chef Christian Van Etten
With the talented and unflappable magic of Spillian’s Head Chef Christian Van Etten, our kitchen imagines extraordinary food into being. Drawing from the best of the Catskills’ food growers and makers, Christian works to create custom menus that capture the essence of each event, the people who are gathering together to revel, and the magic of these mountains. He also is regularly teaching cooking classes as a part of our Mythic Catskills Weekend offerings, and is an inspired teacher, making sophisticated cooking accessible and fun.
Christian comes to us as a Catskills native, trained at the award-winning SUNY Delhi culinary program. He has served as sous and head chef at a variety of fine dining restaurants, most recently at Disney Florida. He has returned to his roots and we are grateful!
Tracie De Silva, Hospitality Manager
Tracie brings together a million different strands for each of our events, from putting elegant flourishes on tables, to managing our event staff, and serving as the most gracious maker-of-all things possible for our wedding couples and workshop attendees. She is a living example of the soul of Spillian and its generosity.
Alex Ramos, Assistant Hospitality Manager
In the course of a given day, you’ll find Alex doing everything from enchanting grandmas, leading our housekeeping crew, serving dinner with a flair, and generally making everyone’s life better. Effortlessly. Delightfully. As well as making us laugh. A lot.
Chantelle Olan, Sous Chef
Chantelle brings an emerging genius to the kitchen – along with being Chef Christian’s right hand, she has taken over most of our baking and has Brooklyn natives asking us if they can buy bagels from us to take home, as ours are better than the ones they can get in their ‘hood.
Amanda Goodchild, Facilities Manager
We’ve discovered that there is one thing in the entire world that Amanda doesn’t do well: making popcorn on the stove. Other than that, she is a force in virtually everything that happens at Spillian. You might find her helping folks navigating parking, climbing a ladder to roof a new building, delicately painting a piece of trim work, or anything in between.
Event Staff
We have a great crew of staff: servers, bartenders, kitchen folks, and maintenance folks . They work together seamlessly to make events feel like they’ve blossomed with effort, and each bring their own brilliance and sparkle to Spillian and our guests.
- Wendy Kastenhuber: she who makes all dishes gleam
- Sean Wells: bar manager by night, hospitality pro with ORDA by day
- Samantha Murad: charcuterie boards co-creator & server
- Tanya White: co-dish gleamer & co-charcuterie creator
- Lori Kovacs: the energizer bunny of service & housekeeping
- Roberta Peters: the bar charmer
- Brian Lawrence: the fire man
- Hunter Balcom: king of the golf cart
- Daniel Ballard: server & landscaping dude
