Spillian is lucky to have a growing community of dear friends who have stepped in and supported its vision in a variety of ways. Our Spillian Fellows serve as an informal brain trust, sharing ideas, challenges, best practices, and resources. We are so grateful to them.
Spillian Fellows
John Boecker is a founding partner of 7group and serves as an internationally recognized, multi-disciplinary consultant focused on integrative design and regenerative development. As an architect, his practice has worked exclusively on green buildings since 1996. He designed two of the world’s first 13 LEED certified projects, taught as LEED FacultyTM from 2001-2013, served on the LEED Steering Committee from 2002-2009, and he chaired the USGBC’s national LEED Curriculum Committee from 2002-2007. Along with his 7group partners and Bill Reed, he co-authored The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building: Redefining the Practice of Sustainability, the seminal text book for guiding integrative design and construction published by John Wiley & Sons in April 2009. As a highly sought keynote speaker and educator, John has facilitated hundreds of workshops on the benefits of integrative design and regenerative development in 36 states and 14 countries.
Robert Smythe is an acclaimed theater artist and academic, whose work, according to Philadelphia City Paper, “sparked the theater renaissance that continues to this day.” He has won prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and six fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. According to the Puppeteers of America, Smythe is one of the most influential puppeteers in the United States, widely acknowledged to have changed perceptions about puppetry and theater. For 23 years he was the founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning Mum Puppettheatre, the only regional theater in the country dedicated to puppetry, and toured throughout Europe, Japan, and North and Central America. His work on motor contagion has been published in Acta Psychologica; his ground-breaking application of narrative theory to puppetry appeared in Puppetry International, and his article, “Reading a Puppet Show: Understanding the Three-Dimensional Narrative” was published in The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance.These days, along with directing and performing, he teaches playwrighting workshops, and serves as a marketing consultant for creative organizations.
Meghan Gardner is the founder of Guardian Adventures, which owns and operates innovative and educational events, training programs, and STEM summer camps. The youth and teen events are STEM/STEAM and story-based experiences where instead of watching movies or playing video games about heroes, mythological creatures, and mystery, the participants get to live the adventure. Guardian Adventures also provides curriculum and training development for making education exciting and memorable for adults and employees (including an OSHA training program for corporate lab safety which involves a zombie invasion). Meghan is also a STEM Curriculum Designer for ST Unitas (the parent company of The Princeton Review), a story-based adventure designer for Royal Caribbean Cruises (providing educational adventures for their 6 million clients a year), a guest lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and other major universities, and an international speaker on the topic of Informal Education, Learning, and Training for all ages.
filmmaker, theater director, writer, producer, and musician (who got married at Spillian!). He has directed several films, including Walden: Life in the Woods which screened at numerous festivals in 2017 and 2018 and was released on digital platforms in October 2019, and a black-and-white silent film called, The Unsilent Picture, starring Bill Irwin. He has directed at many major regional theaters and festivals, including the Alley Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival. He was the artist-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley’s Arts Research Center, co-writing an operatic adaptation of Michael Pollan’s 2001 book, The Botany of Desire with Pollan and fellow artist-in-residence John Gromada. He is currently working on a independent film set at Spillian.
Bradley Olson, Ph.D., is a former police officer who returned to school to earn a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and literature, two Master’s degrees in psychology, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Mythology. Brad is a psychotherapist in private practice at Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona, as well as a sought-after speaker and facilitator. His work with clients is heavily influenced by his interest in Jungian Analytical Psychology and Mythological Studies. Brad is an award-winning poet and essayist, the author of the acclaimed Falstaff Was My Tutor blog, which has earned him a nomination for the 2012 PUSHCART PRIZE in nonfiction, and is scheduled for print release in 2021. Brad serves as the editor of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s MythBlast essay series.
Will Soter is co-founder of Upstate Adventure Guides, one of the premier outdoor guide services in the North East. Upstate Adventure Guides has led a new era in outdoor exploration in the Catskills, inspiring thousands of visitors to the region to understand how to be adventurers and stewards in this extraordinary place. Will is the President of the New York State Outdoor Guide Association, founded the Catskill Adventure Tourism Summit, and serves on the board of the Catskill Mountain Club. He is a Leave No Trace Master Educator, Land Navigation & Orienteering Instructor, and Water Safety Instructor, and hosts a weekly public radio show, Great Outdoors. He is a pied-piper, sharing his deep knowledge of – and love for – the Catskills with learners and adventurers.
Spillian Cheerleaders
A lifelong educator, Gene was a Professor Emeritus and retired Assistant Vice Provost at Penn State, one of the most imaginal thinkers about education you’ll meet, who spent a lifetime committed to helping people find the power of self-authoring through education. He was also Leigh’s dad. His generosity is one of the reasons we’re still standing.
Jackie has spent a lifetime finding the intersections between place and people, history and possibility. For over 30 years, she served as the President of the Centre County Historical Society in Pennsylvania and spend several years the Board of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. She’s also Leigh’s mom. And the anointed Empress of Weird, but we don’t talk about that much.
Leigh’s sister Lynn is Leigh’s daily coach and manager of whining, despair, and elation, sometimes in the same phone call. When she’s not busy with that, she is a fundraiser for nonprofitis, having served as the Development Lead at Mozilla Foundation, and now the Director of Institutional Giving at Consumer Reports.
Leigh’s sister Jody is one of the inspirations of Spillian’s vision of imagining past what you think is possible. She has spent a lifetime immersed in the creative and natural inspiration of Cape Cod, and has fiercely and steadfastly built a life that is about the components she chooses, rather than what the world assumes. She is an artist, a naturalist, and a creator of marvelous working objects.
Chris showed up at Spillian one day, wondering what we were up to and whether we might want to do a music series. We’re not sure he’s glad he did that, but we’re never letting him escape. Prior to his indentured servitude creating music programs and providing brilliance in our marketing and PR work, he spent a career in the music industry, working as an exec in artist development and marketing with major stars for all the major labels. Silly man, he thought he moved up here to fish.
Tom has been a friend and wild-man inspirer of Leigh’s for many years. A film maker by trade, he, along with his colleague John Boecker, has been a moving force in imagining sustainability in the US and the world, including being founding visionaries of the US Green Building Alliance’s LEED certification program as well as consulting and coaching internationally. With John, he’s been helping Mark and Leigh to land and deepen and understand how Spillian’s essence echoes throughout all we do.
Another dear friend of Leigh’s, Suzie helped to nurture the vision of Spillian as it was first birthed in California and has been the tireless supporter and strong shoulder to lean on for energy and inspiration for over a decade. She is an expert in nonprofit organizational and funding development and has both led and consulted for national nonprofit organizations.
David Miller is one of the leading scholars and teachers in mythological and religious studies in the world. He is the Watson-Lederer Professor of Religion, Emeritus from Syracuse University as well as an Emeritus from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has been supportive of Spillian since its first inception as The Imaginal Institute in California and was Leigh’s dissertation advisor.
