Charles “Chuck” Luckmann grew up along the Mississippi River in Illinois, Missouri, and Minnesota. He purchased his first canoe for $75 at eleven years of age, which launched a passion for rivers that has never waned. During a forty-five-year career in education, he taught at nine schools in four countries, including COBWS from 1979–1982, where he spent summers at Homeplace and winters in the Toronto office. From 1992 to 1997, he was executive editor for the Journal of Experiential Education. In 2004 he cofounded Flying Trout Press. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and son and tens of thousands of honeybees.

Ian Yolles grew up in Toronto. In 1978 he started as an intern at COBWS. After overcoming his skepticism, he hung around until 1990, working as an assistant instructor, instructor, course director, and program director, serving the last five years as the school’s executive director. Along the way, he received a postgraduate research fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, enabling him to work at most of the Outward Bound schools around the world. After Outward Bound, he became interested in progressive businesses, leading him to work at the Body Shop, Patagonia, and Nike. He then cofounded Nau. Today he lives with his wife, Irene, in Portland, Oregon, serves as the board chair at NatureBridge, and often seeks inspiration in nature.

Alistair McArthur, an Australian, came to COBWS in January 1978 as executive director at age thirty-seven. He started his outdoor education career in 1964 as an instructor at the Ullswater Outward Bound Mountain School in the UK. He worked as an instructor, senior instructor, chief instructor, and program director at various Outward Bound schools. Alistair also did community development work for two and a half years with the Department of Native Affairs in Papua New Guinea. As base commander of a British Antarctic Survey Expedition for two years, he traveled over fifteen hundred miles by dogsled. Since the early 1990s, he has acted as an adviser and consultant to outdoor education programs based in Australia. Throughout his career he has worked and/or consulted with over fifty outdoor programs in the UK, USA, Canada, Asia, and Australia.

Wendy Pieh was born in 1948 in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1976, Wendy joined her father, Bob Pieh, in founding COBWS. She was the program director for the school’s first four years. In 1990 Wendy joined her husband, Peter Goth, founder of Wilderness Medical Associates, in the small fishing village of Bremen, Maine. She served as a Representative in the Maine State Legislature for eight years and has been the Chair of the Board of Selectmen in Bremen for the last nineteen years.