People

Kit is the co-founder of one of the country's first urban outdoor preschools, the Fiddleheads Forest School at the University of Washington. In 2015, Kit founded the Washington Nature Preschool Association to support the regional growth of nature-based early childhood education and successfully advocated for the passage of the first licensing regulations for outdoor preschools in North America. Today, she continues her work to support the field as the Policy Advisor for the Natural Start Alliance, helping improve equitable access to nature-based early learning experiences and develop meaningful support for educators around the country.

A former secondary science teacher and the 2015 EcoRise Teacher of the Year, Abby Randall is committed to inspiring teachers to ignite passion in a new generation of green leaders. Abby was born in London, England, raised in Hingham, Massachusetts, and spent the last decade in Austin, Texas, teaching and designing curricula for a wide variety of K–12 science courses and alternative education programs. Abby holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Trinity College and an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

In her current position as Deputy Director, Abby oversees the implementation of a wide variety of leading-edge educational resources, including sustainability and design curricula, a workforce development program focused on green building education, teacher professional development,and a K–12 grant program that brings students' green innovations to life. Abby also leads EcoRise's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives and is responsible for leveraging and streamlinig technology to efficiently scale EcoRise's innovative programs to thousands of educators across the globe. In her free time, Abby enjoys tending her vegetable garden and backyard chickens, swimming in Barton Springs, hiking, camping, and traveling the world to visit friends and family.

About Abby‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Abby’s Community Action Project is a national Ambassador Program that aims to develop, empower, and recognize K–12 educators as leaders, changemakers, and champions of environmental literacy in their own communities. Abby’s partner organization, EcoRise, is a social enterprise based in Austin, Texas that began 11 years ago, serving one high school in East Austin. In the last decade, EcoRise has grown to support over 3,250 teachers across the country, with standards-aligned sustainability, design, and green building curriculum; professional development and support; and micro-grants for green student projects like this: https://youtu.be/JixDi-UH4FM. EcoRise plans to expand its reach to serve 4,000 educators in 10 high-impact hubs across the United States by 2020. As such, the goal of the Ambassador Program is to increase organizational capacity and grow the sustainability education movement using a community-based approach. You can learn more about the 2019-20 Ambassador Program and 2nd Annual Summer Institute and about EcoRise's Sustainable Intelligence Program at https://ecorise.org/si-program/.