GUIDES, THERAPEUTIC MENTORS, STAFF

Cody Wollitz

Grants Manager / Mentor

With three years as Grants Manager, Cody provides a firm foundation for Gateway’s efforts to improve youth mental health in the Truckee-Tahoe region and beyond. His endeavors contribute to the development of leading edge programming that positively impacts public health systems. He holds an MBA from University of Nevada, Reno, with specializations in social entrepreneurship, leadership development, and international business. Cody has been a lifelong servant leader in youth development, leading cross-cultural experiential learning programs in the U.S. and abroad. He grew up in Reno, Nevada, and is an avid sports participant in soccer, baseball, basketball, skiing, hiking, and climbing. He holds a certificate in Outdoor Leadership, and explored Utah as a wilderness therapy instructor. Whether as a Mentor or as Gateway’s Grants Manager, Cody is elated to share his appreciation of nature, mindfulness, systems thinking and embodied peak experiences.

Luis Rubio-Aguilar

YEA! Camps Outreach Coordinator / Guide / Mentor

When Luis Rubio-Aguilar was 10 years old, he migrated from his birthplace in Jalisco, Mexico, to the Lake Tahoe area. Growing up there was an awesome experience for a kid: He got to ski, camp, ride bikes, play ball and enjoy the beach. At 12 years old he started skiing at Homewood Mountain Resort, where he fell in love with it. He has now worked in the ski industry for more than 10 years, and with his PSIA Level 2 Alpine certification he enjoys coaching and teaching kids one of his favorite sports. He is also a camp guide (bilingual), mentor and musician. He spends a lot of his free time in woods and meadows identifying plants, flowers and mushrooms and learning about their uses and their roles in nature. Time in the woods gives him peace of mind, an opportunity to reflect and a sense of how complex life is. The more he learns about that, the more in touch he feels with himself and with life’s challenges. Having faced his own share of challenges, both when growing up and as an adult, he hopes the experiences he can share with students and peers will offer both knowledge and understanding.

Mackenzie Kingston

Sierra Experience Program Manager / Mentor

Mackenzie is drawn toward working with youth in order to create more equitable, welcoming spaces for growth, inclusion, and curiosity. After graduating from Connecticut College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Behavioral Neuroscience and a double-minor in Environmental Studies and Anthropology, she first moved to California from Vermont to work with newcomer and refugee youth in Oakland, CA. Feeling the pull of the mountains, she moved to Truckee, CA in 2022 and now works for Gateway as a WHMB Mentor and a Sierra Experience Program Manager.  Mackenzie likes to spend her free time outside hiking, backpacking, swimming, paddling, skiing, or just reading by the river.

KEITH TOM

Sierra Experience Program Manager / Guide

Keith is an Oakland, CA native. Since moving to Lake Tahoe in 2007, he has attended Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) and earned a degree in Environmental Sustainability & Technology. Moving from the city to the mountains gave him a personal perspective on the benefits of being in nature and he loves to get urban youth excited about nature by leading them on educational excursions throughout the Tahoe area. He is also programs manager for The Sugar Pine Foundation, which is a non-profit whose mission is to save the natural biodiversity of Lake Tahoe’s forest through education and hands-on experiences.

JARED MOORE

Climbing Manager

Jared’s passions lie in nature and the outdoors, and sharing it with others, especially young people. From leading nature hikes and catching snakes, to rock climbing and skiing, Jared has a broad skillset and a desire to pass on his knowledge and skills to the next generation. Jared recently completed his AMGA Rock Guide Course, one of 3 steps in becoming a fully certified Rock Guide. In addition, he spends his winter ski patrolling at one of the most avalanche-prone ski areas in the country, Alpine Meadows.

JARED ALDEN

Mentor/Guide

Jared has been engaged with children for over 17 years in variety of professional settings that include: an acute psychiatric inpatient & residential lock-down hospital for adolescents, an outpatient wraparound program for the State of PA, the Fitzsimon Middle School in north Philadelphia, an orphanage in Kathmandu Nepal, the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Children’s’ Center, a preschool in Doylestown PA, some remote villages & nomadic tribes of northern Mali, West Africa. In addition to serving as an outdoor education guide and rehabilitation mental health specialist, Jared enjoys relating to children & youth as a professional AASI Snowboarding coach, mentor and instructor as well as engaging children as a rock climbing instructor, coach and USA Climbing judge.

NICOLE BENTER

Lead Mentor

Nicole loves to share her delight for life. With 20 years of experience working in experiential education (Outward Bound and Yosemite Institute) and leading organizations in the Sierra (Sierra Business Council), she is passionate about making a positive impact. Nicole loves to learn and grow. She holds a Masters in Business and Sustainability, a Masters in Teaching (plus two teaching credentials), and a Bachelors of Science. Passionate about balanced healthy living, she also is a certified Integrative Holistic Health Coach, Optimal Living Coach, and has studied Compassionate Communication. At a young age, Nicole became hooked on outdoor adventure and sharing it with others, as she realized its power to provide challenge, joy, achievement, and a powerful vehicle for personal growth and discovery. Nicole loves to spend time with her two young girls and husband, bike, climb, back-country ski, and jump in alpine lakes!

Lindy Winter

Mentor

Lindy was drawn to mentorship and guiding as a natural response to her own personal growth. She has found healing in nature countless times and delights in seeing young people overcome their perceived limitations as they climb a rock face or splash around in a kayak. As a single mother of two teens herself, she has compassion for families presented with overwhelming challenges. Lindy’s professional background is in architecture, where she has taken particular interest in mentoring junior colleagues by leading training and development programs. Her dream is to combine these worlds by facilitating design-build service projects within the framework of nature-based therapeutic experiences. Calling Tahoe home since 2000, Lindy loves nordic and backcountry skiing, wind sports, and hiking with her dog.

Isabella Jorgensen

Mentor/Guide/Peer Support

Isabella grew up in Maui, Hawaii where her connection to the outside world was fostered. She studied Public Health at American University in Washington DC and spent a year in India, working for a rural women's health initiative. She moved back to Hawaii to care for an ill family member and help manage her family business. She then began working for AmeriCorps where she ran an elementary school garden and taught gardening skills and nutrition lessons. Her passion to connect youth with the outdoors began here and sent her on a journey across the world to learn new outdoor skills. She attended organic farm school in Denmark, volunteered at community gardens in Mexico City, became a wilderness therapy field guide in Southern Utah, and fell in love with Tahoe and became an adventure guide with Gateway. In her free time she can be found swimming in any nearby body of water, tending to her garden, cooking, and climbing. 

Brody Dwyer

Peer Program Coordinator/Medi-Cal Certified Peer Support Specialist/Mentor

Brody was privileged to grow up in Truckee California, graduating from Truckee High School in 2004. He delighted in the wilderness and being outdoors growing up where he could be found camping, backpack camping, fishing, fly-fishing, skiing and snowmobiling. Following his passion for cooking after working a corporate job he graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland Oregon in 2011 with high honors and perfect attendance. After experiencing a mental health crisis in 2016, Brody fervently began seeking out ways to advocate for mental health while learning about his condition(s). Thus, he walked away from his successful career in the restaurant industry to continue to pursue his new passions of mental health advocacy, trauma healing and crisis intervention. Being certified in Crisis Intervention, Mental Health First Aid, and Trauma Informed Care allowed him the honor to work as a Homeless Outreach Coordinator in Truckee/ Northlake Tahoe and now he puts them to use serving youth in his community. He aspires to become a Licensed Practitioner of the Healing Arts after ascertaining his Bachelors in Psychology.

Allison Hester

Mentor/Peer Support

Antony Stangel

Medi-Cal Certified Peer Support Specialist/Mentor

Anna Patterson

Mentor

Anna grew up in the mountains in Colorado and has loved the outdoors from a young age. She spent time working in a child development research lab while earning her bachelor's degree in psychology, which is where her desire to work with young people began. She is now pursuing a master's in counseling psychology, with a concentration in expressive arts therapy, at CIIS. She moved to Truckee in 2023 and is incredibly excited to be a part of this community. She loves art-making of all kinds, skiing, hiking, and any activity that involves the lake. Most of all, she loves sharing her passion for art and nature with others!

Connor Billman

Mentor

Richard Bruener

Mentor

Erika Veidis

Mentor

Erika has a background in environmental policy and education – focusing on the intersections of sustainability and health and on the deeper structural and cultural questions underlying today's environmental challenges. Originally from New Jersey, Erika moved to Tahoe from Boston for a winter of skiing – and has stayed ever since. Erika loves exploring mountains, skiing, trail running, and paddleboarding with her dogs – as well as playing music and writing. Before her life in Tahoe, Erika worked as a farmhand in Wisconsin, ran track, and studied political science, mind / brain / behavior, and environmental economics. Erika is passionate about her Latvian heritage, its nature-based culture, and all-night singing and dancing events with the Latvian community.