Why I Joined the Board of Wildwood Folk School

Every now and then, you come across a project that hits you right in the heart.

Recently, I had the honor of joining the board of a small but mighty startup called Wildwood Folk School—a community-rooted school founded by a group of passionate young visionaries who care deeply about land, learning, and people.

From the moment I connected with the founders, I could feel the integrity and intention behind what they were building. This wasn’t just another education initiative. It was something wilder. Something warmer. A school that teaches plant skills and earth-based traditions—but does it with a sense of humor, humility, and heart.

I got involved first as a consultant—offering guidance on digital strategy, website development, and backend automations to help things run more smoothly behind the scenes. (My happy place.) But the more I learned about the vision and the values guiding this work, the more I wanted to stay close to it.

So when they invited me to join the board, it was an easy yes.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to identify mushrooms, ferment wild foods, or craft something beautiful and useful with your own two hands, this is your place.

Wildwood is for beginners, dabblers, lifelong learners, and anyone curious about reconnecting with the natural world. Their classes are taught by skilled practitioners, and the tone is always welcoming—no gatekeeping, no snobbery, just real knowledge passed on with joy.

The site itself was built using the Avada theme, paired with some powerful plugins that let us do some pretty cool stuff under the hood.

We used Gravity Forms to completely customize the registration, payments, and onboarding experience. Whether you’re signing up for a paid workshop or a free event, the process feels smooth, intentional, and easy to manage for the team on the backend.

One of my favorite builds is a custom integration between Gravity Forms and The Events Calendar plugin. This lets us pass event and venue data directly into registration forms for things like the free plant walks. (Pro tip: sign up for one of these walks—they’re part botany class, part stand-up comedy in the woods, and a perfect intro to Wildwood’s vibe.)

We’ve also wired Gravity Forms to trigger webhooks, sending data into Make.com where it’s used to generate custom messages, send notifications, populate tracking spreadsheets, and keep everything running like a well-loved homestead.

Much of this functionality came from the team simply asking, “Hey, can we do this…?”

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve learned that if you build a site based only on what a client asks for, you’ll probably need to rebuild it a few more times to match what they actually need. But if you start by anticipating where they’re headed, you can build with enough flexibility to support the inevitable “little upgrades” that come with growth and discovery.

And that’s exactly what we did here.

In a world that often feels too fast, too digital, and too disconnected, Wildwood is planting something real. Something slow. Something that reminds us we’re still part of the land—and that learning is a lifelong practice.

My daughter and I have been participating in their year-long Foraging & Immersion Program, and I honestly can’t say enough about it. It’s been a rare and meaningful opportunity for us to learn side-by-side—exploring everything from local seaweeds to plant medicines to ethical foraging practices (which, I’ll admit, I didn’t even realize was a thing… proving once again how much I still have to learn).

This kind of hands-on, values-driven education doesn’t just teach you skills—it shifts your relationship to the world around you. And that’s something I want to be part of.

👉 Visit the school: wildwoodfolkschool.com
👉 Want help building something meaningful? That’s what I do. Let’s talk.