On Val’s path to work as an education design specialist in rural Maine schools were experiences in Maine’s commercial fishing industry, in outdoor/ environmental education, high school science teaching, and designing innovative education programming. Over the past 10 years with Rural Aspirations, Val has developed collaborative programming like the Eastern Maine Skippers Program and the Maine Forest Collaborative, worked with whole communities to create Portraits of a Graduate, and coordinated the Community Learning for ME collaboration. Val lives in Bar Harbor with her family and loves to spend as much time as possible on or near the ocean.