UofW Team

University of the Wild Co-Directors

Patrick Draper
Patrick has worked as an organic farm and environmental learning center apprentice, as a project leader for a youth volunteer program, and as an apprentice at Earthlands. He combines his experience in environmental education and community living with a passion for deep personal work and radical sustainability. With 2 years experience in Primal Therapy, he brings insight into personal, community and ecological healing.

Nika Fotopulos-Voeikoff
B.A. Political Science and Environmental Studies, McGill University
Fine Arts Diploma, Painting and Drawing, Accademia Italiana
Nika has created and been head organizer of a Street Art Event, called RecycART, in Montreal for the last 3 years. She has experience as a project leader for an alternative education program with inner city youth, as assistant campaign manager for a municipal politician, and as an apprentice at Earthlands. She’s committed and passionate about community living, participatory art, and Earth activism and education. She’s engaged in living authentically and reconnecting with her true intrinsic potential.

Apprentices

Siedeh Rezaei-Kamalabad
Siedeh Rezaei-Kamalabad grew up in Cambridge/Somerville, Massachusetts in an Iranian-American household where she gained perspective on the world through her artistic parents, traveling frequently to Iran and balancing the two contrasting cultures in everyday life. After high school, she participated in the AmeriCorps Program, City Year in Boston where she taught a social justice curriculum to sixth graders in Chinatown. Through City Year, Siedeh learned about the non-profit world, developing skills in fundraising, marketing and program development. Siedeh attend American University in Washington, D.C. for a year and then transferred to the University of the District of Columbia. Both schools did not fill her academic needs and the city lost its glamor after two years, so she returned to the land of her birth and attempted to do the school thing again. It only took only one semester at The University of Massachusetts- Boston, the best semester of five at three different schools, for her to realize that mainstream education was not the path for her. Siedeh is now taking the non-traditional route to becoming a writer. This summer, as an apprentice with The University of the Wild, Siedeh plans to help build the vision of her dream school into a reality.

Neil Jones
Neil hails from the parkland city of Saskatoon, Canada, which straddles the mighty South Saskatchewan River where prairie and forest meet. He has a lifelong interest in alternative models of community, education, economies, and relationships; and a love of variety in music, language, habitat, people, and ideas. Neil has studied at university, biked and acted with the Otesha Project, worked and volunteered in the field of natural building, and participated in community initiatives ranging Food Not Bombs to the World Urban Festival.