Volunteer With Us

Catherine Euale

Education Program Volunteer

Catherine is a Venezuelan-Canadian multimedia bio-artist, citizen scientist, community enthusiast, and storyteller with a background in film and fashion. Her work centers around deepening our relationships with the more-than-human worlds. In her practice, she challenges the need to use materials and methods that are non-compatible with living systems. She is the co-founder of Fungal Matters, an online training course for mycomaterials. Catherine is also a certified yoga instructor and psychedelic advocate. She's trained with the Beckley Academy and Chacruna Institute to better understand and help guide people through these liminal states.

Colin Mills

Education Program Volunteer

Colin is formally trained in Sport Management, but a shift in priorities led him to the study of permaculture and mycology. This journey led him to the Fungi Academy in Guatemala, where he served as the Community Manager. Colin is passionate about fungal education and has shared the magic of mushrooms with hundreds of people through courses with the Fungi Academy and workshops with Fungadelic Farms. Now a freelance writer, Colin hopes to use the lessons instilled by fungi and permaculture to cultivate harmonious relationships between humans and the rest of the natural world.

Spencer Child

Elders Program Volunteer

Spencer has always been fascinated with the intersection between geography, cuisine, and cultural formation. While studying cultural anthropology in college, he discovered that he could learn more about the world through the lens of ethnomycology. Spencer has since earned UCSB’s Research Promise award for his paper on Latin American ethnomycology. He is passionate about preserving endangered cultures, both human and fungal. His goal is to explore the multifaceted world of fungi, including their culinary, medicinal, spiritual, and environmental aspects, while also striving to reduce ethnocentric biases on a global scale.

Kai Cartwright

Partnerships Volunteer

Kai is a naturalist deeply passionate about fungi and their role in the ecosystem. He is doing his undergraduate in Ecology at the University of Edinburgh.

Mariana Villani

Elders Program Volunteer

Mariana Villani is an ethnomycologist, agroecologist, herbalist, researcher and teacher. Her focus is on preserving fungi and the traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples, traditional societies and local communities around the world. She has done projects with different Indigenous peoples in North America and volunteers on the Elders Project. She has researched hundreds of uses of mushrooms around the world, and the threats Indigenous peoples and fungi face. She is currently researching the Funga of Chapada Diamantina National Park and also teaching classes about the fantastic uses of fungi in Brazil.

Betsy Middleton

Communications Volunteer

Betsy is a British postgraduate student in Munich where she is studying anthropology of science and working part-time for an environmental NGO focused on transitioning the oil and gas sector. She thinks that by paying attention to the complex and surprising behaviour of fungi, we can learn a lot about how to manage our own actions and responsibilities as part of a global, multi-species ecosystem. She likes to swim in the sea and watch live music.

Belle Brown

Conservation Program Volunteer

Belle is a forager, food justice activist, and videographer. She just completed an undergraduate degree focused in sustainable agriculture and is passionate about the role mycorrhizal fungi play in healthy soil and carbon sequestration. She's worked on farms all over the world and loves getting her hands in the dirt! Her favorite mushroom is a cinnabar chanterelle.

Elliana Efird

Volunteer

Elli is an undergraduate student of anthropology at the University of Edinburgh currently conducting a year abroad in Chile researching multispecies methods and epistemology in the context of annual fungi festivals. She finds passion in exploring the multicultural, multidisciplinary ways of creating knowledge alongside fungi in ethnomycology as well as in the incorporation of humanities and art in global radical mycological communities. She hopes to marry her love of writing as a medium of storytelling and radical change with localized conservation efforts which entangle humans, fungi and other species in webs of interdependence.