Leadership
NWL Leadership is comprised of the organization’s owners, C.G. Stephens and Jodi Browning, and longtime Langskib Director, Michael Jarvis. Together, we guide, influence and ensure NWL’s core values of empowering young people to become the best versions of themselves, and share three major commitments.
Our first commitment is to safety. Beyond professional standards and accepted practices, each of us is a parent. We know how difficult it is for you to entrust us with your children and how important it is to keep them safe, both physically and emotionally.
Second, we are deeply committed to running absolutely the finest wilderness program anywhere. Each of us has been profoundly influenced by our experiences on the trail and so believe deeply in the power of our programs.
Third, we are deeply committed to the young people we serve. We measure our success in the feedback we get from young people and their parents. We often hear from participants years afterward that their experience with us shaped their development and character for years to come.
C.G. Stephens
C.G. Stephens
Director (he/him)
C.G.’s boyhood quest for wilderness adventure brought him to Langskib in 1975. After an incredible trip to the James Bay the next summer, C.G. hired on. He led trips for many years before becoming a Director in 1984. C.G. has a BS from Hartwick College and is a passionate student of experiential education and wilderness leadership. A consummate paddler, sailor, telemark skier and student of nature, C.G. spends the winters in the Adirondack Mountains with his wife Jodi Browning and their three children; Hudson, McKenzie James and Gracie Ruth.
Jodi Browning
Jodi Browning
Director (she/her)
Jodi grew up exploring the lakes and woods of southeastern Ontario where her family has a summer home. Since 1986 she has worked in various capacities throughout the field of adventure based education including directing an outdoor center in eastern Ontario, leading extensive canoe tripping expeditions for youth at risk and directing courses for the Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association. She has paddled thousands of kilometers with young people through lakes and rivers in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba & Minnesota and led several expeditions to Hudson Bay. She began working for Northwaters in 1996. A trained ballet dancer, musician & vocalist, Jodi has spent much of her life pursuing both the arts and the outdoors. In the winter she can be found cross country skiing and snowshoeing in the Adirondack Mountains where she lives with her husband, C.G. Stephens, daughter, Grace and two sons Hudson and McKenzie James.
Michael Jarvis
Michael Jarvis
Director Emeritus (he/him)
Michael Jarvis lives with his wife Lynne and their two children in northern Michigan. He is trained as a therapist and works as a counselor, teacher and administrator at The Leelanau School a small boarding high school during the school year. He also teaches psychology, world religions, and a rite of passage course for the senior class. At the age of 17, Michael left the small town in northern Idaho, where he grew up, to attend the United States Air Force Academy. During the 11 years he was in the Air Force he graduated from the Academy with a bachelor of Science degree, flew helicopters with the Air Force, The Army, and the Coast Guard, taught aircrew survival, earned parachute jump wings, and worked with the Coast Guard on a night vision goggle research project. Michael left the Air Force in 1991 to work in Outdoor Education. He has been a certified high ropes and initiatives instructor and has worked with groups ranging from elementary schools, and church youth groups to corporate teams and adult retreats. He also worked with probate courts in several counties designing and leading wilderness experiences with adjudicated and other youth at risk.
Administrator & Program Directors
Our programs are managed by an outstanding team of Program Directors and Administrators who share in our collective commitment to safety, program quality, and the young people we serve. While each of them have specific areas of responsibility, they work together during the summer (and year round) to manage all aspects of operation and programming at Northwaters and Langskib.
All of us (Leadership, Program Directors and Administrators) spend our summers in Temagami and one or more of us will be in charge of (and working directly with) whatever program your child is enrolled in.
Claire Miller
Claire Miller
Program Director (she/her)
Most of Claire’s summers have been spent in part, or in whole, at Northwaters Langskib – for good reason. As a participant, the trips she embarked on through the organization played a large role in the positive development for her teenage self. Uplifted by the feelings of confidence and pride that her first Northern Lights trip left her with, she continued through the organization for the following five summers, ending her participant career by completing the Leadership program.
Having been inspired by the community that had facilitated her growth over the years, Claire knew she wanted to work at NWL so she could have a chance to provide a similar experience for the participants that were to come. For the following ten summers, she first apprenticed as an assistant leader and over the years transitioned into becoming a trip leader, a senior trip leader, to her current position as Program Director.
Claire is passionate about her line of work and continues to strive each year to expand her experiences in outdoor guiding and education. In both organizational and personal regards, Claire has guided flat and whitewater canoe trips all over Ontario and Quebec, as well as in Texas. She has a new found love for whitewater rafting which continues to bring her to amazing places from the Ottawa river, to Utah and Idaho. She also has a love for winter activities – both snowboarding and alpine skiing – and has worked snowshoeing and dogsledding in Algonquin Park. Claire has a diploma with honours in Outdoor Adventure and Business Studies from Algonquin College and intends to further pursue education in this field.
Claire loves to explore and try new things from surfing in Tofino, to Blackwater Rafting in New Zealand’s glow worm caves. She has a curiosity for life, a desire for connection and a drive to create meaning for herself and others in the world.
Eric Miller
Eric Miller
Program Director (he/him)
It’s been many years since I first came to Langskib in 2004. I’ve been with the organization for so long because its role in my life continues to change. My first trip was challenging. It taught me perseverance and patience as I grappled with the unfamiliar demands of wilderness travel. When I returned the following years, it was the friendships I had fostered that drew me back. The communities I was a part of while canoeing supplied me with a safe place to explore who I was while in high school. As a guide, I recognized the difference my time in Temagami had made in my life, and it was unbelievably rewarding to be able to facilitate that experience for other young adults. As a program director, it is a privilege to manage the container that permits Northwaters and Langskib’s work to happen. Outside of my work in the summer I live in Toronto and work in documentary and corporate film as an editor and videographer.
David Serrahn-Resnick
David Serrahn-Resnick
Program Director (he/him)
I started as a participant in the co-ed program at NWL in 2005. After graduating high school, I attended the Leadership Program in 2010 and was hired as a trip leader in 2011. I studied adventure education at Prescott College, graduating in 2016. I work as a field instructor for a wilderness therapy program out west during the winter when it is too cold to canoe. My passion for the outdoors and working with youth in a wilderness setting comes from my experience as a participant at NWL. My career as an outdoor educator, guide, and caretaker is rooted in the philosophy that the wilderness is place of healing, growth, self awareness and discovery, and the perfect place to become the best version of yourself.
Hannah Sourisseau
Hannah Sourisseau
Program Director (she/her)
I began tripping with Northwaters-Langskib when I was sixteen years old and remember being immediately struck by the beauty of Temagami, the warmth of the NWL community, and the awe and wonder that come from paddling through the backcountry. For the previous decade or so, Northwaters and Langskib has been a constant in my life and a continuous source of learning and inspiration. As a teenager, paddling through Northern Ontario and Quebec taught me about my own personal strength, how to work within a community, how to challenge myself, and how to pay attention – to others around me, to my own feelings, and to the wonder and joy of being alive. Guiding for Northwaters let me move into a role where I got to center and celebrate the authenticity, resilience, and strengths of the young folks with whom I paddled; I look at my summers of being on trail with young folks as ones where I learned so much, laughed so hard, and really experienced the magic, comfort, and strength that comes from being in a community. As a director, I embrace the opportunity to manage all the ins-and-outs that make the work at Northwaters and Langskib possible – I truly believe in the ability of a canoe trip, and the heart and meaning we put in, to be transformational.
Outside of summers spent in Temagami, I completed a BA in English Literature at the University of Ottawa, and then spent some time in Western Canada, completing an MA in English Literature at the University of Victoria, and enjoying the temperate coastal weather. Years of paddling in Northern Ontario fostered a love of the outdoors that has taken me on many hiking and backpacking trips, a couple rafting adventures, and to countless beautiful places. When not in Temagami, I live in the Ottawa Valley, and can be found running, climbing (both rock and ice), skiing in the winter, fair weather biking, and enjoying potlucks, trivia nights, and outdoor adventures with the community I’ve cultivated here.
Jen Zahorchak
Jen Zahorchak
Program Administrator (she/her)
Jen has spent most of her adult life teaching outside and playing with kids. After graduating with a science teaching certificate she led trips and taught outdoor and environmental education at camps and science centers across the states. Jen and her husband Gregg (a Waldorf Forest Kindergarten teacher and retired NWL trip leader) have traveled through 7 provinces and all 50 states together and have embarked on several domestic and overseas hiking and wildlife excursions. Jen and Gregg moved their growing family to the Adirondacks in 2005, where they ultimately settled into a little old farmhouse down the road from C.G. and Jodi. Jen enjoys being on, in, or near the water, gardening, photography, yoga, reading, and exploring outside with Gregg and their three ridiculously awesome young humans- Wren, L, and Otis.