Philip (he/him) grew up on a boat yard in Georgetown, Maine. He learned to philosophize in that salty mix of lobstermen pragmatists and back to the lander idealists. After painting the bottom of many a boat, he took his questions on the road: living and studying in Nicaragua, India and Greece. He settled down at Harvard Divinity School where he completed his doctoral work in philosophy of religion. He completed a postdoc at UPenn and professorships at Carleton College and Manhattan College before returning to his home state as Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at UMaine Farmington. He is the founder and director of Seguinland Institute in his home town. His book, When Art Disrupts Religion, was published by Oxford University Press. He is on the Board of Directors of the Gap Year Association.

Contact: philip.francis@seguinlandinstitute.org

Marsha (she/her) is a designer, artist, educator and graphic facilitator. Her teaching and design work are shaped by her studies at Brown University in Art Semiotics, Modern Culture & Media; by the experience of founding film collectives in New York City; by her training at Boston University in group dynamics and clinical social work; by her work as founder and designer of Seguin Tree Dwellings in Maine; and by more than 20 years of work as a graphic facilitator for organizations ranging from the MIT Media Lab to the United Nations.

She loves helping students to rediscover their creative instincts and expand their creative capacities.

marsha.dunn@seguinlandinstitute.org

Matt (he/him) is committed to supporting the meaningful growth of young people. Matt is a licensed school counselor who spent 13 years at Boston College High School in Dorchester, Massachusetts providing college and guidance counseling. Prior to working at BC High, Matt spent close to a decade working with teens in both teaching and counseling capacities. His work included teaching at a high-school in Honduras, serving as Senior Field Staff at a wilderness-focused therapy program, and co-leading a Dept of Education grant-funded initiative “Year 13” focused on providing educational and career counseling to struggling high-school age students. He received his Masters in Education from Boston University.

matt.weeman@seguinlandinstitute.org

Susan (she/her) was born and raised in Northern California, amongst the towering redwoods, rambling vineyards, and rugged Pacific coastline. From a young age, she enjoyed drawing, reading, writing, and adventuring into the wilds of suburbia. Eventually, she wandered a little farther from home and studied Art Studio at the University of California, Davis. After completing her degree, she explored a variety of career paths — working in education, nonprofits, and retail — while cultivating her creative practice. Her exploration took her to various parts of the Golden State, and then to various parts of the world.

In the spring of 2021, Susan and her partner took off on a cross-country road trip — with their dog, two cats, and six chickens in tow — eventually making their way to Midcoast Maine. She joins the Seguinland team as their Operations & Engagement Coordinator and is excited to apply her broad experience and skillset to building systems, problem-solving, and capacity building. She looks forward to reimagining her creative practice and connecting with the artistic community in Georgetown and beyond.

Jenny’s (she/her) 14 years as an outdoor guide have brought her all over the globe leading backpacking, sea kayaking, cultural exchange, winter adventure, and river expeditions from the Peruvian Andes to the wild waters of Maine, her chosen home. Her award-winning writing has appeared in magazines across the country. She's currently working on her debut book project, Finding Petronella, which traces her 2014 solo trek across Finland following the footsteps of a legendary woman beyond the Arctic Circle.

Jenny's good life is helping people find their voice through creative writing. When she's not writing, teaching, or adventuring, you can find her playing ultimate frisbee or disc golf, cold dipping in the winter ocean, or choreographing flashmobs. She never leaves home without a trusty pair of adventure pants and a waterproof ukulele.

Courses: Wintering: Writing in Fire & Ice, The Good Life For All

jenny.oconnell@seguinlandinstitute.org

Katie (she/her) is an artist, cook, and entrepreneur. She majored in textile design and ceramics and Rhode Island School of Design and is the founder of two creative businesses, Suzie Automatic and Docksmith. She is a passionate gardener and cook.

Katie.goodwin@seguinlandinstitute.org

Ida (she/her) is the director of mindfulness programming at Seguinland Institute. She’s also a treehouse-preneur, runner, ice-bather and forager who hails from Luleå in the north of Sweden where the reindeer roam. Ida takes joy in teaching mindfulness to emerging adults. Ida was introduced to yoga asana as an anxious teen who had been on-the-move from a young age. The practice followed her sporadically, as she studied and travelled from Sweden London to India to Berlin to Cuba…Eventually, somehow, she grew roots on the salty island of Georgetown, Maine - building treehouses and exploring this new land. Living across a vast ocean from friends and family, a regular practice of yoga and mindfulness has become a tool for grounding herself in this place and in her body.

Her intention as a teacher is to create a space that is welcoming to all (beginners and experts alike) and to facilitate movement and breath such that students experience the insights that come with greater awareness of their bodies and minds. Her wish is that this practice deepens not only their connection to the many layers of self but also to the environment around us. At Seguinland Institute she takes mindfulness as a starting point, facilitating yoga, breathwork and meditation. Ida looks forward to practicing with you.

ida.lennestal@seguinlandinstitute.org

Koley True is the Greenhouse cultivator and one of two Good Food Facilitators at Seguinland Institute. She is a born and raised Mainer, growing up in Western Maine and graduating from the University of Maine at Farmington for Early Childhood Education and Psychology. There, she had the unique opportunity to take a fusion course of “The Good Life” in the fall of 2019, where she met Philip and the wonderful Seguinland Institute team. Growing up homeschooled, cooking and gardening have always been an integral part of her life. She is passionate about being resourceful, purposeful, and getting students into the greenhouse and kitchen as much as possible. Students will occasionally get to experience a “Koley Dinner”,  which includes but is not limited to flavorful, diverse, and abundant whole foods that are packed with nutrients and care. Outside of Seguinland, she is a private caterer, nanny, dancer, and dance teacher for young children. During the off seasons of the Gap Terms, you can find Koley in the Greenhouse and Cookhouse getting ready for the next terms!

Lauren (she/they) is a returning Community Life Assistant and alum of Seguinland Institute. After graduating high school in the “Back Mountain” of Northeast Pennsylvania, Lauren joined the Fall 2021 cohort of the Good Life program. She then returned as a student for the Wintering Writers retreat of 2023.

Throughout their early 20’s, Lauren has been travelling, working and studying through experiential learning opportunities. There are a multitude of interests they have been exploring: community building, alternative education, ecology, and music. She came back to Georgetown again in the summer of 2025 for an organic farming internship before accepting the role of Community Life Assistant for the 2025-2026 season.

Lauren is looking forward to this next year in Maine continuing her work with Robinhood Farm and Forest, Georgetown Central School and Seguinland Institute.

Clara (she/her) is an alumnus of the Good Life Gap Semester (Fall ‘20) and May Term (‘21) who is thrilled to return to Seguinland Institute for her second year as a Community Life Assistant.

Clara recently received her BA in English at Pomona College, where her research focused on memory, fragmentation, and fabulation in contemporary autobiographical fiction.

She has spent recent years collecting skills and stories from her work on organic farms and homesteads and at a local art center, seeking to apprentice herself to the trees, books, and humans around her. She is always open to a musical jam session, walk through the woods, cold water plunge, dance party, or reading group.

Sofia (she/her) can often be found reading a book and sipping on a delicious iced hojicha. Born and raised in Southern California, Sofia loves trips to the beach and an adventure.

Most of all, Sofia loves people, leading her to complete her bachelor’s in psychological sciences from Pomona College. While in undergrad, Sofia did a little bit of everything: she completed a thesis on maternal mental health, spent time as a mentor at a local high school, was a literacy tutor for young students with dyslexia, worked for the theater and music departments, and helped run her school’s used book and clothing store. She even dabbled in harp lessons.

As a Seguinland alumni herself, Sofia is excited to welcome new students and continue learning from the creativity and wisdom of the growing Seguinland community.

Annabelle Oberst (she/they) is a Community Life Assistant at Seguinland Institute. Born and raised in North Carolina, she studied Education and Creative Writing at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Before joining Seguinland, they worked as a Program Assistant for a youth-centered nonprofit in Hillsborough, North Carolina, which cemented their love for working with young people.

Annabelle is passionate about cultivating creative communities in everyday life, specifically through Creative Nonfiction, a discipline rooted in introspection. In her free time, she enjoys working on her novel, hiking, attending concerts, and spending time with family and friends.

'Kafari’ (he/him) is the alias of Cincinnati, OH born, Portland, ME based pianist, rhythm bones player, beatmaker, and teaching artist Ahmad Muhammad. His music synthesizes his love of ambient piano music, spiritual jazz and experimental hip-hop, with influences including Dorothy Ashby, J Dilla, Chopin, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who in a 2014 performance sparked his interest in the rhythm bones (an Irish instrument popularized in the US in blackface minstrelsy), which Kafari often teaches to audiences. He appears weekly at The Jewel Box in Portland, where he performs piano/bass renditions of songs requested by the prior week's audience.

In the liner notes to his recent release 'Riffs and Lullabies vol. II', Kafari says: "I think of being a musician as a private public journey. My intention is to care for myself and to cultivate a personal relationship with music that is expressive, healing, and that serves my needs at the time. Perhaps through that act of expression, I can make a connection with you. Thank you for listening.”

Description text goes hereMatthew Cumbie (he/him/his) is a collaborative dancemaker, writer, and artist educator. His artistic research cultivates processes and experiences that are participatory and intergenerational, moving through known and unknown, and bring a poetic lens to a specifically queer experience. His choreography and dancemaking- considered “a blend of risk-taking with reliability, [and] a combination of uncertainty and wisdom,”- weaves together a physical vocabulary of momentum and clarity, revelatory moments, and a belief in a body’s capacity to meet each moment.

He has danced in the companies of Christian von Howard, Keith Thompson, Jill Sigman, Paloma McGregor, and Dance Exchange- an intergenerational dance organization founded by Liz Lerman- where he became an Associate Artistic Director and the Director of Programs and Communications. With Dance Exchange, he collaborated on and performed in works ranging in topic from the human genome to prayer and protest, on the highest point of the Great Smoky Mountains during a total solar eclipse, and with community organizers and activists after years of research and work in response to structures of racism and erasure in Dallas, Texas. In partnership with Dance Exchange, Matthew advanced his body of work Growing Our Own Gardens- an iterative intergenerational performance project rooted in queer world-making that partners with local LGBTQ+ and arts organizations, like the Rainbow History Project, the DC Center, and Dance Place, to catalyze intergenerational LGBTQ+ convenings and reflection.

As an artist educator, Matthew helped develop and brand Cassie Meador’s Moving Field Guide: a program created in partnership with the US Forest Service that connects artists with scientists, naturalists, and environmental educators to help people learn about environmental issues. He has been an artist-educator with Jacob’s Pillow, including their Curriculum in Motion program, and continues integrating artistic approaches and facilitation strategies in classrooms and with teachers in PG County (Maryland) and Waterville, ME. He has been on faculty at Texas Woman’s University, Queensborough Community College, American University, and the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University, and has been an invited speaker at the New York City Roundtable Arts in Education conference, the Advancing the Human Condition Symposium at Virginia Tech, and the LGBT Health and Art Making conference, in partnership with the Human Rights Commission and the GWU Health and Well-being graduate program. He was also selected to be a part of the inaugural APAP Artist Leadership Fellowship cohort.

Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colby College. He continues creating work independently and in collaboration with other artists, and as a company member with Christopher K. Morgan & Artists. He supports the development of artists’ work as a professional fundraiser, specializing in online fundraising campaigns and grant writing, and is a certified practitioner of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. His work has been commissioned and supported by places like Dance Place, the Kennedy Center, Herman Melville’s Arrowhead, and Harvard University, and by the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, HumanitiesDC, the Arcus Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Maine Arts Commission. Originally from Houston, Matthew holds undergraduate degrees from Texas Lutheran University and Texas State University and an MFA in dance from Texas Woman’s University.

Rachel Alexandrou (b. 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist, who uses her education in plant science and collaborative practice, to create experiential work about food, flora, and innovating human relationships to the natural landscape. As Artist in Residence and Guest Lecturer at Seguinland Institute, she teachers workshops on foraging and works with students to co-create food-based events, including foraged feasts. Rachel has a BS in Horticulture from University of Maine and has studied Science Illustration

Summer J. Hart is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Maine living in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the author of two books of poetry: Boomhouse  (2023, The 3rd Thing Press), which won the 2024 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, and Sky Burial (forthcoming in 2026 from JackLeg Press). Her creative work has been supported by MacDowell, NYSCA/NYFA, and Vermont Studio Center. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2023 (Alternating Current Press),  Allium, Ballast, Bedfellows, Heavy Feather Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Northern New England Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Her mixed-media artworks have been featured in galleries and shows across the United States and are included in the permanent collections of The University of Hartford and The University of Southern Maine. Summer is an enrolled member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.