Jason Kauffeld

Before my time as an Experience Guide with Green Lake Conference Center, I spent a decade of my life overseas, including two and half years engaged in holistic community development with the Peace Corps in Nepal. A few years later, after finishing an environmental protection and food security project in Armenia, my wife and I sold everything we owned and pursued a dream: we would travel around the world until the money ran out. Over the next thousand days and fifty countries, we survived an elephant attack in Borneo, played with AIDS orphans in Africa, drank yak butter tea to make it through a frigid night on Mount Everest, and hiked forty days and forty nights through Mongolian wilderness to visit the Reindeer People. We experienced the qualities we all share with others on the planet, irrespective of culture or race or religion. I am passionate about the global village and leveraging group wisdom to create something better, and even more passionate about the power of nature and of reflection to help us recreate ourselves. If you want to eat a Nepalese meal and talk about building high functioning teams, organizational capacity building, improved cookstove design, sustainable natural resource management, board games, how to best pack for a trip around the world, or putting together a great retreat or annual conference, I am a good choice to invite to the table.

Jason, born and raised in Madison, studied natural resources and international development at UW Madison and Stevens Point and earned his Master’s through a special Peace Corps program.  His education included a semester abroad at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad where he conducted conservation research on a Benedictine Monastery and learned dirty jokes from the monks.   He met his wife Giselle at a church service in Trinidad and their honeymoon included five years overseas working, studying, and traveling in fifty countries.  After a career that included stops with both federal & state government, UW Extension (as a consultant/resource to nonprofits) & the UW System, and international &  local nonprofits, Jason is now the Director of Nonprofit Relationships for the Green Lake Conference Center.  As a creative ideator with an extensive array of curated connections and resources, he is eager to assist nonprofits in any way possible and encourages you to call him, even if you just want to ask what passes for a dirty joke for a Benedictine monk.

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Connect Information

• Web:   https://glcc.org/meetings--events.html
• Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/glccaba
• Twitter: @jasonkauffeld

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Green Lake Conference Center