What We Believe

We design and offer leadership development programs and workshops for professionals dedicated to creating a socially resilient and environmentally sustainable future. We do this because we believe transformative leadership can help people navigate the challenging interconnections between social, environmental, and economic issues.  We often tailor our services to meet the specific needs of our clients through a creative and collaborative design process. We welcome you to contact us and initiate a conversation.

Meet The Team

Click an image to see bio

Mike is passionate about helping organizations grow their resilience in the face of change and uncertainty. He also believes leaders within organizations play a crucial role in determining the quality of response to change and uncertainty.

Since 2003, Mike has designed and led programs and workshops that help organizations and individuals develop their leadership capacity through self-reflection, assessment, and facilitated interactions with peers. While these programs and workshops address a wide variety of topics, they are all oriented toward generating effective innovation and adaptive responses to change and uncertainty within client organizations. Mike lives in Missoula, MT, along with his wife and business partner Raquel and their aging dog and cat. He loves the public lands of the Big Sky state and is an avid trail runner and skier.

Michael Wood

President
High Ridge Leadership, LLC
Phone: (928) 607-6356
Email: [email protected]

Raquel loves helping people become better leaders and helping teams become more effective. Before joining High Ridge Leadership in 2015, Raquel enjoyed a 22-year career with the federal government: 15 years as a Public Affairs Officer with the US Forest Service and seven years as a Leadership Development Specialist with the National Park Service (NPS). She was proud to receive two prestigious awards during her career with the NPS: one for “Excellence in Innovation” and one for “Visionary Leadership Development”.

She has a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Communication from Eastern New Mexico University and a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Norwich University. Raquel lives in Missoula, MT with her husband Mike. She adores her grown children, Aspen and Carson, and she enjoys running, hiking, skiing, and cooking new recipes with ingredients from her garden.

Raquel Romero

Principal Consultant
High Ridge Leadership, LLC
Phone: (928) 607-2290
Email: [email protected]

Allison’s passion for leadership development started at a young age. From being the captain of two high school sports teams, to always listening and asking thoughtful questions of her friends and acquaintances, Allison has been leading and coaching people all her life. She started working for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in 1994, which she credits with developing her personal leadership style and inspiring her adventurous spirit. Allison launched Leadership at Play in 2010 with her business partner, Kat Smithhammer, with the goal of sharing their passion for helping individuals and teams develop their leadership capacity.

Examples of Allison’s work include teaching a communication class to a NASA astronaut crew in the canyons of Utah, to facilitating a leadership development and teambuilding experience for the United Nations Development Programme, to developing, implementing and managing an organizational wide mentoring program for the Prevention Management Organization of Wyoming.

With an honest and direct communication style, an easy way of connecting with people, and a knack for asking the pertinent question or observing the relevant leadership behavior, Allison has a real talent for helping people and teams grow. She won the NOLS annual staff award in 2006 for her excellence in coaching and mentoring female instructors. Allison currently sits on the Board of Womentum, whose flagship program is a women’s mentoring program designed to effectuate meaningful social change for women. She lives in Wilson, WY, with her three dogs, and always finds the time for wilderness adventures with friends.

Allison Bergh

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC
Leadership at Play
Phone: (307) 413-2803
Email: [email protected]

Char contributes wit and wisdom as one of the nation’s foremost scholars on the U.S. environmental movement and its key leaders, among them Gifford Pinchot, founding chief of the U.S. Forest Service. An award-winning teacher, Miller loves engaging with audiences large and small on key challenges facing communities, agencies, and organizations focused on enhancing public-lands management. Using the past to open up a conversation about our present dilemmas, all with an eye for how to build greater resilience in the future, his real ambition is to help identify an essential and vibrant geography of hope.

This vital subject lies at the heart of his recent books, too, including Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream (2016), America’s Great National Forests, Wildernesses, and Grasslands (2016), and the forthcoming Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings (2017). He is also author of Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot (2013), Death Valley National Park: A History (2013), and Public Lands/Public Debates: A Century of Controversy (2012). Earlier volumes include Ground Work: Conservation in American Culture (2007) and Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (2004). In collaboration with photographer Tim Palmer, Miller’s America’s Great National Forests is a visual feast that will remind you how important these spectacular public lands are to the nation.

Char Miller

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC
Phone: (909) 607-8343
Email: [email protected]

Kat approaches life with curiosity, creativity, and awe. Usually laughing (at times referred to as a “katcophony”) and smiling, she is fascinated with the growth and development of individuals, teams, and organizations through an ethic of play.

Immersed in leading extended wilderness expeditions in Patagonia, the Yukon, the Kimberly, and the Tetons, among other notable places, Kat learned how to support the transformation of a group into a team and co-create learning environments where individuals bravely practiced new skills and discovered possibilities. Highlights include canyoneering with NASA Shuttle Crew STS 122 during 100-year flood conditions and the second ascent of Mt. Burney in southern Chile, 30 years after its first ascent.

A few of Kat’s current and past clients include NASA, Google, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme, the Wharton School, Wharton Executive Education, National Park Service, and the US Forest Service.

With a unique talent for inspiring contributions from all team members, Kat listens with presence, and probes into underlying belief systems with warmth and compassion. She is comfortable with silence, sits spaciously in conflict, and actively practices being with 'what is arising” (navigating uncertainty). A firm believer in learning from practical experience and cultivating robust self-awareness, Kat practices her own lifelong learning with focused playfulness. She has an M.A. in Leadership and Training (Royal Roads University), a B.Ed. (Queen’s University), and a B.A. (Trent University). Kat is a certified professional ICF coach and Integral Master Coach with Integral Coaching Canada. Kat is also a Wharton Senior Fellow.

Kat is happily married and lives in the Tetons. She loves soaking in remote hot springs, exploring the backcountry by bike or skis, soul-collaging, cooking, and slowing down.

Kat Smithhammer

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC,
Leadership at Play
Phone: (208) 419-0948
Email: [email protected]

Lou’s career spans over 60 years. 32 of those years were served in the USFS. His FS career divides almost equally into thirds. The first 1/3 was as Forestry Technician. He started as a GS-3 and worked most field jobs that existed at the time on the Carson and Bitterroot NFs. His last Technician assignments included: Crew Leader of the Bitterroot
Hotshot Fire crew; Fire Dispatcher; and Snow Ranger.

The second 1/3 was Administrative. He served as District Administrative Assistant on the Kootenai NF. Later he was Personnel and Contracting Officer on the Bridger-Teton NF; Administrative Officer with USDA in Mexico City; Forest Personnel Officer on the Plumas and Angeles NFs; and finally Regional Employment Officer for the Pacific
Southwest Region, headquartered in San Francisco.

For the last 1/3 of his FS career, he was based in the Albuquerque Regional Office as an Internal Facilitator and Organizational Change Consultant, the only position of its kind in the FS. In that role, he helped leaders of wide-ranging personalities and styles, in every FS Region; every Research Station; 62 of the 155 National Forests and the
Washington Office.

After 32 years with the Forest Service, he continued working in Private Sector Consulting serving a wide variety of industries and clients in all the federal land management agencies throughout the country.

Lou has received three particularly outstanding commendations:
- In 1962, at age 22, he was recognized as Outstanding Scoutmaster of the Year
by the Kit Carson Boy Scout Council, Taos, New Mexico
- In 1990 he was honored with the highest USDA Superior Service Award for
“promoting humanistic policies leading to innovation, productivity, and job
satisfaction among federal employees.”
- In 2005, 10 years after retiring from the FS, he was honored at the
Centennial Forest Congress in Washington, DC. He is one of only 3 persons
to ever receive the Organizational Leadership Award created to recognize
outstanding contributions over 100 years since the Forest Service was
founded. The other two recipients were Overton Price, Associate Chief to
Gifford Pinchot, and Max Peterson, Forest Service Chief 1979-1987.

Lou now invests most of his time as a “very selective volunteer.”

Lou Romero

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC,
Phone: (505) 275-1570
Email: [email protected]

Sarah Moody is a certified life and leadership coach for individuals who are ready to move towards the most inspired lives they can imagine. As a leadership consultant, she works with teams and organizations to get clear about where they are, where they want to be and what is getting in the way, and empowers employees with the skills and tools to lead from all levels. 

 

Based in the beautiful mountains of Western Montana, Sarah is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and her value of continual growth has led her to seek a variety of certifications to bring different perspectives and modalities into her coaching and consulting styles. A certificate in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica adds a psychological and soul-centered approach to her leadership.

 

Sarah was an NCAA Rowing Coach, got a master’s degree in environmental studies, and spent 13 years working for the government both for the US Forest Service and the National Park Service before transitioning to a full-time leadership consultant and coach. During her time with the NPS, she co-founded a leadership development program in Glacier National Park with the goal to support employees in growing as individuals and staying empowered and inspired to create meaningful change in all areas of their lives.

 

Inspired by her diverse experiences, Sarah enjoys challenging teams to see interconnections and understand the systems that are impacting employees. She loves partnering with clients to dream bigger and find deeper purpose and meaning in their lives.

 

When Sarah isn’t connecting with her people or playing in the mountains in her backyard, she is creating something beautiful, reading, playing guitar, and traveling around the world.

Sarah Moody

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC,
Sarah Moody Coaching
Phone: (321) 288-2943
Email: [email protected]

Mark Metoyer has more than 30 years of expertise in adult learning, motivating highly-effective teams, human resources development and training, organizational assessments, confidential investigations, action learning, improving human performance, training management, and strategic planning.

Mark has expertise in consulting, facilitation services, coaching skills, change management, social and collaborative learning, diversity, equity and inclusion, unconscious bias, train-the-trainer (T3), and a proven ability to interact and stay “in touch” with all levels of the organization.

Mark has accumulated more than 40 years of formal and informal supervisory experience with the U.S. Coast Guard, CI International, several not-for-profit board positions (Habitat for Humanity, Daily Bread, Inc.) as a volunteer, and parent and member with other community-based programs.

Mark Metoyer

Team Member
High Ridge Leadership, LLC,
Metoyer Consulting
Phone: (321) 288-2943
Email: [email protected]