Our Team

FARM DIRECTOR

Iris Fen Gillingham founded Gael Roots Community Farm at 22 years old after moving back to her hometown and wanting to protect an old farm that had gone up for sale. The land was a prime spot for developers, and Iris rallied friends and family, found funders to support, and created a plan to keep the farmland in agriculture through a community-focused farm. Iris had grown up on Wild Roots Farm, an off-grid regenerative farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. She became involved in climate justice work at the age of 9 when her community rose up against the threat of fracking. Between 2014-2019 she worked with Earth Guardians and helped launch the climate justice organization Zero Hour. Her passion for change and positive voice have been featured in articles and videos by Vice, The New York Times, CNN, and Teen Vogue, along with international TV stations and local media outlets. She was also featured in the National Geographic film “Paris to Pittsburgh”, and has received local awards for her work in Sullivan County, including the SPARK award. Working with the Livingston Manor Summer School students in their garden, running internship programs, and hosting workshops on her family’s farm inspired her to found Gael Roots Community Farm. Iris wants to support people of all ages (especially young people) to build connections to their food, energy resources, and local ecology, with an emphasis on creating stronger relationships between themselves and the natural world. She is passionate about fostering collaboration and connection at Gael Roots. Iris attended SUNY Sullivan and received a degree in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in Maine.

Value-Added Consultant

Haley is an avid naturalist, a student of herbalism, and a certified movement specialist. For over a decade she had been largly self-taught in regards to wild plant identification and ecological knowledge, and during that time she also completed several herbalism courses through The Herbal Academy. In 2021 she found an opportunity to learn under her first in-person mentor when she and a handful of others were chosen to participate in that season's herbal internship with Farmacy Herbs in Rhode Island, under the leadership of Mary Blue. She has since been fortunate to have aquired multiple mentors after moving to the Catskills. 

Haley has been affiliated with Gael Roots Community Farm since its founding, and after several years of dreaming-up future programs and workshops with Iris, she is thrilled to be an official member of the team as the farm continues to grow and flourish. Her role as the Field Educator and Herbal Apprentice will allow her to serve this community through a wide range of offerings, which include plant identification walks, ethical foraging practices that build reciprocal relationships with the land, natural movement classes, and workshops ranging from herbal preparations to wildcrafting. Her hope is to help the participants expand their observational skills and build a foundational mindset of reciprocity between themselves and the land.

ADMINISTRATION & GRANT WRITING

Christine Ahern brings to Gael Roots Community Farm decades of experience managing nonprofits focused on the environment, farms, arts, and public media. She has a B.S from the University of New Hampshire in Environmental Science and has extensive knowledge of nonprofit structure, grant writing, project management and event planning.

Some of the most formative experiences shaping her world view include working with the Hudson Valley Sloop Clearwater, serving as the director of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, managing Radio Catskill/WJFF for a decade, and working with farmers throughout the region with the Lackawaxen Food Hub.

Christine loves Sullivan County NY, where she landed almost 25 years ago, after spending time in Maine, California, and the Hudson Valley. She’s thrilled to be consulting with Gael Roots Community Farm, supporting – and learning from - a new generation of farmers and land stewards.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & FARMING CONSULTANT

Wes Gillingham has wandered the forest and swamps here on the ridge between Youngsville and Livingston Manor his whole life. It was those experiences tracking bobcats, deer, bears, and snowshoe hares that cemented his relationship with the land. Tracking wildlife to learn their behaviors along with knowledge and stories from Old timers really steered where he would go with his life. Although graduating from the University of Maine his real education comes from his extensive experiences in rural and wilderness America. Wes is a co-founder and Associate Director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, and coordinates collaborative efforts working with regional, state, and national partners on Extreme Energy Extraction and fossil fuel infrastructure fights. He serves on the advisory board of the Center for Earth Ethics and has personally lived off the electric grid for almost 40 years. He and his wife Amy coordinated a 150-family CSA vegetable operation for ten years. As a board member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, is co-chair of the policy committee, working on New York State and National farm policy. While as an Acting Director of Field Programs for the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute, he taught graduate and undergraduate environmental education throughout North America. Leading backpacks and canoe trips in wild North America made him realize how special the Catskills are and how rare his connection to this place is. Those experiences give him the passion to help build Gael Roots Community Farm for the sake of our community and the planet.

FIBER ARTS & FARMING MENTOR

Amy believes the natural world is the best teacher and has used that as a philosophy for living. She has demonstrated this while mentoring nearly 40 interns and homeschooling her two children over the past 25 years. She is passionate about continuing to learn from the wild by observing, listening, foraging and exploring.  Amy is also drawn to improving soil and food systems by nurturing the microbial life and all that we cannot see on the land.  While she loves to learn about and envision sustainable agricultural practices, she also knows that the place we live, shapes us.  In her efforts to domesticate and plant on their small farm, that land slowly uncultivated her and taught her to be more wild! This affects how she grows food, herbal medicines, saves seeds, and tends to sheep, cows, ducks, and chickens.   Developing a close relationship with what grows on the land, Amy is a fiber artist using sheep wool, flax, and dye plants to make clothing. The Wild Roots Farm landscape has been inspired by traditional building and land practices while keeping room in the landscape for wild berries, trees and plants to intermix with domestic food systems.  She has led many workshops about farming, food, and is a certified breath facilitator.  Amy brings people together to cook and bake with the outdoor wood-fired oven which creates transformation in community.  

BOARD PRESIDENT

BOARD VICE-PRESDENT

Doreen is Professor of Global Environmental Politics at the College of the Atlantic (COA). She teaches courses on climate justice, land and climate change, comparative climate change and biodiversity politics, and French and European political institutions. Her courses span theory and practice, with theoretical groundings in political ecology and practical political engagement in real-world struggles for climate justice and social change. Doreen held the inaugural Zennström professorship in climate change leadership at Uppsala University, Sweden, in 2015-2016.

Doreen’s professional work beyond teaching and COA straddles intersections between biodiversity and climate policy and politics. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on Accelerating Climate Action. She is advisor and consultant to international climate justice organizations and social movements on issues related to land, livelihoods, and climate change, in particular against carbon markets and carbon offsetting. In UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, she serves as advisor to a group of developing country governments on the issue of loss and damage. She is active in a number of national and international alliances of climate justice organizations working against carbon offsetting and the commodification and financialization of nature.

BOARD TREASURER

Mimi McGurl is a freelance director, dramaturg, and landscape gardener in the Catskills. She has collaborated with the Farm Arts Collective on several projects (including Dream on the Farm 1 and 2) and with the North American Cultural Laboratory (Courage, The Weather Project, Shakespeare’s Will, and The Lost Book of Lakewood House). She has taught writing classes and directed plays at the Catskill Art Space, NYC’s WOW Cafe Theatre (the Paul Robeson Project), Chashama, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Theatre Rhinoceros, and Highways in Los Angeles. She has also been adjunct faculty at NYU, ACT’s MFA program, Mills College, the University of California, Irvine where she received her MFA and Stanford University where she received her PhD.

BOARD SECRETARY

Jade Haumann is a member of the Seneca Nation Wolf Clan. She is from the Onondaga Nation community where she currently lives with her partner and his three young boys. She recently earned her Master of Professional Science from SUNY ESF in the winter of 2025 studying controlled fire practices through an Indigenous lens. Jade’s fire work embodied her passion for advocating for Indigenous sovereignty, healing human-land relations, and her love for community. Fire holds a special place in Jade’s heart and genuinely enjoys sharing the often-untold story of fire’s nurturing qualities in caring for the land. Jade spends time focusing on public outreach and education around the northeast about land fire practices with grounded roots in Indigenous views and values. Most often Jade works with various youth groups to teach about land reciprocity and responsibilities as land caretakers. Along her passions for healthy land fire relations, Jade is an avid caretaker of traditional Haudenosaunee heirloom seeds and foraging native plant foods. She is currently a First Nations Development Institute Tribal Food Systems Research Fellow, a writing partnership with the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

BOARD MEMBER

Kanenishon (Ga-na-ee-soon) Arquette is wolf clan, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), and was born and raised in the Mohawk Nation community of Ahkwesáhsne. She spent her early years immersed in the Mohawk language, culture, and traditions. Kanenishon was a student at the Akwesasne Freedom School until grade 9, where she learned traditional cultural practices, including ceremonial speaking, Mohawk history, legends, narratives, archery, fishing, traditional medicines, basket making, beading, leatherwork, gardening, food preservation, and seed saving. She has continued volunteering with the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment to collect trash, participate in their seed giveaway, collect maple sap, and grow traditional foods. She knows the importance of connecting children with the natural world and the value of community service. She believes Mohawk children should learn their language early in life and be outside to have a relationship with the natural world. Kanenishon graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree in childhood/early childhood education. She chose social studies for her area of concentration because so little is taught in schools about Native American history. Kanenishon wants to utilize her familiarity with the Mohawk language, culture, and history to share knowledge with future generations. She continued her education and graduated in 2022 with her Masters MSEd in curriculum and instruction, focusing on language revitalization. Kanienishon is currently a mindfulness instructor in the local school districts in and around Akwesasne, working to introduce positive coping strategies to children who deal with stress and anxiety.

BOARD MEMBER

Robert builds bridges between communities, government, and policymakers to advance climate resilience and environmental justice policy. For over 15 years, he’s coached social entrepreneurs challenging the status quo, managed complex disaster recovery programs, moved millions to frontline organizations, and helped pass landmark climate and resilience policy.

His work includes helping advance New York's Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act across the finish line, designing New Orleans' COVID-19 vaccine equity initiative that reached 1,700+ households, and managing a $1.3M technical assistance project for climate-vulnerable communities and Tribal Nations in the Southeast and nationwide.

Robert has worked on climate and environmental justice advocacy domestically and internationally. He’s worked with and for nonprofits, governments, and mutual aid organizations, and is passionate about centering behavioral health in disaster management and policy advocacy. 

He holds dual master’s degrees in social work and Disaster Resilience Leadership from Tulane University, with a certificate in Disaster Mental Health and Collective Trauma, and life coaching and organizational coaching certifications from the Academy for Coaching Excellence. Robert lives with his wife and daughters in Decatur, Georgia.

BOARD MEMBER

Ife Afriye Kilimanjaro, Ph. D., (she/her) is a grandmother, author, researcher, educator, activist, traditional healer and spirit-warrior whose life and work are informed by her deep commitment to healing, justice and co-creating a better world. She co-founded The Wind & The Warrior, a spirit-healing workspace for movement leaders-activists and serves as Co-Executive Director / Managing Director for Soul Fire Farm Institute.