Our Team
Paige Teegarden our founder and president has over 15 years experience assisting organizations of all sizes improve their performance. She is a systems thinker with an uncanny ability to ask probing, strategic questions, and a gifted facilitator who uses our human connection to the natural world and outdoor challenges/experiences to create new perspective and breakthrough strategies. She helps groups assess their current behaviors and strategies. Her combination of innovative facilitation techniques, “brain-based” training techniques, expertise in strategic planning and results measurement, and research make her a talented consultant.
Paige is the lead author of a book due out in 2009 on nonprofits and organization culture. Through a wide variety of consulting engagements, Paige has developed her facilitation and organization assessment skills. She has:
- facilitated strategic planning processes for multimillion dollar organizations,
- helped start up volunteer organizations create their structure and solidify their processes designed,
- conducted innovative research studies including the first ever competency study of leaders facilitating community building initiatives and the largest survey on nonprofit sector executive transitions, and
- designed and supported the implementation of evaluation systems which have allowed organizations to gather information about their performance and their ultimate impact.
Paige also has extensive experience designing and conducting research, designing web-based surveys, completing data manipulation and analysis, and synthesizing complex data and organization systems. Paige’s published works include: Shortage Decade: Where will the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leadership Come From? Executive Leadership Transition: The Record to Date, Competencies of Community Builders, Making Collaboration Work, and Depending on Ourselves: Zambian Experiences in Domestic Fund Mobilization. She has a Masters in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Davidson College, NC.
Let Paige help you—Forget the Box, THINK OUTSIDE!
Nick Pratt, Associate - Nick joins us as an associate and assists in facilitating meetings, drafting reports, and coordinating workshops and organization development work. Nick's low key style helps everyone feel right at home. He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park as an Associate of the CIVICUS Living and Learning Program with a BA in Government and Politics and a concentration in Philosophy. Nick has experience as both a Teaching Assistant and as a Peer Dialogue Leader for the Common Ground program at the University of Maryland. He went on to co-create a new training technique that was implemented into the Common Ground curriculum.
Erika Krause provides Think Outside with management support and administrative assistance. Erika has over 10 years of experience in business support. Currently she co-owns and manages a contracting company, as well as providing administrative management services as an independent contractor.
Subject Matter Experts and Associates
Duane Yoder serves as President of the Garrett County Community Action Committee (GCCAC) in Oakland, Maryland. Mr. Yoder has served in that position since 1980. Previously was employed in similar roles in Southern and Maryland Eastern Shore. His work has primarily focused on assisting low income persons to become more self sufficient and addressing the conditions and causes of poverty.
During his tenure as President, GCCAC has emerged as one of the most successful rural community development corporations in Maryland. The corporation is providing significant leadership in changing housing conditions in the Western Maryland County of Garrett. Over the past twelve years GCCAC has developed or financed 1,000 units of affordable housing and developed 100,000 square feet of community and commercial facility space. GCCAC also provides a variety of services to one third of Garrett County residents in early child education, childcare, transportation, senior citizen programs, emergency services, and housing.
Mr. Yoder served as chair person of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta Advisory Council. He is past president of the Maryland Community Action Partnership, past director and officer of several national Community Action organizations and served on the Maryland Commission on Housing Policy. He is a member of the Western Maryland Economic Development Commission. He serves on numerous local boards involved in community development and human service issues. He is a 2002 graduate of Leadership Maryland.
Yoder has a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Mennonite University and has completed graduate work at the Universities of Maryland and West Virginia.
Memberships
Think Outside has been certified in equine assisted growth and learning with Greg Kersten, EAP founder; is a member of the Association of Experiential Education; is site certified to facilitate on the Adventure West Virginia Challenge and Ropes Course; is an ACA certified kayak instructor; and is a member of the Garrett County Chamber of Commerce.