Ellen Shinkle, BA
Field Director
Ellen has been with Open Sky since our first student in 2006. She has served as a senior field guide, trainer, hiring coordinator, field manager, and assistant field director. Prior to joining Open Sky, she worked extensively in wilderness therapy and attained over 500 field days as a field guide and trainer. Ellen brings years of experience, unmatched enthusiasm, and provides skillful personnel management for the largest team of employees at Open Sky. Ellen is certified as a Wilderness First Responder, trained in de-escalation and crisis intervention and has extensive experience teaching how to effectively work with our students and safely manage risk. She received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Spanish from University of North Carolina at Asheville. In 2007, Ellen became a licensed massage therapist.
Ellen fell in love with wilderness work in 1999 when she helped to start an outdoor program for a group home where she served as a residential counselor working with adjudicated teens and saw the impact of the wilderness on these young people. Inspired to work full-time with at-risk teens led her to Aspen Achievement Academy, where she worked for five years as a field guide, trainer, and field specialist.
After accumulating extensive experience in wilderness therapy, Ellen joined Open Sky in 2006 to serve as a field manager. After this short stint to assist Open Sky in getting started, she decided to go to massage school in Durango where she became licensed in the spring of 2007. During time in Durango attending school, Ellen assisted with hiring and training for field guides and eventually returned as field manager and then became Open Sky’s first assistant field director. In 2009, after three years of operations, Ellen then assumed the role of field director.
As field director, Ellen brings an extensive background in wilderness therapy, healing arts, risk management, and outdoor adventure. Ellen’s experience, skills and knowledge in risk management, staff development, personnel administration, along with an unparalleled passion for making Open Sky’s field team the best that it can be makes her an exceptional leader for the company’s largest group of employees.
Ellen is known for making productive use of her off time. When not out in the field with staff or in the office here in Durango, she is racing her mountain bike downhill at impressive speeds or spending time in yoga class or relaxing and having fun with friends. When wandering beyond the Durango area, she enjoys going to hot springs, exploring the desert for archeological sites and relics, canyoneering, meditating in the sun, back packing long and short distances, rafting rivers, caving, and just wandering around in the natural world and going where it takes her. She is a big fan of movies, enjoys learning and is always excited to read something new.
