Meet Our Team

Staff

Stephen Blackmer

Stephen Blackmer

Executive Director

Stephen Blackmer is founding executive director of Kairos Earth and chaplain of Church of the Woods. Steve comes to this with 30 years of conservation experience, having founded and built conservation organizations including the Five Rivers Conservation Trust, Northern Forest Alliance and Northern Forest Center.

A midlife shift led him to Yale Divinity School and ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church, carrying the question in his heart and mind: “How can being a priest deepen my work to conserve the Earth? What does the Christian tradition have to offer to this work? How can the Christian tradition be re-understood and re-imagined in a time of need? How can the conservation movement recover its understanding of the Earth as holy ground?”

Jo Brooks

Jo Brooks

Operations Director & Spiritual Programs Coordinator

 

From growing up in the forests and fields of Michigan and Ohio to living next to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Jo’s love of the outdoors has only grown with time. As a New Hampshire resident for the past nine years, Jo comes to Kairos Earth after working as the Community Outreach Director and a Head of House for a girls’ dorm at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, and as a full-time mom to an energetic and nature-loving son. Jo also spent six years in the Marine Corps as a Logistics Officer – based in Iwakuni, Japan, and Camp Pendleton, California – where she honed her love of detailed planning and spending time outside around the world!

She is a voracious reader, loves to hike, kayak, and take long walks with her husband, son, and Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, plus has a yoga and meditation practice that was first established almost 20 years ago.

Board of Directors

and Arvin!

and Arvin!

Adventurer

 

Arvin is Steve’s buddy, conscience, tormentor. Some might say alter-ego – we don’t know. What we do know is that he does his best to make sure Steve doesn’t spend too much time indoors. He is happiest when he is out on adventures, reveling in the glory of the mountains, woods, and rivers – and especially when he is skiing, climbing, canoeing, eating pie, berries, and moosecakes, and drinking “nut brown October ale.”