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Karen Williams Adjunct ProfessorTeacher Education

Email: kwilliams@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

Biography

MEd, Trinity Washington University

Ms. Williams has spent the majority of her career working in the Maryland. Hre experience includes teaching abroad, classroom and school administration with an emphasis in Special Education, and education policy. She is currently an educator with the Clark County School District, Las Vegas, NV.

Bradley Wilson Adjunct ProfessorBusiness

Email: bwilson@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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BA, Cal State Fresno

Wendy Wilson Senior AccountantAdministration

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7489workEmail: wwilson@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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BSBA Accounting, California State University, Long Beach
MA Counseling and Psychology, Graduate Institute
MA Theological Studies, Graduate Theological Union/Pacific School of Religion

Rick Winfield Program Chair, Entrepreneurship; Assistant ProfessorBusiness

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7582workEmail: rwinfield@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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Biography Photo of Rick Winfield

BA, University of Pennsylvania
MBA, Columbia University

A lifelong entrepreneur, Rick Winfield began his career in the early days of the “dot-com boom,” gaining experience working for small entrepreneurial ventures, large companies (including Microsoft and AT&T), and venture funded startups.

Rick escaped to Mexico as the dot-com bubble burst and came back inspired to start his own venture. In 2001, he founded ComputerTrainingSchools.com, a pioneer in the .edu lead generation space. He bootstrapped the company and grew it until successful acquisition. Rick also co-founded Veskritec, Inc., an early venture accelerator.

Inspired by working with young entrepreneurs and a long-time advocate of what has become known as the “lean startup” methodology, Rick returned to school in 2012 to earn his MBA (studying with the grandfather of lean startup, Steve Blank).

Rick began teaching as an Adjunct Professor at Sierra Nevada College and the University of Nevada-Reno in 2014. He joined SNC full-time in the Fall of 2015. While Rick’s primary focus is entrepreneurship, he also teaches classes in marketing and finance.

In addition to teaching, Rick is an active angel investor and startup mentor who has lived in the Reno/Tahoe area for over ten years. An accomplished adventure skier, he has skied deep powder, steep couloirs, and big volcanoes on all seven of the world’s continents.

Roger Wittenberg Advisory TrusteeBoard of Trustees

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Roger Wittenberg’s background as a scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor has led him to found several companies that focus on recycling materials into reusable products. His most successful venture, the Trex Company, has turned billions of pounds of recycled and reclaimed plastic, including 1.3 billion grocery retail bags and waste wood each year, into alternative wood products. After retiring from Trex, Wittenberg founded International Supply Consortium LLC, which takes on projects that use innovative building technologies and real estate projects that utilize these same sustainable materials.

Wittenberg’s passions for recycling, green technology, and innovation are now being applied to projects in his own backyard, North Lake Tahoe. As a Foundation board member of Sierra Nevada College, Wittenberg helped move the campus’s Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences to a Platinum LEED status through the use of Trex products and other innovative green strategies. And, his passion for sustainability now drives the mission of a local Crystal Bay project: Boulder Bay Resort, through which he aims to create a new model for the resort/community experience that embraces innovative green technologies and provides a sense of place for visitors and locals. Roger lives with his wife Beatrice in Incline Village, with his extended family nearby.

Brenda Witzke General Manager, Dining ServicesFacilities

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7452workEmail: bwitzke@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

Kendra Wong Associate Professor EmeritusBusiness

Email: kwong@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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BS, University of California, Davis (Major: Economics; Minor: Communication)
MBA, Arizona State

Kendra Wong began her professional career with PricewaterCoopers, LLP in their audit practice. Her experience at PwC exposed her to numerous industries, including venture capital and life science. Since leaving PwC, Kendra has worked in the ski resort, medical device, and power industries. Kendra maintains an active CPA license in California.

Although her educational foundation is in economics, Kendra’s professional concentration since 2001 has been in accounting and finance. She has extensive experience in general ledger accounting, SEC reporting, and SOX audits.

Kendra joined the Sierra Nevada College faculty as an adjunct in fall 2007, but has since expanded her role. She teaches accounting, finance, and general management courses and serves as a student academic advisor. Kendra was promoted to Business Department Chair in Fall 2013. Kendra has mentored business plan teams in the Jâlé and Warren Trepp Business Plan Competition at SNC and the statewide Governor’s Cup for the past three years. In 2013, Kendra was recognized as the Faculty Advisor of the Year by Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

Outside of the classroom, Kendra enjoys the outdoors just as much as her students do. Kendra is an avid skier during the winter and enjoys running, hiking, and biking during the summer. Kendra and her husband, Ethan, own the Wild Alaskan Restaurant and Bar in Incline Village.

Steven Woodward Creative Writing EditorMFA in Creative Writing

Editing

Email: swoodward@sierranevada.eduINTERNETWebsite: http://snwoodward.wordpress.com

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MFA, Fiction, University of Michigan

Steve Woodward is an associate editor at Graywolf Press. Prior to joining Graywolf, he taught composition and creative writing at the University of Michigan. He is editor and co-founder of Menagerie, an online magazine that focuses on hybrid forms. His own writing has been recognized with a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and with Hopwood Awards in both fiction and nonfiction. He has spoken about publishing and independent presses at AWP, the Loft Literary Center, the Flathead River Writers’ Conference, Writers at Work, and often visits MFA programs as an editor. He lives in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

Emil Wozniak Adjunct ProfessorTeacher Education Department, Las Vegas

Email: ewozniak@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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MS, Canisius College

Sunil Yapa Creative Writing FacultyMFA in Creative Writing

Fiction

Email: syapa@sierranevada.eduINTERNETWebsite: sunilyapa.com

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MFA, City University of New York

Sunil Yapa’s first novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, set during the Seattle World Trade Organization protests of November 1999, is this year’s Common Read and a 2016 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, an Amazon 2016 Best Books of the year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and an Indies Next Pick.

“Yapa’s melding of fact and fiction, human frailty and geopolitics, is a genuine tour-de-force.”
– The Seattle Times

The winner of the 2010 Asian American short story award, Yapa’s work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, The Margins, Hyphen Magazine, The Tottenville Review, Pindeldyboz: Stories that Defy Classification, and others. The biracial son of a father from Sri Lanka and a mother from Montana, Yapa has lived in The Netherlands, Thailand, Greece, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, China, and India, as well as London, Montreal, and New York City.

Kristine Young Executive Assistant to PresidentAdministration

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7509workEmail: kyoung@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

Tyler Young HR DirectorHuman Resources

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7540workEmail: tyoung@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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BS, Brigham Young University

Geoffrey Zahler Adjunct ProfessorBusiness

Email: gzahler@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

Katie Zanto Interdisciplinary Studies Program Chair, Associate ProfessorHumanities

Phone: 775-831-1314 x7529workEmail: kzanto@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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Biography Photo of Katie Zanto

BA, English, Dartmouth College
MA, English Education & Curriculum Development, Stanford University
CLAD, credential in English, Mills College.

Katie teaches English composition: Writing and the Environment and Educational Issues, communications, Principles of Interdisciplinary Studies, Service Learning , Senior Portfolio and a variety of other courses in the Humanities Department. She also teaches mountaineering and telemark skiing at the college.

Under the auspices of University of California, Berkeley, she designed and founded a literacy and leadership program, Adventure, Risk and Challenge (ARC) for high school youth. In 2011, she received the LL Bean Outdoor Hero award for her innovation with this program. A former outward bound instructor, she has taught mountaineering, rock climbing, backpacking, expeditionary canoeing and backcountry snowboarding courses across the United States for over a decade. She has worked with teachers, families, adults, youth in a range of 1 week to semester long expeditionary courses. She also taught English at Berkeley High School and English Language Development (ELD) at Sierra Mountain Middle School in Truckee.

At Sierra Nevada College, she is currently the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program and the advisor of the First Generation Club. Katie combines her academic focus in communication, writing and integrative learning with her passion for outdoor adventure education with her commitment to social justice and providing access to educational opportunities for all students. Through collaboration with faculty across departments, Katie has helped to build SNC’s Interdisciplinary Studies program. She hopes to bring active learning, service learning, communication skills, and integrative thinking to the college community and to inspire students to get out into the community to make a difference.

Thomas Zummer Adjunct ProfessorMFA in Interdisciplinary Arts

Email: tzummer@sierranevada.eduINTERNET

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