John Dowd, Advisor and WKI Instructor
John built his first sea kayak in 1963 and paddled straight out to sea at age 17. For the next 16 years, he traveled and kayaked extensively in New Zealand, the Caribbean, Asia, Chile, the Adriatic and North America while working as an Outward Bound instructor, commercial diver and freelance writer/photographer. John founded Ecomarine Ocean Kayak Center, Sea Kayaker Magazine and was a founding member of The Trade Association of Paddlesports. He wrote Sea-Kayaking: A Manual for Long Distance Touring. In the 1990’s he sold Ecomarine and Sea Kayaker in order to home school his children and write children’s books. He is currently working as a consultant in the industry while producing the video series Seamanship for Kayakers.
John Dawson, Advisor and WKI Instructor
John mistrusts the word expert as being a half step from complacency but in anyone else’s vocabulary, at the age of 65 with over 40 years experience as an outdoor educator John is considered to have expert status in sea kayaking, kayak surfing, canoeing, sailing, whitewater kayaking, rafting, caving, mountaineering, backcountry skiing and rock climbing. John was an instructor at Eskdale Outward Bound School, later at Colorado Outward Bound and Prescott College before taking on the job of Program Director at Keremeos Outward Bound in Canada. Currently John serves on the board of trustees of the National Outdoor Leadership School.
Dr. Gary Ostwald, Advisor
Gary’s areas of expertise include high performance teams, leadership and management retreats, working effectively with ambiguity, performance improvement and culturally diverse settings and adventure-based team effectiveness programs. Gary is on the faculty at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business as a Lecturer in the Management Department, where he teaches MBA-level courses in high performance management, negotiation and dispute resolution, managing culturally diverse teams and human resource management. Gary is also an avid sea kayaker and is excited to contribute his team building expertise to WKI programs.
Grant Thompson, WKI Instructor
Founder and President of Tofino Expedition, Grant has been paddling personally and professionally for the last 25 years and has led trips in such locations as Honduras, The Caribbean, Mexico, BC and Norway. He is founding member of both the Sea kayak Guides Alliance of BC and the Association Canadian of Sea Kayak Guides and was on the committee that drafted curriculum for the first recognized sea kayak guide training course in North America. Grant has been instructing guide courses in British Columbia for 13 years and has extensive experience guiding on BC’s central coast.
Tina Walker, Marketing and WKI Instructor
Tina has been working in the sea kayaking industry since 1997, as a Guide, Instructor, Program Director and Promoter. Currently she is an executive member of the Sea Kayak Guides Alliance of British Columbia, North America’s largest regulatory body for professional sea kayak guides. Tina has a feature role in the video series “Seamanship for Kayakers,” is a Certified Guide through the Sea Kayak Guides Alliance of BC and has trained with Outward Bound, Wilderness Alert, Canadian Power and Sail Squadron, Canadian Yachting Association, Canadian Recreational Canoeing Association, John Dawson, and John Dowd. Before traveling down the path of adventure tourism Tina earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies from the University of Victoria.
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