Champlain Hills

Program coordinators act as the core organizer of their local VMN program. They maintain contact with VMN participants and help organize volunteer projects.  They attend field trainings for free and also receive a stipend for the year.

Sophie Mazowita is the program coordinator for the Champlain Hills. She fell in love with nature on her first canoe camping trip, immediately prompting her to drop all plans to become a veterinarian and golden retriever breeder in favor of wildlife biology and wolves. She landed her dream job as a naturalist in Algonquin Park (the same spot where she first camped), but after four years sharing the stories of that land, she felt stirred by the conviction that people shouldn’t have to travel to a 3000 square mile wilderness to find connection with nature. She traded that wilderness for the urban wilds of Toronto, where she was exposed to the idea of forest schools and nature mentoring, and she found the magic of coyote trails and wild edibles growing right in the heart of Canada’s largest city.

UVM’s Field Naturalist Program drew her to Vermont, and this project-based Master’s program saw her writing a management study and subsequent management plan for Red Rocks Park in South Burlington. Seeing an opportunity to connect kids to South Burlington natural areas, she started the Red Rocks Nature Camp, then took a job leading summer camps and a forest preschool at Green Mountain Audubon Center, eventually becoming the Center’s Education Director. She moved to her current role as Youth Programs Director at Crow’s Path Field School in 2016. To balance all that time playing with kids in the woods, she manages the Burlington Mammal Tracking Project (trackingvt.org), serves on the board of the South Burlington Land Trust, and is now thrilled to be strengthening the naturalist community in South Burlington through the VMN program.