Thoughtfully designed learning experiences.

Roam Wild is a Dallas-based nonprofit that works to connect youth from diverse backgrounds in carefully designed outdoor adventure trips.

Each trip incorporates team-building, adventure sports (backpacking, rock climbing, rafting), lots of self-reflection, challenging preconceptions, and giving back to the community. Through exposure to multiple geographic settings, wilderness experiences, and community service, participants will learn valuable skills that will serve them for years to come.

What We Believe

All youth deserve the opportunity to experience wild places, and that those opportunities should not be obstructed due to financial means.

Through meaningful, adventure-based experiences youth from different backgrounds can connect across lines of difference to create powerful, lasting relationships. 

Bonds that are created across lines of difference at an early age, at a pivotal time in a child’s life, will have positive, lasting effects on how that child interacts with and values people unlike themselves later in life.

The best way to learn and grow is through meaningful collaboration with peers, challenging experiences outside of a person’s comfort zone, and taking responsibility for themselves and others.

Outcomes

As a firm believer in measuring effectiveness, we have created several metrics for our program that we will track during trips as well as long after we’ve returned home. Some goals are easy to measure, while others may come with time. In either case, outcomes will play a key role in how we plan to support our community through outdoor adventure. For more information on what this looks like, drop us a line.

Social & Emotional

Campers return with greater self-awareness, the ability to self-manage, and a desire to make sound decisions for themselves and others.

New Relationship Skills

Each camper can speak to crossing lines of difference to build new relationships.

Camper Commitment

The majority of families will want their child(ren) to return in future years and will refer other families.

Land Stewards

Campers commit to and model environmentally healthy practices at home

Founder & Board of Directors

  • FOUNDER

    A lifelong educator and school leader, Adam grew up in the Twin Cities and spent much of his youth trudging around the wilds of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern MN. He left the Midwest to earn his B.A. in History with a teaching license from Colorado State University. On the weekends and summers he lived and worked in Estes Park, CO, where he also developed a passion for rock climbing, and continued to develop his backcountry experience.

    As a teacher in Denver, Adam found any/all opportunity to get his students outside and into the mountains - going so far as to start a weekend club that brought students on ski and climbing trips.

    After some time as an administrator in Denver, Adam moved to Dallas, TX, to become the founding principal or Texas’s first EL Education high school school.

    Seeing a need to provide more youth with the opportunity to get outside and experience the outdoors, Adam has spent the last few years working on getting RW up and running, while also continuing to support educational efforts in a local school district.

Profile photo of Roam Wild board member Tom Foley.

  • BOARD MEMBER

    Tom is an attorney and social entrepreneur with a focus on launching and scaling businesses that strive to close the gender and racial wealth gap.

    With his passion for social justice and his practical experiences teaching at Paul Quinn College, Tom embraces innovative programs and initiatives that bridge our social divide.

  • BOARD MEMBER

    Dr. Maddox works as a pediatrician at UT Southwestern. She has been in Dallas for 12 years and is passionate about serving the children and families of North Texas.

    Katie is committed to the mission of Roam Wild and believes that all children should have meaningful experiences with peers of different backgrounds and explore the great outdoors.

  • BOARD MEMBER

    After a 15-year stint in public education, Kierstan Barbee currently serves as a professional learning consultant for Corwin Press. In her role, she works diligently to improve classroom pedagogy to empower the learner and provide a strategic implementation of classroom practices through coaching and professional development. Kierstan has fifteen years of experience in rural, suburban, and urban public education through roles as a teacher, academic specialist, and professional development supervisor. When she’s not on the road, Kierstan serves as the executive assistant to her two-year-old doodles, Boss and Charlie.

    Adventures outdoors rejuvenate the soul. Giving all kids access to these profound experiences is another step in the journey toward equity and access for all.

  • BOARD MEMBER

    In the Fall of 2019, Dr. John Gasko was appointed Chief Well-Being Officer at Uplift Education. Under the umbrella of “The Well-Being Team,” he currently leads staff and student facing work encompassing well-being, counseling services and prevention, health services, social and emotional learning, restorative practices, and physical education and athletics. Earlier in his career, Dr. Gasko served as the Director of Research and Public Policy for the Children’s Defense Fund, worked alongside physicians, neuroscientists, and psychologists as Associate Division Chief of Developmental Pediatrics at the UT Medical School in Houston, and became a CEO and Managing Director of the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute. In 2016, Dr. Gasko was appointed Professor and Dean of Education at the University of North Texas and eventually Special Advisor to the President. While at UNT, Dr. Gasko built and launched thirdspace, one of the first mindfulness and well-being centers dedicated to supporting students, faculty, and leaders in higher education.

    Dr. Gasko has experienced firsthand how talented leaders and teachers are besieged, overwhelmed, stressed out, and who leave their professions at alarming rates. Striving evermore to understand why people on the front lines of helping others were “dropping out,” Gasko traveled the country and the globe to study with a variety of institutions, physicians, scientists, and wisdom teachers—including Harvard Medical School, the Chief of Primary Care at UChicago Medicine, Alex Lickerman, UMASS Medical School’s Jon Kabat-Zinn, Boston Trauma Center’s, Bessel Van Der Kolk, and Tibetan teacher, Pema Chodron.

    Gasko is one of the few people to attain a Black Belt “with distinction” in Jamie Wheal’s Flow Genome Project system, which is featured in the NYT’s best-selling book, Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work. He has trained in expedition-based canyoneering in the rugged Utah-based desert system with Wheal and Curt Cronin, a former commander of Navy SEAL Team 6, and is extending this training to include back-country skiing and guiding in the Holy Cross Wilderness in the Pike San Isabel National Forest. Gasko is also a trained Emergency Medical Technician and Wilderness First Responder.

  • BOARD MEMBER

    Arlena Gaynor is a former teacher and school district leader in Washington, D.C., and Dallas. Currently serving as the Deputy Chief of Academics for a national educational partner organization, she focuses on supporting districts and organizations in improving equitable educational outcomes for students.

    Excited to serve as a Board member for Roam Wild, she believes in the healing and transformative power of access to nature. She is committed to ensuring that young people in Dallas, regardless of background, can embark on a journey of personal growth and connection through outdoor adventures.