About Jason

I have spent most the last two decades working with families, teens, and young adults, helping them to make positive life changes.  Most recently, I did this as the National Director of Outreach for Outward Bound.  My life’s focus has been centered around personal transformation, and helping people find inner-strength and form meaningful connections, through programs that provide physical and emotional challenges. 

This path didn’t present itself seamlessly.

Since the age of 14, I had been struggling with the deaths of my sister, Maria, my grandmother, Beth, and my father, Phil.  (All of whom died -in separate events- before I turned fifteen).

Like many of today’s high school students and young adults, as a young man, I wanted both to achieve and to find purpose; but I struggled just to make it through school, after such devastating death loss. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sit still in a hard chair, or listen to lectures 8 hours a day.  It wasn’t my learning style. Also, I was simply an angry young man, in denial and pain.  I needed to move and engage.  Needless to say, my refusal to accept help and support left me stuck and frustrated well into my twenties.  That is, until I enrolled on a 78-day Outward Bound Winter Leadership Expedition.  It was the best investment I have ever made.  It led me to purpose; and through purpose, I finally found healing. 

Since that experience, I have instructed wilderness courses for at-risk and grieving high-school and college-age students. I have delivered presentations (in high-schools, universities, and at conferences across the US), that focus on grief and finding resilience through challenge and connection. In honor of Maria and my Dad, I then went on to create a national wilderness program, “Heroic Journey”, which has been featured in Backpacker Magazine, the Denver Post, and the Associated Press. I found incredible gratification in creating the kind of experience that I knew I desperately had needed myself, when I was going through my own grief.

My work in the Heroic Journey program led me to my next job as the Outreach and Education Manager for Judi’s House, a Denver-based grief-support center founded by former NFL Quarterback, Brian Griese.

Though all the years I have been working 1:1 with families and young adults, I realized, that in the THOUSANDS of conversations I have had, there has been a common theme that has surfaced with astounding frequency.

Whether due to family history or childhood loss like mine (death, divorce, etc), or, simply driven by personality (a need for nontraditional learning environments), or even a student who has drive, and WANTS to go down a traditional learning path, BUT simply doesn’t know, by the end of highschool, where they want to target their efforts, or what major to choose…

...many students are NOT yet (or EVER) ready to go from high-school into a traditional college or university. Yet, they have 529 funds at their disposal. And parents don’t want to be in between the “rock and hard place” of forcing a “false future” decision...OR, conversely, not using their hard earned / and hard saved money towards a higher purpose.

I became a true believer in the power of vocational, outdoor, gap, and international programs and saw a need for one-on-one guidance when it comes to navigating the opportunities that exist for families looking at spending options for their 529 college savings plan. 

(When I am not working, I spend my days hitting the gym, swimming, biking, and hiking with my family in my native state of Colorado. In the evenings, you will find me listening to the Lumineers and sipping wine, or having movie nights.)