Stephanie Feller (L) and Justine Nobbe (R)
Co-Founders, COO and Executive Director, Adventure Mamas Initiative
The Basics
Company Name: Adventure Mamas Initiative (AMI)
Location: Utah nonprofit with a national grassroots membership base
Founded: 2016
Full-Time Employees: 0, we are currently run by an all-volunteer team
Products: Community platform / events
Social: Instagram // Facebook
Claim to Fame: Adventure Mamas Initiative (AMI) is the first and only nonprofit organization exclusively committed to maternal wellness via time spent adventuring and in nature.
The Culture
The best thing about working here is:
The culture: both our community and our team were built with foundational values of compassion, authenticity, vulnerability, and acceptance with strong inclinations towards humor, joy, passion and lightheartedness. Despite being in the throes of the startup days, we have a lot of fun along the way.
When we’re not working, we’re:
Engaged in very glamorous activities generally revolving around ensuring our children are safe and cared for in some capacity whether that’s ensuring said children are fed, bathed, educated, transported, or rested. Somewhere in the midst of working (whether as SAHMS or as out of home professionals) + gifting time and energy to AMI, we’re also always looking to spend time in nature in whatever capacity we can-- sometimes that’s a big, technical, multi-day excursion and sometimes that’s a 15 minute walk in the nearby hills.
What we’re reading:
Currently totally absorbed in “Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road” by Kate Harris and it is AMAZING. She’s an extraordinarily intelligent, comical, visceral, and compassionate storyteller making it one of the best travel narratives I have read in YEARS.
What we’re listening to:
An eclectic hodgepodge of TED talks and random podcasts, weird pandora station mashups, and YouTube channels that incorporate a diverse array of dubstep, folk music, and children’s songs that accidentally get thrown into the lineup.
If they made a movie about our workplace, it would be called:
“THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY but seriously though” --which also happens to be a regular mantra of mine... gotta keep them adrenals in check
Inclusion in the outdoors matters because:
Nature provides an unbiased platform for catharsis and empowerment. There are few environments paradoxically conducive to both profound introspection AND interpersonal connection, to feelings of deep peace AND lively adrenaline rushes, to a sense of awe at the expansiveness of the universe AND a sense of intimate belonging within it… ALL people are entitled to reap the benefits of spending time in nature and until ALL people feel wholly welcomed, we have work to do.
Five years down the line, it’s our hope that:
AMI is the go-to organization for maternal wellness resources, the experts in facilitating nature and challenged-based experiences for mothers, and we have increased access to the outdoors for thousands of women in our diverse, dynamic, nationwide community. All decisions, plans, and operations will be examined through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion as well as through a lens of environmental sustainability.