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You are hereOur Staff
WINGS celebrates and supports extraordinary women explorers and promotes scientific exploration, education and conservation to inspire future generations.
Our Staff
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Milbry C Polk
Executive Director and Co-Founder
A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Polk is the author of 10 books including award winning Egyptian Mummies (Dutton Penguin, 1998), co -author with Mary Tiegreen Women of Discovery (Clarkson Potter, 2001) and co-editor with Angela Schuster The Looting of the Iraq Museum (2005 Abrams) and is a contributing editor to The Explorers Journal. She lectures frequently and serves on the boards of museums, theater, news and arts organizations. Her photographs have been exhibited widely and she has been published in numerous magazines. Her own explorations have been in the Middle East and Asia ( North Africa, Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Laos, Burma) and more recently in the Arctic and Tibet. Her work focuses on Wings WorldQuest, a nonprofit organization she founded with Leila Hadley Luce to support the work of women explorers. She is creating educational programs to engage young people in science and exploration. Her profile on CBS Sunday Morning “They also Dared’ won a Gracie Award. Her other awards include Leader of the 21st Century from Womens Enews; Environmental Award from Unity College. Polk graduated from the Madeira School and Harvard College. She lectures frequently.
Email: milbry@wingsworldquest.org
Susan Colacello
Director; Programming and Education; Website
Susan Colacello joined WINGS three years ago to launch the organization’s public and youth-based programs. There, she has overseen the development of iExplore, a web-based education program that brings the WINGS Fellows to young people as role models, an international Fellows Network and a robust website envisioned to serve as a global portal to exploration and discovery. She has 20 years experience developing, funding and implementing education programs including classroom resources, extra-curricular activities and professional development trainings, conducting strategic planning for non-profit organizations and writing and producing media and film projects. She worked as an Artist in Residence, bringing documentary filmmaking to kids in New York public schools and hospitals and taught courses in using video technology in the classroom and media literacy at the New School and through the Educational Video Center in NY. A member of the start-up team at the Rubin Museum of Art, she helped launch their education program as well as funding and building the NEH sponsored website, www.exploreart.org. She also served as Education Director for the Foreign Policy Association, managing the national “Great Decisions” discussion group program and a national team of master teachers to create the “Global Citizen Project,” a global education curriculum built around youth town meetings. She is also a freelance writer having focused mainly on disability issues.
Email: susan@wingsworldquest.org
Cinda Scott, PhD
Assistant Director, Development and Operations
Cinda was raised in Lexington, MA, and was class of 1999 at Middlebury College where she majored in Environmental Studies and Biology and minored in Spanish. Cinda later enrolled at University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) in the Department of Marine Biologies and Fisheries. As a recipient of a fellowship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Educational Partnership Program and a scholarship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, she recently received her Ph.D. in marine molecular evolutionary genomics under the supervision of Dr. Douglas Crawford. Her work focused on the genetic basis of gene expression in the teleost fish, Fundulus heteroclitus. Cinda hopes to synthesize her love of science with her interest in educating the world about the importance of environmental stewardship and responsibility.
Email: cinda@wingsworldquest.org
Melissa von Ludwig Program Assistant, Website and iExplore Maeri Headstrom Content Coordinator, Video Editor, iExplore Julie McNamara Program Assistant, Website and iExplore--Summer/Fall 2009