Director

Sarah Brummel

Sarah’s childhood days were spent exploring the Michigan wilderness and learning about nature through hikes, canoe trips, and horseback rides. For college, she was led first to Vermont then to California to study Environmental Studies and Education. The redwoods of California won her over, so she started a non profit called HOWL Science Program to expose children to the redwood forest and instill a love of nature that would make them conservationists for the future. Her love of environmental education deepened and this led her to volunteer for Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots in Tanzania. She spent 6 months working with schools in the Kilimanjaro Region, and realized the Tanzanian children were not visiting the national parks. She created a program with HOWL to enable children a chance to see the wildlife of East Africa. She now has brought HOWL home to Michigan to enable more children a chance to connect, appreciate, and enjoy caring for their local environment.

Sarah’s love of outdoor learning started with an internship at the Life Lab Science Program at UC Santa Cruz, where she watched kids light up the second they got their hands in the dirt. That spark led her to found HOWL, a nonprofit built around getting children outside through summer camps, after-school programs, and hikes through the redwoods and along the Santa Cruz coast. She trained junior rangers, made sure scholarships were available so money was never the reason a kid missed camp, and spent years getting really good at keeping groups of kids safe, engaged, and having fun outdoors.

From there, Sarah designed a garden education program for classrooms in Santa Clara County and spent 7 years visiting classrooms to get children outdoors into their school gardens! Then she spent over 10 years teaching grades 1-5 in various schools in California, Michigan, and Tanzania.

Along the way, she also took Tanzanian schoolchildren on safari through a partnership with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program, sparking a love for elephants and conservation. HOWL continued this work for years taking hundreds of children on safari. She moved to Tanzania after summers of visits to teach at International School of Moshi. Sarah returned to Michigan in 2022 so she could raise her son with family nearby. They love taking walks in the woods, kayaking on the lake or rivers, and camping outside. She is thankful to be home to revisit her roots of exploring the natural world of Michigan.