Jody is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director (along with husband Bill Miles) of Earth’s Classroom, Inc. (EC); a 501c3, non-profit environmental learning center located south of Rosebud, MO. Since its founding in 1999, EC has worked with over 75,000 participants, bringing to life MO’s rich natural and cultural history through experiential, outdoor education. They lead day long ecological and cultural history field trips as well as high adventure ecology wild caving and multi-day ecology canoe/camping trips to study and teach limnology. In other words, EC uses the resources as their “blackboard” to teach from.

Before working full-time for Earth’s Classroom, Jody worked for Missouri DNR at Meramec State Park from 1999-2005. She had also worked for DNR in Minnesota at Itasca State Park in the mid-1990s. She has participated in the Wolf Research Team tracking Canis lupus, grey wolves, in northern MN and WI through Northland College, out of Ashland, WI where she received her BS in Natural History Outdoor Education and minored in Native American Studies. Her field experience has involved researching orchids, freshwater mussels, deer browse surveys, North American brown tarantulas, American ginseng, Japanese beetles, and being a federally trained Fire Crew Boss. In addition, she has been trained by NASA and NOAA data scientists and experts to interpret climate science to the public. All this field research gives her fuel to interpret hard sciences to the public of all ages so that the participants can more thoroughly become aware, understand, and appreciate our resources on planet Earth.

Jody resides in her home state of Missouri, just 4 miles from Earth’s Classroom, and lives on 56 acres on the upper Bourbeuse River with her husband with their two sons, Willow (18) and Granite (15), along with their cats and chickens.