The Wild Woman Podcast with Becca Ploener

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ ---- Cici Cambron (she/her) is a whitewater paddler and instructor currently living in Asheville, NC. She’s been paddling and teaching kayaking for about 3 years, and has been out as a trans woman since early 2022. She’s here to share some of her story and dive into how those two facets of her life have intertwined - especially as she dips her toes into the southe...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ ---- Dan Horseman is a Certified Professional Life Coach and ACA L4 WW kayak instructor living in Asheville, NC. He recently became a new dad and is excited to share his passions for the outdoors with his 3 month old son, Brooks. When he's not on the river, Dan is usually spending time with Brooks, his wife, Kaity and their two dogs, Kara and Townes. If you would...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ ---- Candice Caldwell Day is an innovative fine art tattoo artist and is based in Sylva NC at Parlor & Co Salon at her private studio. A native to North Carolina, she has been a snowboarder for 15 years & a whitewater boater for almost 30 years, and held a position for multiple years on the US slalom racing team as a teen. A former aerial circus performer...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠ ---- Alissa Gardner is a mother of two, an ICU nurse in Western NC, and a long-time outdoors lover.  She’s been whitewater kayaking for over 25 years and grew up paddling predominantly on the Youghiogheny and Gauley rivers. She moved to Western NC in 2008 to attend school at Warren Wilson College where she participated in their paddling team. After college, sh...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠ ---- Jeremy lives in Truckee, CA with her beloved husband of 30 years and her 2 teenage daughters. Her passion for nature brought her across the country and into the Sierras in 1999 where she found she had a deep spiritual connection to the mountains, forests, and rivers of this place. Jeremy has been a Whitewater River Guide for 26 years. She currently teaches gui...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Becca Ploener is a whitewater kayak instructor and authenticity coach based out of Asheville, NC. She works with folks who are feeling burntout, tired, and like they have NO TIME for themselves. Combining her knowledge from her background in psychology, experiential and inquiry based learning, wilderness medicine, women's health, and whitewater kayaking she h...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Andrea Newton started the Ladies of the Whitewater Community Group on Facebook. Originally the idea stemmed from a conversation about menstrual cycles on multi-day river trips. Andrea enjoys running class IV rivers on her RMR phat cat with a small Oar Frame or in a duckie. Her first experiences were rowing on the Arkansas River through Brown's National Monume...

⁠⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Christina Cunningham is a trauma sensitive massage therapist & coach with 25 years of experience in the field of embodied spirituality.  She was compelled to start her own healing journey when she had her first episode of existential crisis when she was 18 years old.  She went on to study the human experience from a variety of perspectives incl...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ --- Candace Bethel is a Trauma Awareness & Energy Coach. She has been working in the alternative energy medicine industry for over 20 years specializing in childhood trauma, mental health, PTSD, medical massage, accidents, injury and pre/post surgery. As a survivor of childhood trauma and PTSD herself, Candace’s goal is to help others understand how they are a...

TRIGGER WARNING: DEATH ON THE RIVER ⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ --- Sarah Connelly is a mental skills coach living in Pacific Northwest. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Kinesiology and Wellness Management from California State University.  She went on to complete a Masters in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sport Psychology from Fresno State. She is passionate about teachin...

TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT ⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠⁠ ------------------------------------------------------------ Holly Johanna Winters is 42 and an educator, farmer, musician, and proud activist parent of two amazing girls in Bothell, Washington. Holly is in her third season of guiding day trips and has aspirations to specialize in guiding multi-day adventures in the f...

⁠Schedule a session with Becca⁠⁠ ------------------------------------------------------------ Chloe Skerlak is wildly passionate about the menstrual cycle! A Full Spectrum Fertility Awareness Educator and Holistic Reproductive Health Practitioner, she educates people from their first period to their last because she believes body literacy is for everyone at every age. She's charted her own cy...

Schedule a session with Becca⁠ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Award-winning adventure romance author, Stacy Gold would rather be in the middle of nowhere than almost anywhere else. She’s kayaked more than 50 rivers in three countries, been heli-dropped into remote ski huts, worked as a ranger for the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, and spent years as a c...

Schedule a session with Becca --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dan Regalado is out to spread kindness and love to all. Whether he’s sharing his passions for the arts and outdoors with students, or photographing the candid love of his friends and family, he finds joy through being surrounded by lovely people in amazing places. Currently living out of...

Anna is an Atlanta-based outdoorsperson who has been guiding folks in the outdoors since 2014.  She has taught a variety of classes including wilderness survival, map and compass skills, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding, and backpacking.  Just over a year ago, she started a position with REI Adventures where she coordinates logistics for REI's multiday backcountry trips. She is pas...

Jessica Thayer works around presence and accepting what is. Her youth as the daughter of a single mom involved in whitewater has been an integral part of her journey so far. She grew up living an alternative life spending summers at the youth hostel alongside the Appalachian Trail, going to the Olympic time trials and hanging out with loads of river rats was an intriguing balance to the natural ca...

Jen’s life is fueled by adventure, travel, laughter, life lessons and doing the things people tell her she can’t do. She thrives on meeting new people and hearing their stores and using them to help motivate and drive her along her own path. Once considered a traveling hippie she finally found her home in the mountains of WNC and enjoys getting out and exploring the beauty of it all. Becca Ploener...

Kelly Holland is an educator living and teaching in Asheville, NC. Her 9-5 is in art education - teaching visual art to K-12 students with severe and profound disabilities. In the summer and on the weekends, she is a whitewater kayak instructor with H2O dreams based in Saluda, NC. She most enjoys teaching children to kayak or working with adults who want to improve their technique and efficiency....

Mara MacDonell has a Masters of Environmental Science from Yale, where she grew her interest for community development, natural resource management, science education, outdoor recreation and environmental justice, with a particular focus on rural communities adjacent to public lands. Mara grew up near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota and has spent significant time in...

Carrie Soulliere is a South Eastern rafter and insurance agent who serves the whitewater community nationwide. Carrie focuses on affordable health insurance. Most members of the guiding and tourism communities qualify for health coverage that is generally free or less than $10 a month but still provides excellent coverage. She understands our community and the important things in our health plans....

Morri Stewart has been a whitewater river guide for 30+ years, navigating rivers in the Western United States and the world, from the Colorado River to the Tatenshini/Alsek, the Tuolumne and Kern Rivers, California, the Salmon River, Idaho, and the Zambezi River, bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe. For the past two years, when she is not traveling the roads of Baja and the US in her conversion van, Mor...

Matty Alpert, they/them is newer to the whitewater kayaking world, but has been a part of the outdoor industry for the past 6 years. They started working for their university's outdoor program and now works for NCOBS (North Carolina Outward Bound School) as a logistics manager. Matty feel for whitewater kayaking about 3 years ago when they went to their first roll clinic and since then they have t...

Claudia Behringer-Smith(she/her/hers), works for Camp Merrie-Woode as their Adventure Program Coordinator and has been working in the Outdoor Industry since she was 18. Claudia's been recreating outside her entire life, and has also been fat her entire life, which is a really complex thing since its uncommon to find fat people who are also outdoor professionals. She adores paddling in any form, wh...

Julia Yanker is an adventurer and paddler, as well as a coach for outdoor enthusiasts. She specializes in treating stress injury after a traumatic incident, and also coaches adventurers with everyday problems like honing their mindset, group dynamics, anxiety, and other obstacles that keep them from achieving their objectives. She’s been wandering the wilds for 15 years and navigating how her auth...