Diana McCargo

Elected June 2010
NOLS Courses: 1975 Wind River Wilderness Course, 2009 Wilderness EMT

After graduating from Hampshire College with a BA in Natural History/Environmental Studies and Writing, Diana moved to Vermont to work as a naturalist for the Vermont State Park system. In 1983 she became a commercial beekeeper and helped establish a honeybee products business, Apitherapy, Inc. where she was responsible for design, marketing, and new product development.

After the birth of her two daughters in 1986 and 1989, Diana became a full time mother residing on a small horse farm in northern Vermont. While raising her children, Diana was the co-DC of the Huntington River Pony Club and ran a series of Shakespeare and musical theatre camps for children ages 7 to 17 in the barns on her farm. She was an active volunteer in the local public school, working with accelerated readers and writers, coaching the cross-country running team, and running an environmental science enrichment program in conjunction with the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.

Diana is currently on the board of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, and is specifically involved with two scholarship programs, one for single parents and one for first generation Vermont students.

Diana’s two daughters, Meriwether and Charlotte Hardie, are both NOLS graduates and Meriwether is currently a NOLS instructor. Two of her three stepchildren, Audrey and Dwight Swift, are also NOLS graduates. In the fall of 2009, Diana and her husband, Dr. Peter Swift, took the WMI of NOLS Wilderness EMT course in Midpines, California.

Diana lives in Vermont with her husband and they enjoy a very active life of biking, hiking, horseback riding, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, telemark skiing, sailing, scuba diving, adventure traveling, gardening, family, and friends. Some of her most exciting travels have taken her to the North Slope of the Brooks Range in Alaska, the remote ocean reef systems of Indonesia, the Antarctic Peninsula, and several countries in Africa.