Meet Our Staff

WMI Instructors are experts in wilderness medicine education. With extensive experience in backcountry travel and patient care, they are engaging educators who teach from experience.

Renee Jenkinson WMI Instructor since 2002

For Renee Jenkinson, the decision to work for the Wilderness Medicine Institute was a no-brainer. Born in Portland Oregon, she had the entire west coast as her playground growing up and grew to love a variety of outdoor activities including skiing, hiking, surfing and road biking. “When I figured out I could teach emergency medicine and be outside and have fun every day with WMI, I was tickled and jumped right on board,” she says. A WMI instructor since 2002, Renee likes holding classes on Halloween and describes her teaching style as a cross between Bob Ross, Bill Nye and Beyonce. But in spite of her fun-loving attitude towards instruction, Renee takes her work seriously and believes that the knowledge and skill students acquire during a wilderness medical course has the power to change their lives.

After losing a best friend in a rock climbing accident in the Tetons, Renee was inspired to learn as much as she could about limits and workings of the human body. She began to study and teach medicine, and discovered that for many people the basics of emergency medicine could be incredibly empowering. “Some people I worked with seemed to feel more empowered to live their lives,” she says. WMI’s scenario-based courses allow instructors like Renee to go beyond a simple lecture and embolden students to face the wilderness and their own limitations with confidence, and she was touched to see people “feel at home and capable in their bodies in a new way.”

When she isn’t teaching Renee loves to be in or near the water, and is learning how to make neon signs. “Of course I never mix the two,” she adds reassuringly. She loves costumes and games, roadside dance parties and hikes that end in water. She once worked as an assistant to Pat Sajak and Vanna White and became extremely good at Wheel of Fortune. She also has fond memories of the time she tried to ski patrol on a snow bike, and reveals that she once survived a snakebite.

Renee moved to Ecuador in the summer of 2008 but continues to teach for WMI in a variety of locations all over the world. Fortunately she loves to travel, and even worked with a friend for several years creating a travel adventure company for teenage girls. During her years with the company she got the opportunity to take teens on trips to Alaska, Montana, Washington, Hawaii and Scandinavia. One of her favorite WMI memories involves eating fresh clams on the beach with students in Mexico, and she has also taught for WMI up and down the west coast, in the Rocky Mountains, and in Japan. With a passion for her field that grew out of her early experience with grief, Renee loves that WMI gives her the chance to “laugh a lot while doing important work.”