Charlotte Resident Diana McCargo Elected to National Outdoor Leadership School’s Board of Trustees

Charlotte, VT resident Diana McCargo has been named to the Board of Trustees of the prestigious National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), the world’s leader in wilderness education. Diana and her family have a long history with NOLS. She is a graduate of the 1975 NOLS Wind River Wilderness Course and 2009 Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT) course, her husband, Dr. Peter Swift, took the 2009 WEMT course with her, four of her children are NOLS graduates, and her daughter Meriwether is currently a NOLS instructor.

“Diana is a true testament to NOLS’ impact on its students, not only on their own lives, but the lives of their family members and children,” says NOLS Executive Director John Gans. “This intergenerational effect is uniquely NOLS. With Diana’s help, we hope the school will continue to be an integral part of our students’ lives, both during their own lifetimes and the lifetimes of future generations.”

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. While raising her children on a small horse farm in northern Vermont, Diana was the co-DC of the Huntington River Pony Club and ran a series of Shakespeare and musical theater camps for children ages 7 to 17 in the barns on her farm. She was also 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 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.