A Tennessee native, Teresa took a bold leap after graduating from college by moving to Germany to work on a forestry project outside Nuremberg in Bavaria. Her experiences in this job strengthened her innate interest in the natural world and supported her belief in respectful coexistence with everything wild, forming the foundation for her future occupational pursuits as a naturalist guide across North America, Asia and Europe. It was love at first breath of island air when Teresa stepped foot on Vancouver Island, her base for leading grizzly bear tours on the coast just opposite in mainland British Columbia. Commuting regularly between Canada and the U.S., these days Teresa has her own driving lane at the border crossing and the passport control agents in Victoria simply roll their eyes.

Teresa is thrilled that her passions have evolved into a career built upon sharing the untamed world with other nature enthusiasts who agree that wilderness deserves reverence and dedicated preservation. She spends the vast majority of her year viewing bears—from the coasts of Alaska to the shoreline of Hudson Bay, she’s been a bear junkie since she got hooked in 2009. Now a permanent transplant to the Pacific Northwest, the wilds of British Columbia and Alaska are her office, and her desk looks a lot like skiff with a small outboard. Teresa has also guided walking tours of the breeding and molting beaches of southern elephant seals on Peninsula Valdes in Argentinian Patagonia, as well as educational wine-tasting tours in central California’s Paso Robles AVA region. During the bears’ denning season, you'll find her south of the border observing gray whales along the Pacific Coast as they make their annual migration from their feeding grounds in Alaska to their breeding grounds in Mexico.