SUPERPOWER: Synthetic thinking
Retired Counselor, Pendleton Community Care School Based Behavioral Health and Retired Administrator and Teacher, The Woodlands Institute
Living in Pakistan as a child, Denmark-born Jennifer Taylor-Ide vividly recalls making eye contact with another little girl, one who was in a refugee camp. “It was like we were staring at each other across every line—skin, wealth, culture—and just seeing each other,” she says. That moment has stuck with her across the decades, a recurring reminder of the similarities and differences among humans.
Because of her father’s work, the family moved across the globe as Taylor-Ide grew up, from elementary school in Virginia to high school in India. She landed at Wellesley College, where she studied comparative religion as a way to better understand the people and the cultures she had seen in her youth.
Along with her then-fiancé, his friend, and a college classmate of hers, she co-founded Woodlands & Whitewater Institute in 1972—later known as The Mountain Institute and, now, Experience Learning—at Spruce Knob to provide outdoor learning experiences. Taylor-Ide stepped away to complete her divinity degree at Yale but then returned to Woodlands through the late 1980s, assisting youngsters with mapping, caving, group dynamics, and more in the outdoors. The work was fun, and it made lifelong impacts on their students, inspiring career choices in environmental science and a deep appreciation of nature.
During West Virginia’s school consolidations in the 1990s, she got involved with Community Schools, an effort to use schools as community hubs to better connect people and resources. Taylor-Ide felt a calling to return to school to obtain her master’s in mental health counseling at James Madison. She first completed home visits in a rural county in Virginia but quickly realized these services were needed just as much in Pendleton County. She approached the local clinic, Pendleton Community Care (PCC), which had been founded by The Woodlands Institute to provide better access to health care. After the addition of mental health to the mix, she became one of the first school-based mental health counselors in West Virginia.
While Taylor-Ide officially retired two years ago, she has stayed on retainer at PCC. She now spends her time playing and enjoying folk music and engaging with environmental projects on her property.
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