WOMEN IN THE REGION

Holmen’s Rebecca Seibel, pictured in center with Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop co-founder Bear LeVangie, has built a career around arboriculture and training.

BY SHARI HEGLAND | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

From her vantage point high in the trees, Rebecca Seibel of you’re in an industry that doesn’t have a lot of women in it, and when Holmen sees a world where “women can run around with a even fewer of those women climb, and fewer yet climb daily,” Seibel chain saw and climb trees,” and she wants that to be what young says, “you gravitate toward your tribe who are doing things like you girls with interests like hers see as well. with a common goal.”

While her dream world for girls who want to pursue outdoor The common goal that developed into WTCW was to help careers is expressed in casual terms, her “day job” is grounded in doing women who wanted to do the same things Seibel and her colleagues those things safely. were doing. Today they lead intense weekend workshops around the country. The 2022 schedule includes a half-dozen opportunities from FROM CLASSROOM TO FOREST North Carolina to Colorado to Massachusetts, including one August

An Appleton, Wisconsin, native, Seibel says she has always loved 26-28 at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center near Lanesboro, nature, and she was headed toward a science career in academia, Minnesota. earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire before starting graduate school at Louisiana State University in Baton MORE MIND THAN MUSCLE Rouge. But then, the forest called. One of the key messages Seibel hopes women take from the

“The lab work and the classroom were not for me,” she says. workshop, and that girls take away from watching the WTCW team

Seibel left the classroom for the forest, joined a tree care company in action on a CBS “Mission Unstoppable” episode that aired this in Minnesota and never looked back. Or down. spring, is that succeeding as an arborist is not a matter of being the

Twenty-five years later, she is director of training for North biggest or the strongest. American Training Solutions, where she can be found training “It’s what you have between your ears that makes you a good arborists, utility workers and others who work in “at-height” careers arborist,” she says, pointing out that just in the act of trimming a around the country. branch away from a homeowner’s skylight, you engage a variety of mathematical and scientific skills: tree biology, the biomechanics of WOMEN’S TREE CLIMBING WORKSHOP your own body, the physics involved in rigging the block and tackle

She also teaches groups of women—budding arborists, and the ecology of the entire yard or forest. ornithologists and scientists who work in the canopy, even women “It’s absolutely a mix of the science of nature with the beauty of who perform with aerial silks or work in industries such as window using your body outdoors,” she says. CRW washing—how to climb trees as a lead instructor with Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop. Writer Shari Hegland probably hasn’t climbed a tree in 40 years, Seibel met the co-founders of WTCW, twin sisters Bear LeVangie and Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, through industry conferences. “When but Rebecca Seibel has her thinking it would be an empowering experience.

SEE WOMEN’S TREE CLIMBING WORKSHOP IN ACTION

Seibel and her colleagues were filmed here in the Coulee Region in fall 2021 by producers for “Mission Unstoppable,” a program designed to reach teenage girls interested in STEM careers. You can find their episode, which aired in mid-May, on the program’s YouTube channel at