Celine Adair

Director of Operations

Celine Adair says her career enables her to enjoy her two favorite things — people and nature. As a professional backpacking and river guide, surf instructor and rock climber, Celine finds her niche at The National Center for Outdoor and Adventure Education (NCOAE) a perfect fit. As our co-founder and director of operations, she is responsible for training NCOAE instructors in the sensitive skills required to handle the range of human emotions often displayed by wilderness course participants while on a physically and demanding outdoor trek. Here, she offers guidance and training on small group dynamics, group facilitation and building community.

In addition, as the person responsible for NCOAE’s curriculum development, Celine heads up the training of our instructors, ensuring they possess the human skills necessary to lead our courses and facilitate our curriculum. She provides coaching and assessments in order to increase the instructors’ skill set in delivering the NCOAE curriculum in a meaningful manner that can be easily “received” by students and course participants. And as administrative director, Celine manages course applications and stays in touch with parents of our youth participants to discuss the NCOAE process.

Celine’s experience speaks volumes about her skills. In addition to spending the last four years at NCOAE in a variety of executive positions, she was a therapist at The Carousel Center Child, a clinical supervisor at Open House Youth Shelter, a counselor at Aloha House and an assistant director at Maui Surfer Girls.

In addition, she was a lead wilderness guide with Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions, a lead instructor for Adventure Treks, and a camp counselor and mountaineering program leader at Camp Green Cove.

Born and raised in Brewster, NY, Celine is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She majored in wilderness therapy and marriage and family therapy, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1999 from Prescott College and a Masters degree in marriage and family therapy in 2005 from Argosy University.

Her husband is NCOAE Co-founder Zac Adair, and the couple has a son, Sawyer.