Meet the Team
Founder & CEO: Emily Schoerning, PhD
Dr. Emily Schoerning is a scientist and educator who helps people and communities understand and cultivate resilience in this time of change in which we live. Her work in science communication has won national and international awards. She founded American Resiliency in 2021 from her home in rural Iowa, where she practices habitat restoration and food production with climate resilient strains. Her philosophical influences include Robin Wall Kimmerer, Paulo Freire, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. She encourages you to braid your threads of meaning and cultivate life.
Dr. Schoerning once fought a bear to protect a friend, and she'd do it again! However, regarding the man/bear challenge, she would choose man.
Volunteer Coordinator: Michael Coffey
Michael Coffey is an organizational strategist and executive coach who helps activists, entrepreneurs and founders overcome the technical and mental barriers to creating powerful and sustainable organizations for the 21st century. He has a Masters in Human Environment Systems Geography from Arizona State University, and has been working in community organizing since 2021.
Michael and his business, Systemic Transformation LCA, have been close collaborators with American Resilience since 2024, helping AR expand their operations, develop their volunteer program and contribute to AR's resilience media.
In his free time, Michael loves to train in Historical European Martial Arts, create community with friends through cooking and tabletop roleplaying games and travel the world to discover all the amazing things worth fighting for.
Aaron Smithmier
Aaron is an all-around creative based in Spokane, Washington, where he moved in search of more trees and less humidity. He illustrates, sculpts, writes, designs, produces videos, and even trains people in sales. For almost 15 years, he’s run his own video production and marketing company, helping clients turn good ideas into great work while gently explaining that Google Images is not, in fact, a free stock photography service.
Before that, Aaron collected an unusual assortment of jobs, including NBC floor director, realtor, llama wrangler, professional axe-thrower, Radio Disney mobile DJ, and comedy writer. His career has never followed a particularly straight line, but he likes it that way. He’s less interested in hustle culture, buzzwords, and “career scalability” than he is in making cool things, making people laugh, and creating genuine connections with people along the way.
El Sealey
El Sealey is a public health professional and educator who is passionate about community health and emergency preparedness. They have a Masters in Public Health from University of Colorado Anschutz. They have experience working in state and county public health departments with an emphasis on emergency preparedness, health education, and qualitative analysis. Their experience as an educator is broad- they have taught students of all ages in classrooms, government buildings, basements, gardens, and have hosted more than one class next to a chicken coop!
El also designed Bunker Not Required, a workshop for building community emergency preparedness, in close collaboration with American Resiliency. Since its creation in November of 2025, the workshop has reached over 1,300 students nationwide and has expanded to include additional trainers in New York State.
In their free time, El enjoys rock climbing, hiking, creative writing, and pampering various cats.
With Special Thanks to our 25-26 Board:
David Bonomo, Claire Adrian-Tucci, Len Gutman, Erin Munoz, Oana Cojocaru, Shanon Solava, & Kathryn Ference
And 25-26 Advisory Council:
Edith Mayfield, Jana Zeedyk, Penney Balmes, Erin Munoz, Elyse Conley, Beth Sarver, Mary Beth Hewitt, & Naomi Ulsted