Camp Steven’s Executive Director Dr. Kathy Wilder (Right) with Camp Stevens’ Board Chair Rev. Stefanie Wilson. Photo: Camo Stevens
As Kathy Wilder prepares to step down from her “dream job” as Camp Stevens executive director on March 31, she leaves a legacy of deep caring, embracing both challenge and joy, cultural expansion, strategic planning and grace-filled leadership in difficult times, according to staff and board members.
“It’s been the great honor of my life to be the executive director here,” said Wilder, who is also celebrating a 30-year relationship with the Julian camp. She is moving to Sparks, Nevada, where her spouse, the Rev. Hannah Wilder, will serve as rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “I know that Camp Stevens will go on for their 75th anniversary next year,” she said. “I encourage people to engage and find peace and challenge here.”
“My first job at Camp Stevens was in 1996, as an intern, and my start date was March 18, the same start date for my job as executive director,” Wilder told The Episcopal News in a recent telephone interview. Between those events, she completed a bachelor’s degree, held positions elsewhere, and returned in 2007 to serve as the camp’s operations manager. She was a board member and also served as interim executive director, before accepting her current position in 2018.
“I was there during the Angel Fire,” she recalled, crediting former camp executive director Peter Bergstrom with mentoring her “to deal with change really well. One thing I learned is, when challenging things happen, it doesn’t mean Camp Stevens will fade away.” The Angel Fire in 2007 destroyed 15 buildings at the 260-acre camp, owned by the Episcopal Dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego.
The Rev. Canon Greg Larkin, a former camp board chair, agreed. “Kathy kept Peter’s ethos alive and his view for camp, but at the same time she was able to expand the vision and work to make camp more welcoming and accepting, especially for folks on the fringe.” Larkin was chair of the camp’s board when Wilder was hired as executive director. Bergstrom, who served as the camp’s executive director for 40 years, retired in 2012 and died in 2018.
“Kathy was instrumental in getting the cabins, buildings, and grounds ready for campers after the fire,” recalled the Rev. Canon Kelli Grace Kurtz, who has served as camp chaplain and whose son was a camper there.
“Then she led the Camp Stevens community through the pandemic, making sure staff were attended to and the larger camp community was kept informed. The pandemic was the not-imagined second hit following the fire and was a tremendous challenge. Kathy navigated it with strength and grace.”
The Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy, who has been a camper, chaplain, board member and counselor at Camp Stevens, recalled when Kathy was hired in 2018 after the departure of former executive director Beth Bojarski. “It felt exactly right,” she said. “Kathy’s love for Camp Stevens, her natural gifts for evangelism, and her enthusiastic and welcoming personality was exactly what the camp needed.”
“She saw the camp through Covid, which was devastating financially for camp, and she has done incredible work in fundraising and sharing all the goodness of Camp Stevens. She’s left a lasting legacy that will see Camp Stevens through the next generation of campers, counselors, staff, retreat center guests and visitors.”
Wilder, say Kurtz and others, is just as at ease “meeting with the bishops and executive staff at both dioceses as she is singing ‘Banana Slug’ with a group of campers at community gatherings.”
She is also just as likely “to be found elbow-deep in the dish pit as she is all dressed up at a donor function or preaching at a church. Kathy is unique as far as executive directors go in a way that aligns with our core,” said Gabby Coburn, operations manager, who will serve as interim director.
“The staff feel that. They know she’s part of this work and when times get tough or people are out sick, she jumps in and helps out.
“Kathy was my camp counselor in 1999 when I was 14,” Coburn recalled. “She has a genuine care for all people in our community; she genuinely wants to hear their stories and to make camp a better place for everybody. Her departure is a big loss for the community.”
Making camp an even ‘better’ place
Camp Stevens Board Chair, the Rev. Stefanie Wilson, said Wilder’s leadership “is a wonderful combination of being organized, competent, clear-looking at the present and the future and also deeply caring. She’s a great preacher and willing to travel all over the diocese to spread the good news of Camp Stevens and to talk about the love of God all at the same time.”
Wilder initiated a strategic plan, with specific goals for fundraising and diversifying the camp board and staff, Wilson said. With the board, a new vision statement was created: “envisioning a world of whole-hearted belonging.”
Larkin said Wilder is “always looking for the next way the camp could reach out to people, how camp can be accepting, and that’s not always easy.” After hearing feedback, Wilder paved the way for a Black Family Camp in 2025, and has been “all in” with it ever since, according to Ariel Robinsted, outdoor education program manager, who facilitates the Black Family Camp.
“When we opened ourselves up to that conversation, we learned there were ways we were creating barriers for Black folks to participate at camp and that we needed to partner with people who could help us learn about what to do and educate ourselves,” Wilder recalled.
Raising awareness involved educating herself and others and “taking a hard look at ourselves in the context of the world and knowing that we’re an Episcopal organization which has traditionally been a very white organization,” Wilder said. “Camping has traditionally been very white, based on vacationing and people with that kind of privilege.
Similarly, Wilder invited as keynote speaker for the camp’s 70th anniversary celebration, Sikh attorney and activist Valarie Kaur, founder of the Revolutionary Love project, who was “such an inspiration that drove us to say we want to be a place of lifting up voices that may not be heard in other places,” Wilder said.
“We want to live into our Episcopal-ness and live into who we are in the world community. We are far from perfect, but what’s really cool is to see the culture of this place, committed at every level of position and policy reflective of our DEI and anti-racism work, and that will continue far after me.”
Wilder has been a “trailblazer,” said the Rev. Ryan Macias, a volunteer chaplain and board member. “Kathy embodies a spirit of gracious hospitality. She is someone committed to inclusion and has worked very hard over her tenure to make Camp Stevens a more inclusive space, particularly for people on the edges. Particularly with children with different needs in terms of neurodivergence and disability as well as folks coming from a variety of diverse gender expression, which is not something camps are always great at.”
Wilson agreed. “In every moment, Kathy is willing to have the hard conversation with deep hope. She takes this whole Jesus thing seriously.”
Tough times have also called for tough decisions. As part of the camp’s continued recovery from a one-year closure during the pandemic, the camp is now included in the annual diocesan budget.
“The practical change is that we basically have brought our finances into the diocese,” Wilder said. “The diocese committed to wanting to support the camp as a ministry of the diocese in a meaningful way. One way was to offer accounting services so that time-consuming job could be taken off our plates, to some degree, and we could focus on running the camp.”
Wilder’s compassionate leadership extended to camp staff during the pandemic when “a lot of camps across the nation were letting go of staff, and staff lost housing, but Kathy didn’t want to do that,” Robinsted said. “She figured out how to keep the staff able to live onsite and to do some work. I don’t know what many of us would have done without that choice,” as many of the staff reside at the camp.
Simultaneously, Wilder opened the camp to the community as a Covid testing site and as a food pick-up location. “We’ve never been so connected to the Julian community,” Wilder said. “We met so many of our neighbors. They got to know us because we chose to engage in that way.”
Moving forward with many voices
Interim director Coburn said a search committee has formed and will confer with consultants, “and we’ll be talking to Episcopal camp and conference centers to figure out our best process for going forward. Also, to reflect the community and to incorporate voices of many constituents, everyone from alumni from 75 years ago to first-time campers this year—and everyone in-between.”
Summer camp enrollment has already begun and is at about 70%, she added. “Kathy’s work here was transformational. This place is so different than when I arrived. It is more deeply connected to its value and to who we are in the world. It’s been a challenging and wonderful eight years, and her legacy will be felt in the camp for a very long time.”
The board is planning a celebration for Wilder at the end of the month, but Robinsted said there’ve already been several parties along the way. In true Wilder fashion, “she invited us over to her house last night for a giveaway of whatever they can no longer use. She made espresso and Hannah made donuts and we just hung out and perused through all the free stuff.”
Wilder said she plans to “take some time off and rest, and to be a great clergy spouse for the next few months. I’m entertaining an offer from the University of Nevada Reno to teach and do some work around organizational leadership and nonprofit leadership in general,” the focus of her doctorate in education.
The camp is more stable now “than we’ve been since the day I started. I feel good and proud of the staff for that,” Wilder said.
“I got to live my dream job and hope I’ve primed Camp Stevens for a big period of growth moving forward. The new vision statement leaves so much room for looking at what can be created, ways to become a more accessible place for spiritual growth for all groups of people.”
She added: “I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken so far and seeing what more we can do to be a place of true belonging for all people. Camp is all about finding peace and where you’re stretching. Where you find your connection to the world, to liminal space, where people see themselves. And that’s where you find God.”