Brett married his college sweetheart in Alaska and immediately began working on remote land surveying on Federal Native Lands Selection for the government. Once the job was completed, they moved from their home in Alaska to Orcas Island in Washington for a winter job and ended up settling there since. Brett has a background in Math and Physics, but has worked as a carpenter, surveyor, sawmill laborer, solar tech, and entrepreneur, starting WildLife Cycles, the local bike shop. His journey led him to buy raw land, built an off grid house, and have a daughter. When his daughter began school, he volunteered at her school, which eventually led to a science teaching position at a K-8 off grid school on Waldron Island, before building another off grid house and eventually to teaching Physics at Orcas High.
In 2010, Brett received a Toyota Tapestry Grant for the Umiak Energy Project, where his students built a 25 foot Umiak and a bicycle-powered boat trailer and learned about battery and PV technology by assembling three different battery packs – Lead Acid, NiMH, and LiFePO4 – and incorporating PV for charging the batteries. His students ran trials and gathered data in the local Salish Sea and learned how to track energy, power, battery conditions, as well as compare distances covered and speeds traveled with the different battery packs. After this, Brett began coordinating with the 5th grade teachers on monthly visits to work with his students to increase science interest in elementary school.
Brett has I have lived nearly 20 years off the grid using PV and wind energy with no fossil fuel backup and brings his experience and passion learning to his classroom, focusing on clean transportation on and between the islands, including on engaging physics curriculum that explores efficiency and design of off grid cars, carts, ferries, boats, and conversions.
