Our 2019 Speaker Videos

Avery Fisher Career Grant winning violinist Tim Fain has toured internationally with Philip Glass in Duo Recitals, performed as soloist with the world’s top orchestras and has been featured in films such as Black Swan, 12 Years A Slave and Moonlight. He co-created Light, with Jacob Marshall, for Forbes as the first ever virtual experience sync-ed to a live musical performance, and collaborated with Jessica Brillhart and Google on Resonance, a 360 VR music film for which he composed the score and performed throughout on camera. Tim has written and performed music for numerous other films and VR experiences, and collaborated intimately with artists such as Leonard Cohen, Justin Vernon, Richard Goode, Darren Aronofsky, Lou Reed, and Christina Aguilera.

Dan Kimzey has been an educator for more than twenty years, the past sixteen as an administrator with positions as assistant high school principal, middle school principal, and his current assignment as the principal of Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Montana. Upon graduating from Beaverhead County High School in Dillon, Dan joined the US Army and served as an Arctic Infantryman in Alaska. Upon completion of active duty, he served in various units in the Army National Guard and US Army Reserve until his retirement in 2013, having achieved the position of battalion Command Sergeant Major as his final posting. Mr. Kimzey is the past
president of the Montana Association of Secondary School Principals and his had the good fortune to work with several-thousand students, families, and teachers in North Dakota and Montana. Militarily, he has served on combat and operational deployments as well as numerous training and humanitarian service missions. He is a graduate of the University of North Dakota (B.S. Ed, Social Science Education and MS.Ed, Educational Leadership) and the US Army Sergeants Major Academy. He was named the Montana Secondary School Principal of the Year in 2016 and is a recipient of the Legion of Merit medal. Dan’s wife, Brooke, also a UND alumni, is a speech-pathologist with the Corvallis School District, his daughter, Lauren, is a senior at Hamilton High School and his son, Cole, is an eighth-grader at Hamilton Middle School. He enjoys woodworking and knifemaking, camping, rafting, fly-fishing, hiking, hunting, and most other outdoor sports in his free time.

Michael W. Leach has worked as a ranger naturalist in Yellowstone National Park, Montana fly-fishing and wildlife guide, and head boys basketball coach; but first and foremost, Michael is a dad and a storyteller.  His writing, including his "Love Dad" column, has appeared in numerous regional publications.  In 2014, Michael's first book, Grizzlies On My Mind, topped a regional bestseller  list.  It was followed by Be Audacious, a Foreword INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist. 

Passionate about his four generation Western roots, Michael earned a B.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana.   After leaving the National Park Service, he founded Yellowstone Country Guardians, a nonprofit recognized for an unconventional, fresh approach to environmental programming that resonated with today's youth.  

Through his writing, speaking and Be Audacious blog, Michael's mission is to help others break down barriers of conventional beliefs, leading to a more meaningful way to live, work and make a difference. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Bozeman, Montana. 

Nik was born and raised in Montana, where he joined the Marine Corps when he turned 18. He excelled as an infantry plt sgt with 3 rd Marines and as a Subject Matter Expert for the Marine Corps Close Quarters Battle program. After his Military retirement, he trained Navy EOD in mission readiness for 9 years. He has excelled in local surf ski races as well as being the US Para-canoe representative at international racing competitions since 2013.  Nik is an above the knee amputee, crushed hip, and ruptured aorta, due to mechanical injuries sustained from a careless driver running a stop sign.

Nik is a force to be reckoned with in the paddling scene, able bodied or para-canoeist and Team USA is fortunate to have Nik racing for them!

Event/Discipline: Para-canoe, KL

Karin grew up on a dairy farm in the village of Catawba in northern Wisconsin. Her favorite subjects while attending Phillips High School were biology and chemistry, so she decided to major in Biotechnology and received her B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 1992.  During her studies, she became interested in viruses and the how the body’s immune response controls these infections.  She went on to study the immune response in graduate school at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, where she received her Ph.D. in 1998.  She then moved to Hamilton, MT to complete additional training (post-doctoral fellowship) at Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) studying the immune response to virus infection from 1998-2003.  In 2004, Karin accepted a position as an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where she focused on viruses that infected the central nervous system (CNS) and taught classes on immunology and virology.  In 2008, she returned to RML as a tenure-track investigator to set up her own group studying virus infections of the CNS and how the immune response affects virus-induced neurological disease. Karin received tenure in 2016 and promoted to a senior investigator.  Her research group, the Neuroimmunology section, primarily focuses on viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes including La Crosse virus, Jamestown Canyon virus and Zika virus. In her free time, Karin likes to bicycle the back roads of the Bitterroot valley, particularly if the bike ride includes a stop at one of the several great local breweries.  She also enjoys hiking, taking photographs of the amazing scenery and wildlife in the valley, being part of the Hamilton Wild Things women’s football team and traveling to different parts of the world to experience unique cultures.

Rachael holds a Doctorate of Physical Therapy from Loma Linda University.  She has the privilege to be a full time wife to Dr. Benjamin Watters and a mom to Micah (7), Adeline (5), Emerson (3) and Chloe (17 months).  Rachael has a heart for children and mothers.  She understands the demands and isolation that being a mother of young children can bring.  In 2014 she started and co-coordinated a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group in Hamilton. Over the last year she has been involved in a storytelling endeavor entitled MOMedy.  This project consisted of writing and performing a one woman tragic comedy based on her postpartum experiences with five other mommas and one papa at the Roxy Theatre in Missoula.  MOMedy also performed at a perinatal maternal mental health conference at Fairmont Hot Springs in October. 

Rachael considers herself to be a maternal mental health advocate and hopes that sharing her story and bringing awareness to the realities of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders can break down the stigma surrounding maternal mental health and encourage others to seek support and treatment.