Ali McGarigal

Educator - Kathryn Senor Elementary School

Ali was born in Bend, OR, but her family relocated to Beijing, China when she was 10. She lived in Beijing and went to the International School of Beijing until she graduated high school and came back to the U.S. for college. Ali completed her undergraduate degree at Colorado College (CC) in Colorado Springs. She fell in love with the Colorado landscape and the field of environmental education while she was there. She worked briefly in Portland, OR as an AmeriCorps member working for a city’s natural resources department on environmental justice and forest management. Ali realized she missed teaching, so she and her partner moved back to Colorado to help run an undergraduate semester program called Teaching and Research in Environmental Education (TREE), which they’d both done while at CC. Ali was hired by ACES in February 2021 to help start full-time environmental education at KSE. Outside of work, she loves caring for her reptilian friends, cooking and baking, getting outside with human friends, and playing music.