Michelle Kenny
Executive Director
Owner Goose Hollow Flowers
Originally from upstate New York, Michelle lived in Sweden and Florida before landing in Portland to take a job with Marriott hotels in 1996. With a life long passion of dabbling in floral design, gardening and events, Michelle took the plunge and bought Goose Hollow Gardens in 2007 all while on maternity leave. The first year as an owner, Michelle trained extensively with her mentor Florist designer and Artist Jeanie Gray. Michelle’s past experience in the Hotel industry as an Event planner, Wedding coordinator and Convention Sales manager, gives her an expert edge on what it takes to make each event spectacular. 2013 brought the year of re-branding and in order to better reflect the primary vision of the shop, the name was changed to Goose Hollow Flowers. One of Downtown Portland’s best hidden gems, Goose Hollow Flowers continues to grow and thrive.
As a small floral shop owner, Michelle saw the need to bring back a new and improved floral association to help support, benefit and showcase the local floral talent in the area. Most importantly, she is excited to connect like-minded professionals to be part of a rich and vibrant community. In 2022 Michelle started the process and is excited to watch the Pacific Northwest Florist Association Bloom.
Sarah Helmstetter
President
Co-Owner Solabee Flowers
Sarah came by her career in floral design over 20 years ago naturally, raised between the wild Ozarks and the hillsides of rural Oregon, her parents demonstrated a love of gardening and spending time outdoors. She currently lives in Sandy, Oregon on a split forest/farm homestead with her partner Chad and children Gus and Willa, as well as a bevy of chickens, ducks, cats and wild country dogs. She co-owns Solabee Flowers with her long time business partner Alea Joy, giving her experience in events, retail, buying floral as well as growing, greenhouse management and responsible wildcrafting.
You can see her work @solabeeflowers on instagram or www.solabeeflowers.com online.
Josef Reiter
Vice President
Botanica
Josef Reiter has worked in many different areas of the floral & nursery industry including florist shops, a catering & event company, a greenhouse, a garden center, as well designing gardens for private clients before venturing out on his own with Botanica Floral Design & Botanica Floral + Home.
Prior to living in Portland, he spent 21 years in New York City as a professional actor/singer/dancer.
Jeremi Carroll
Treasurer
Pollinate Flowers
Jeremi and his husband owned and operated Pollinate Flowers, a regenerative flower farm in Dundee, Oregon, for a decade where Jeremi discovered his love of flowers and floral design. Starting his design journey in 2018 the abundant gardens at the farm inspired Jeremi’s aesthetic and are reflected in his work. Selling their farm in 2023 they moved to Milwaukie to a smaller property where Jeremi creates his designs out of his home studio, and are transforming their new space into a lush cutting garden which will continue to inspire Jeremi’s designs.
Wendi Day
Secretary
Old Town Florist
As a young lady growing up, I spent long summers in my grandparents garden, planting and helping her grow flowers and vegetables. This inspired a spark to later, as a teen, work in a neighborhood flower shop. My design esthetic has been influenced throughout the years from working for and with many other talented designers in the industry. Working over four decades. and owning Old Town Florist for 30 has been both challenging and exciting. This wonderful experience has made me into the flower designer I am today….
Sarah Jane Dillon
Director of Sustainability
Flora Kultur owner/designer
Just over a decade ago, Sarah Jane beckoned to the universe “I want to touch flowers.” It sounded like a pretty illogical next step for this communication design graduate from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. After years of playing rock n roll and touring, producing commercial content at a creative agency and freelancing and consulting on music supervision gigs… FLOWERS?! YES!
Sarah Jane started working in flower shops learning the new wave of eco-conscious, sustainable, floral practices and how to foster relationships with our local farmers and nurseries, for the freshest curated bouquets and designs with the least waste and harm to our environment. While educating and cultivating a very loyal customer base and making like-minded floral friends and collaborators, Sarah Jane honed her style and craft and in 2019 Flora Kultur was born. Sarah Jane chose the name Flora Kultur because it sounded both traditional and edgy. Client’s say they can tell from the name that it wouldn’t be the same old thing and that always sounds like a compliment to Sarah Jane.
Sarah Jane currently creates in her home studio in NE Portland and sees clients by appointment only. This has served her family well as their little one nears school-age, and now Flora Kultur is positioned for growth and looking for a collaborative space to create in.
Sage Marcella
Board Member
Director of Membership
Originally from Marthas’s Vineyard, a little island off of Massachusetts, Sage was introduced to the world of flowers at a small flower farm on the island. She spent her summers home from college out in the flower fields at Morning Glory Farm. Here she spent her mornings in the fields cutting and arranging 100 plus bouquets for the local farm stand, and her afternoons, tending to the fields.
Sage graduated from college with a degree in Visual Media, but after a season as a graphic designer she realized a life behind a computer was not where her heart was. She loved getting messy and using her hands to be creative and connect with nature. Her new found love of flowers, young hearted adventurous sprit, and pure curiosity and desire to move west took her off island and across the country to Portland Oregon. She attended the Floral Design Institute and came to realize that her love for color and texture and design could be pursued in the world of flowers.
Fresh out of flower school, Sage worked at a couple shops and eventually linked up with Sammy’s Flowers. The next 18 years were spent running and managing Sammy’s flowers, one of the best shops in town, and helped with all aspects of the company. This included training countless designers and florists that worked at the shop over the years. In doing so she realized she loved teaching people the world of floral design as much as she loved designing herself. To support her desire to continue to learn and grow as a designer she treated herself to workshops around the country with some of her favorite and inspirational designers. Sage now works independently as a freelance florist in town and across the country and dreams of opening her dream shop one day. In the mean time she is delighted to be part of this association that helps connect people in the floral design world locally.
Scott Insensee
Board Member
Director of Allied Membership
Coming Soon.
Michelle Dummer (AKA Chelle)
Director of Education
Chelle Floral Design/Freelancer
First and foremost, devoted wife of a UPS man and mother of two beautiful humans and three fur babies. Chelle has just about run the gamut in the floral world. Beginning her career in 1996, Chelle started at the bottom of the totem pole on the production line prepping teacups with oasis for the designers on the line. She gradually moved up into a designing role. From there she has worked with many talented designers in shops in and around the Portland metro area, taught at the Floral Design Institute (FDI), along with running her own design studio, Chelle Floral Design in Tualatin, OR. She has experience in everyday floral design, sympathy, large scale, bridal, production, artistic, parade floats and floral couture. Chelle is also a student, achieving her CFD (certified floral designer) and accreditations with the American Institute of Floral Design (AIFD) and strives to learn and grow as a floral designer with continued education.
“I am blessed to be able to say that I love my job, which fuels me to continue learning”
Chelle
Françoise Weeks
Director of Mentorship
Françoise Weeks, born in Belgium, has infused her work with a quintessential European reverence for flowers and nature. Combined with creativity and mechanical ingenuity, she has crystalized her singular style of Textural Woodlands and Botanical Haute Couture pieces, garnering a global following.
Her generosity of knowledge and perspective in use of floral materials, structure and techniques, create rigorous and exciting learning opportunities for her students to explore all that nature has to offer.
Françoise’s studio is located in Portland, OR. She teaches workshops in her studio and offers online courses as well. She has taught in many cities in the US as well as in Canada, Mexico, England, Sweden, Iceland, France, China and Australia.
Her dynamic work has been published in national and international magazines, as well as an Emmy- winning TV feature.
In 2019 she was invited to participate in the renowned flower shows Fleuramour and FlowerTime in Belgium.
In December 2018 her book “The Herbal Recipe Keeper” was published by Timber Press. She currently is working on a new book “The Wonder of Woodlands”, which will be published in the spring of 2024.
Heidi Berkman
Association Advisor
Heidi found her love of flowers early in her career as an event planner. She gathered knowledge and experience by
working beside others in the floral industry for several decades, complimenting the roles she held in project
management, event planning, marketing campaigns, retail ownership and nonprofit and board service.
In the fall of 2007, Heidi founded “The Bloom Project” – a nonprofit that provided fresh bouquets of flowers to
hospice and palliative care patients and their caregivers during end-of-life care. Flowers and greens were donated
by wholesale floral companies, grocery stores and florists. Volunteers created bouquets that were then delivered
to patients by nurses, chaplains and social workers in their home or care facility.
Over thirteen years, the project grew expanded from Bend to Portland, Oregon adding new volunteers, floral and
hospice partnerships to the project (as well as an affiliate project in San Francisco), gifting 300,000+ bouquets with
over 136,000 volunteer hours during its history. In December of 2020, the organization dissolved due to Covid with
no clear way to return back to operation.
Heidi has continued to organize pop-up flower events to bring encouragement individuals in our community as
well as support industry events such as “Petal it Forward”. In addition, she provides consulting support to business
owners and their teams through networking and identifying resources as needed.
