Founder and teaching artist with Arts Are The Answer, has twenty years experience as a Drama and Arts Specialist, Professional Development Coordinator, Teacher, Coach, Author and national presenter.  She is an Educational Theatre Association Hall of Fame winner, has been awarded the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Theatre Teacher of the Year Award and received Washington State and KCTS’s Golden Apple Award for her Drama Outreach Program.

As an Arts Coordinator and Professional Development coordinator, Lynda has facilitated, planned and taught in the areas of school planning and student learning through Democratic schools, differentiation, integration, critical thinking skills, teaming, Arts Integration, Drama and Visual Arts curriculum, and multicultural integration of culture and the arts with other content areas.

Lynda is a trained facilitator, who can help schools develop a vision and action plans; lead and facilitate school improvement plans and facilitate teacher retreats.

Lynda has developed curriculum, and presented workshops across the country on a variety of topics in drama,  improvisation, visual arts, multicultural studies and art, integration of the arts, thinking skills through the arts and in planning arts integration focuses in elementary schools.In addition, Lynda has served at the state level in developing arts standards, and overseen standards based curriculum in the arts, and assessment in the arts. She has been trained in History Alive, Visual Thinking Skills, Mentoring Matters, Democratic Schools,  Kennedy Center Arts Integration model as well as a variety of facilitation models and strategies.

Lynda has a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Drama from Western Washington University, a Masters degree in Theatre from Western Washington University and her administrative credentials from City University in Seattle.

She is the author of several drama textbooks: Acting Through Improv, Improv Through Theatresports;, The Acting Primer, Drama Assessment,  and two plays.  She served as Co-director of Education for Seattle Theatresports and presented workshops at various conferences in Theatre-In-Education strategies.

As Arts Coordinator for the Puyallup School District, she coordinated art shows and opportunities for students art work to be seen in multiple settings and created mini grant opportunities for schools to integrate culture and the arts. Lynda also coordinated the Honoring Cultures and Diversity celebration, a three day event with performances by children, community groups and presentations and displays of student work honoring cultures and diversity displayed.

She is the mother of four and a grandmother, a potter, an artist and an actress.