Learn more about our Instructors and their backgrounds
Erik Kulick, JD.WEMT.FAWM
Founder & Chief Instructor
Looking to bring the finest outdoors training and education to Pennsylvania and its surrounding states, Erik Kulick drew upon his passion for the outdoors and his 30+ years of teaching experience to found True North fifteen years ago.
Growing up as a backpacker and paddler, Erik has a diverse background. He has taught for regional and national outdoor programs, like the L.L. Bean Outdoor Discovery School. He has spent the last twenty years focusing his training on wilderness survival and he feels particularly fortunate to have worked with Byron Kerns, a former U.S. Air Force SERE instructor featured in the book, Deep Survival. He’s been privileged to instruct military personnel of various service branches, from those in the enlistment pipeline to special operations. In his classes, Erik is best known, not just for his technical skill and knowledge, but for his energy and patience in teaching folks of all levels and backgrounds.
Erik has a background in emergency services where he started as an EMS provider. He is a Wilderness EMT, a Pennsylvania certified EMS Instructor, an instructor for the American Heart Association, and has taught at the Center for Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the Wilderness Medical Society, where he is also a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine (FAWM). Erik presently serves in law enforcement.
As an attorney and MBA, Erik also works with organizations to help train their members. The Great Outdoors may lack access to telephone and the internet, but it provides some of the best opportunities to learn team building, communication, conflict resolution, and risk assessment. Erik has worked with the Boy Scouts of America, Carnegie Mellon University, UPMC, and the Association of Consulting Foresters amongst many others.
Erik has been featured in various national and foreign media outlets, including Backpacker, CNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, KDKA, Men’s Health, National Public Radio partner, WITF, as well as Australia’s News Corp and Britain’s The Guardian.
J.C. McGreehan, BS.NRP.WEMT
Senior Instructor
An avid outdoor enthusiast, J.C. McGreehan brings his extensive recreational, military, and medical experience together to provide his students, no matter their skill level, a well founded and truly unique instructional experience.
J.C. brings much wilderness survival and medicine expertise, garnered at home and overseas, to the table. He is a practicing National Registry Paramedic and a certified Wilderness EMT. J.C. is a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot who completed his survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training at the U.S. Army SERE School. J.C. has deployed to some of the most devastated areas of the world, including Haiti and Afghanistan. In 2013, as a team leader for Team Rubicon, J.C. led a group of medical and rescue professionals to the Philippines in less than 72 hours after Typhoon Haiyan, one the most devastating tropical cyclones ever recorded, made landfall to help the nation’s survivors who were in dire need of clean drinking water, shelter, and critical health services.
On the recreational side, J.C. enjoys mountain biking, hiking, outdoor photography, primitive camping, sailing, SCUBA, not to mention the occasional adventure race, all of which have taken him around the US and abroad, as he continues his search for the next great experience.
J.C. initially joined the True North team as a student almost fifteen years ago when he took our Advanced Wilderness Survival course to hone and refresh his skills. Shortly afterwards, he began to consult for True North, then later started teaching its clients. He has represented True North in the national media, including Fox News.
J.C.’s teaching philosophy is to create a comfortable learning atmosphere for our clients that first instills confidence, thus allowing them to effectively acquire tangible and useful skill sets that are applicable, not just to survival situations, but to many aspects of life too.
Lisa Anantarow
Youth Education Instructor
With a love for the outdoors and adventure, Lisa Anantarow provides any added dimension to our mission at True North.
Lisa has diverse career focused on service, education, and leadership. She has more than 25 years experience as a teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools working with children of all ages and backgrounds. She also served as an Officer in the U.S. Army, where she was deployed to Iraq.
Lisa believes that everyone should have access to all of the benefits and opportunities that the Great Outdoors has to offer, no matter one’s background and circumstance. While she is always up for a day on the trail or the river, Lisa especially loves urban exploration where she can investigate abandoned structures and long forgotten places.