The Team

CO-FOUNDER
Nick Blackman
  • Art Director and Over-analyzer for Wazoo
  • BS Mechanical Engineering, BS Aerospace Engineering
  • Search And Rescue Team Lead and K-9 Training Specialist with Alpha Search and Recovery in Houston, TX
  • Instructor and Evaluator for the National Association for Search And Rescue (NASAR)
  • Associate Instructor for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD)
  • Basic Wilderness Survival Workshop
  • Spent 4 years working as a NASA Engineer
  • Certified Appalachian American

His innate desire to understand how everything works led him to earn degrees in both Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from West Virginia University. He dabbled in everything from data entry to deep-sea drilling tools and even as far as training astronauts. His last job was as an engineer at Johnson Space Center working with some of the largest vacuum chambers in the world. Needless to say that job 'sucked'. No matter how hard he tried to force himself to sit back and earn a good salary, life in a cubicle was slowly crushing him. Wazoo Survival Gear was the dream; unlimited design potential, researched, tested, and applied in the outdoors. Engineering gone wild! 

CO-FOUNDER
Dustin Hogard
  • Certified blackwater body/evidence recovery | Public Safety Diver (PSD)
  • Divemaster | Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI)
  • Advanced Freediver | Apnea Total
  • Wilderness First Aid/ First Responder (WFR/WFR) | Offgrid Medic
  • Corpsman | Texas State Guard (TXSG)
  • Wildland Firefighter | Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD)
  • Crewman | United States Coast Guard (USCG)
  • Graduate of Incident Response to Terrorist Bombing (IRTB) and Prevention and Response to Suicide Bombing Incidence (PRSBI) | New Mexico Tech
  • Skydiving A License | United States Parachute Association (USPA)
  • Courses Completed: Advanced Bushcraft | Randall's Adventure & Training, Hunter & Gatherer Desert Survival | David Holladay, Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Survival, Ropes, Knots, and Rigger | Pathfinder School, Winter Skills Course/ Wilderness Skills Course | Gray Bearded Green Beret Austere Medical Management | Ed Calderon and Voodoo Doc
  • BS in Advertising, Texas Creative Program, Business Foundations from the University of Texas, Austin

Dustin attributes his work and hobbies in a variety of industries to giving him well-rounded firsthand experience and ability to pull and combine technical concepts from various fields that are now being applied to Wazoo designs. Prior to Wazoo, his "odd jobs" have included canopy tour zip-line manager, cave tour designer, exotic animal caretaker, and he has worked from Alaska to Peru to Switzerland. He loves getting high whether on a rope, mast, tree, or rock slab and feels most comfortable in small, dark, confined places, especially within the Earth's crust.

Chief operating officer (COO)
Noelle Juengling
  • Masters in Outdoor Recreation/Tourism Management
  • NOLS Wilderness First Responder

Taking on the concrete jungle, Noelle earned a B.S. from New York University. From there she made her way into the startup ecosystem in both New York City and Chicago. Looking for a change of pace she traded skyscrapers for mountains and she earned a master's degree from Colorado State University in Tourism Management and Outdoor Recreation. Having worked for a impact investing fund, whitewater rafting company, craft beer magazine, and lifestyle tech startup; she's lucky to have always been able to be a part industries that she enjoys. But none of these fits better than Wazoo for an outdoor activity junky. Everyday at Wazoo is an adventure and navigating all its moving parts keeps her on her toes. Speaking of toes, she's a big fan of going where her own two feet can take her and spends a lot of her time camping in the backcountry, atop one of Colorado's 14,000 ft peaks, skiing down a mountain, or paddling in a pack raft on an alpine lake.

Operations Coordinator
Tara Brinkman

Tara's hobbies include:

  • Side-staring at dog
  • 7th Grade Push Up Champion
  • Top Natural Ingredient Pancake Maker
  • Toxic positivity
  • Kayaking, Stand-up paddling, camping, hiking, and working out like a beast!
Picking, Packing, & Positivity
Jenn Lockhart
Social Content Creator
JJ Morris