We lost a dear friend of this movement this spring. Geoff McNeely, one of our founding Whidbey Island landscape stewards, passed away on May 8, 2026, surrounded by love, after battling glioblastoma, a brain cancer whose diagnosis came as a complete shock in the fall of 2025. Through months of treatment he was supported by his wife, Kristin, his three children, and a wide community of friends across Cascadia and beyond.
Geoff was, in his family’s words, “a husband, father, technologist, thinker, creator, collaborator, and deeply curious human being whose ideas and generosity touched people across many communities.” Born on September 11, 1970, he was known for his sharp mind and inventive spirit, and for the way he could connect deeply with others through conversation, creativity, and big ideas. He worked in technology for many years, including work connected to Microsoft and AT&T and collaborative projects with friends and colleagues around the world, and he loved exploring systems, theories, emerging technology, and community-centered ways of thinking about the future.
That same curiosity is what drew him to this work. Geoff lived with his family in the Scatchet Head area of South Whidbey, and he helped lay the early groundwork for the Whidbey Island Landscape Group, one of the nine landscape groups now taking part in the Cascadia Landscape Hub Cultivator cohort. He helped host our 2023 activation tour, and he brought a rare gift for weaving together the many strands of the bioregional web, the qualitative and the quantitative alike. He was a good friend and collaborator to many of us here, for years. His thoughtfulness, his humor, and his unwavering presence as a friend touched many circles of this movement, and he will be deeply missed.
A celebration of his life
Geoff’s family and community warmly invite friends to gather for a celebration of his life on Saturday, July 18, 2026, from noon to 5:30 in the afternoon, at the Scatchet Head Community Club in Clinton, on the south end of Whidbey Island. The gathering will be a potluck and barbecue in the neighborhood he loved. You are welcome to bring something to share or to grill, and something that reminds you of Geoff.
Full details, directions, and a place to RSVP and to share your own memories and photographs are on Geoff’s memorial website: everloved.com/life-of/geoffrey-mcneely. In lieu of flowers, his family invites gifts in his memory to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
If Geoff touched your corner of this movement, we hope you will join in remembering him, in person on Whidbey or in your own way, wherever you are. We hold his wife Kristin, his children, and all who loved him close, with deep gratitude for the life and the ideas he shared so generously with us.