Leadership Team

Plane Captains

Taya Weiss: Organizer 
Known aliases: "Big T", "The Brain"

Taya was the lead organizer of the US National Record 68-way formation in 2009 and co-organizer of the 71-way in 2008. As a founding member of Team XRW, a joint project with the Performance Designs Factory Team, she was the first woman to dock her wingsuit in freefall with canopy pilot Jessica Edgeington under a Velocity 71. Taya successfully proposed wingsuit record rules and judging to the USPA and PASA and is currently a member of the International Parachuting Commission's Wingsuit Working Group, where she is working towards an FAI wingsuit world record category. Taya drinks hot sauce for fun, has degrees from Harvard and Princeton, and is a proud co-founder of skydiving non-profit Raise the Sky. In case you need more proof that she loves a challenge, ask her about the time she killed a camel for food.

Scott Callantine

Scott Callantine was a plane captain at the 68-way US National Record in 2009 and organizes at events all over the US. When he's not flying a wingsuit, he is a molecular biologist with a Master in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Idaho. Scott is a United States Parachute Association Tandem and Static Line instructor and has over 4500 skydives. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Ed Pawlowski

Ed Pawlowski was a plane captain at the 71-way Wingsuit World Record in 2008 and at the 68-way US National Record in 2009. He owns WestCoast Wingsuits and NorthernCalifornia Skydiving in Lodi, California. Ed has over 11,000 jumps and has been an Accelerated Freefall and Tandem rated instructor since 1994. He also has a PRO rating and is a senior rigger and pilot. Ed is a World Record holder for a 400 person linked formation skydive in Thailand in 2006.
 

Zun Stéphane Zunino

Stephane "Zun" Zunino is one of the founders of Fly Your Body (S-Fly) Wingsuits along with Loic and Cathy Jean-Albert. A member of the Soul Flyers team, he has more than 12,000 jumps, including 7 years on the French 8-way team and competing twice at the world level in skysurfing. He participated in the 2004 357-way formation skydive in Thailand and in the 2009 71-way Wingsuit World Record. He coaches and organizes in Europe, based at his home dropzone in Gap-Tallard, France.

 

Videographers

Mark Harris: Videographer 
Known aliases: "The Giraffe"

Mark Harris has been skydiving for 18 years, of which 14 years have been full time within the sport as an instructor. With experience in almost every discipline, he especially enjoys wingsuit video and photography. Mark was both an organizer and a team captain at the 71-way event in 2008. As an organizer and videographer at the 68-way US National Record in 2009, Mark took the photos used for the judging process while flying on his back underneath the formation, doing flips, and practicing his American accent (no big deal). He was also on the organizing team of the first US National Record 25-way at Skydive Chicago and has been very involved with developing wingsuiting in the UK, which he calls home. Fun fact: Mark appears to be about twice Taya's height.

Jeff Nebelkopf: Videographer
Known aliases: "Foghead", "Dragon Eye"

Jeff's ideas for a judging system created the possibility for wingsuit records, and his wingsuit designs have also revolutionized the discipline. As a photographer, he has landed cover shots in almost every major skydiving publication (multiple times) in the past few years, as well as publishing his photos in mainstream magazines like Popular Mechanics. Jeff's in-air videography credits include the first ever live broadcast of a wingsuit jump for NBC's Today Show and the "Man X Machine" project, during which he was the first person ever to fly the RED camera on a wingsuit jump. Most recently, he was part of the team filming Corliss "threading the needle" through a mountain cave for the Red Bull China project in Hunan Province. Jeff has been known to fly circles around everyone at the speed of light, so don't be surprised if you never even know he's there.

Craig O'Brien: Videographer 

Known aliases: "OB", "The Chuck Norris of Videographers"

Craig O'Brien is one of the top skydiving videographers in the world, in multiple disciplines, formats, and at more records than it's even worth trying to count. He has more than 15,000 skydives and is a three time world champion skysurfing cameraflier. His cinema credits include Charlie's Angels (2000), Iron Man (2008), and the Bucket List (2008). He films major brand commercials for Toyota, Energizer, Coke, and Verizon before you even wake up in the morning. OB filmed the 68-way US National Record and has been fine-tuning his wingsuit flying with Team XRW. Based at Perris Valley Skydiving, his team has implemented a seamless, full-solution bigway video debriefing and sharing system that we will be using at the record via www.bigwayphotography.com. 

 

Ground Support

Eli Bolotin: On the Ground Organizer, Media Coordinator 
Known aliases: "Hey You!", "My Hero" 

As a board member (and co-founder) of Raise the Sky, the charitable organization behind the US National Record 68-way, Eli Bolotin was Our Man on the Ground at the 2009 event. Handling everything from fundraising to mainstream media to Japanese film crews to hand sanitizer, he kept the event running smoothly and everyone smiling. Eli is a full-time skydiver, AFF instructor and wind tunnel coach with several wingsuit jumps under his belt. A seasoned media liaison and imposer of order upon chaos, Eli has served as a Volunteer Coordinator for the American Red Cross Disaster Action Team of Massachusetts Bay where he was a member of the Logan Airport “Tarmac Team” in the event of an airplane crash and point person for major disasters. He holds a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University, where he lived down the hall from Taya. Harvard is still trying to figure out how these two got so far off the reservation.

Dan Dupuis

Will Kitto: Web Guru, Team Awesome

Known aliases: "Yeah Buddy!", "Do a Flip!"

A general force for awesomeness in the skydiving and BASE community, Will Kitto is a member of Team XRW as a wingsuit pilot. He is also a multiple medal-winner at the 2011 US Nationals in various CRW events with his team, Too Wrapped Up. The medals make a cowbell-like noise when he wears all of them at once, which is pretty impressive. More cowbell! He is the man behind the website and registration database for the event. Look for him to be flying a slot on the record.