Max Reinhardt presently owns small businesses as a handyman and amateur mycologist. When he is not painting houses or refinishing floors he is out in the woods foraging and learning about mushrooms and the Wisconsin ecosystem. Max has run his
own business as a handyman for 3 years and has begun to (co)-lead forays in Marathon County privately in 2022 and through the Wisconsin Mycological Society this year.

Max received his Wisconsin Certified Wild Mushroom Identifier credential in 2023 at the first certification class held in Wausau, WI, where he lives.

​Max holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he went on to teach for 4 years in ceramics. He has taught across the US at such schools as Pratt Institute of Art and Design in New York, Southern Oregon University, and most recently at UW Stevens Point. He has taught a wide range of classes including ceramics, drawing, 2D, 3D, photography and sculpture. He has exhibited widely across the US and in the Czech Republic and has acquired a number of grants and awards, which can be viewed through his CV.

Max began to develop a strong interest in the outdoors in New York while surfcasting on the beaches of the Atlantic in 2012. He moved back to Southern Oregon where he started fly fishing and exploring the world of wild mushrooms in 2014. Max moved to
Wausau in 2017 and was smitten by the abundance of mushrooms that year, and began to investigate the world of mycology more intently.

The last several years Max has been devoted to learning various aspects of mushrooms including but not limited to
identification, culinary, medicinal, extraction, propagation, association with trees and the broader landscape, anthropology, derivation of language and morphology.

He has two nascent social media pages including Max Reinhardt Mushroom Forays on Facebook and @reinhardtmushromforays on Instagram. Max is engaged with conservation in the midwest in humble but earnest ways including volunteering for Protect the Porkies, signing dozens of petitions a year, frequently collecting trash in the woods and educating the local community about wild mushrooms.

He would like to continue to contribute to the Wisconsin Mycological Society, the North American Mycological Association and various conservation interests as he is deeply
concerned about climate change, logging, mining and various environmental issues.

Max is a single father who enjoys spending as much time out of doors as possible with his son.