Retreat Teachers
We are very proud of our retreat faculty, which is comprised of some of the nation’s best writers, educators, provacateurs and meditation teachers. Each retreat is led by one host, one meditation teacher and at least one person playing the role of “yeast” — someone who helps the group to rise by synthesizing, provoking, and providing insight.
Adrian Ayson - Yeast
Adrienne Maree Brown - Host
Adrienne Maree Brown is the Executive Director of the Ruckus Society. She also serves on the boards of Wiretapmag.org, the Brower Center, the Allied Media Conference, and National Healthcare-NOW. Also known as a co-founder of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters, Adrienne was co-editor of the youth organizing collection How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. As a writer, singer, and organizer, Adrienne has been involved in the growth of many organizations, most recently the New Orleans Network, the Future 5000, and the Arctic Indigenous Alliance. She believes actions speak louder than words, she's trying to live that way.
Marge Bruchac
Margaret (Marge) Bruchac, PhD, is an Abenaki Indian with roots in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and deep research interests in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont and Massachusetts.
Her research, writing, and performance work focus on decolonizing museum representations of Native American Indian peoples, recovering culturally appropriate versions of indigenous oral traditions, tracing the situated knowledges contained in Native family stories, and investigating the resonance of transculturalism and transnationalism in American history. Dr. Bruchac has done exhibition consulting for Historic Deerfield, Old Sturbridge Village, and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, among other museums. She serves as the Five College Repatriation Research Liaison, a Trustee of Plimoth Plantation (and an advisor to that museum's Wampanoag Indigenous Program), and a member of the Indigenous Archaeology Advisory Board for the World Archaeology Congress. Marge has performed Abenaki songs, stories, and dances at the First Nations Festival, Keepers of the Word Festival, Missisquoi Abenaki Nation PowWow, Old Songs Festival, and more than 300 other venues. The Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers recognized Bruchac as "Storyteller of the Year" with awards for public performance in 2000, historical writing in 2002, and academic writing in 2004. Dr. Bruchac has taught college courses on Native American studies as visiting faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Keene State College, and Tufts University. In 2006, she was a Visiting Indigenous Fellow at Harvard University, and in 2007, she was the McLellan Visiting Professor in North Country History at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Her children's book "Malian's Song" (2006 for the Vermont Folklife Center) recently won the American Folklore Society Aesop Award.
Roberto Chene - Yeast
Roberto holds a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Pastoral Theology, and has done postgraduate work in Social Welfare Policy at University. He is the director of the Center for Intercultural Leadership Training and Conflict Resolution in N.M. He is deeply rooted in the Chicano-Latino community and has taught "Cross-Cultural Education "and "Latinos and Public Policy" at the New Mexico. He consults with many organizations in Multicultural Organizational Development and is currently working with two major religious organizations as they initiate programs to eliminate institutionalized racism. He has conducted trainings, presentations, and lectures throughout the and has worked in South Africa. Roberto is motivated by his deep commitment to transform relationships of dominance into relationships based on equality. He is currently working on a book of reflections and lessons gleaned from his more than thirty years of practice in the building of multicultural community.
Anushka Fernandopulle - Meditation Teacher
Anushka Fernandopulle has practiced dharma in the Theravada Buddhist tradition for over 15 years in meditation centers and monasteries in the USA, India, and Sri Lanka. Anushka enjoys teaching meditation to those working for social justice and currently serves as vice-chair of the board for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which brings together contemplation and progressive social action. Anushka also works as an organizational development consultant, helping nonprofits function more effectively. Her work in this area is informed by a B.A. in social anthropology/comparative religions from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management. Anushka also enjoys hiking and creative arts.
Carolyn Finney -Yeast
Carolyn Finney was born in New York and grew up on an estate where her father was the caretaker and her mother the housekeeper. Though the land was not their own (her family resided in the gardener’s cottage), her parents poured their love into the land. Staying close to her roots, Carolyn pursed an acting career for eleven years, both in New York and Los Angeles. But a backpacking trip around the world in 1987 changed the course of her life. She spent the next five years traveling and living in Africa and Nepal, respectively. Motivated by these experiences, Carolyn returned to school in 1994 to complete her undergraduate degree, focusing on women and development in Kenya. She then pursued a Masters degree in international development, investigating women’s participation in community forestry management in Nepal. She recently completed her Ph.D. in geography at Clark University in Massachusetts. As a Canon National Parks Science Scholarship recipient, she focused her dissertation research on cultural and environmental encounters in the U.S, highlighting how they are gendered and racialized. In particular, her research seeks to broaden our understanding of African Americans and environment interactions by exploring how the attitudes and beliefs of African Americans are influenced by racialized constructions and representations, informing how African Americans participate in the use of national forests and parks. She is currently a Newhouse/Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in Environmental Studies and Humanities. She began her position as Assistant Professor in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley in July 2007. The journey continues!
Peter Forbes - Host
Steven Glazer - Host
Steven lives with his wife and two daughters in Thetford Center, Vermont. Director of the award-winning Valley Quest program, he is the editor of “Valley Quest: 89 Treasure Hunts in the Upper Valley” and “Valley Quest II: 75 More Treasure Hunts in the Upper Valley”; the co-author of “Questing: a Guide to Creating Community Treasure Hunts”; and author of “The Heart of Learning: Spirituality in Education”. Steven received his MA from the University of Chicago in 1986, and has worked with Valley Quest since 1999, helping more than 100 school and community groups study and share their natural and cultural treasures. Prior to joining Valley Quest, he spent seven years at The Naropa Institute, where he co-founded Naropa’s School of Continuing Education and co-directed Naropa’s landmark Spirituality in Education Conference (1997).
Toby Herzlich - Host
Toby is a facilitator and trainer with a background in community development, organizational excellence, conflict resolution, and participatory strategic planning. Her work focuses on developing leadership within progressive nonprofits, supporting values-based planning in grassroots organizations, and cultivating visionary leadership among women and young adults. With a practice aimed toward the diverse needs of multicultural groups, Toby's participatory methods emphasize dialogue and collaborative problem-solving, fostering collective intelligence toward sustainable solutions. Toby is a co-designer and trainer of "Cultivating Women's Leadership," a program for women working toward social change and environmental sustainability, and has worked in war-torn areas of the Middle East and the Balkans to create networks of emerging women leaders. Based in Santa Fe, her clients include not-for-profit organizations in the Southwest as well as national and international organizations, environmental consensus-building groups, arts organizations and public arts agencies, foundations, and city, state and federal policy-makers. Toby is a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Program. She chairs the board of the Ocamora Retreat Center and is on the faculty of the Academy for the Love of Learning, both in New Mexico, and is also on the faculty of the Center for Whole Communities in Vermont. Recent clients include UNESCO's Creative Cities Alliance, Bioneers, the Wilderness Society, and CODEPink Women for Peace. Toby is an avid gardener and telemark skier, and loves to take in the views from high mountaintops.
Wendy Johnson - Meditation Teacher
Wendy Johnson has lived and practiced Zen and organic horticulture at Green Gulch Farm for more than 30 years. A lay-ordained dharma teacher in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, Wendy is the author of the book Gardening at the Dragon's Gate (Bantam Press). A passionate environmental activist, Wendy has been involved in ancient forest protection, restoration ecology work, and the establishment and protection of numerous public organic gardens in the Bay Area. Wendy has taught many retreats including Mission Retreats for the Trust for Public Land. Wendy is a wife and mother of two children.
Cynthia Jurs - Meditation Teacher
Cynthia Jurs has practiced in the Tibetan Vajrayana and Zen Buddhist traditions for 25 years and in 1994 received dharma transmission from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh to teach Engaged Buddhism. She directs the Open Way Sangha in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which draws from all schools of Buddhism as well as other wisdom traditions to teach an approach to living in awareness in relationship to the Earth through dedicated practice, ceremony, retreat and pilgrimage. Since 1990 Cynthia has been facilitating a Tibetan practice to bring healing and protection to the Earth by filling and burying Earth Treasure Vases in places of need around the world. Her husband, Dr. Hugh Wheir, founded an organization she also helps direct called Animal Alliance, which is dedicated to addressing the imbalance between under-populations of endangered species and over-populations of domestic animals and wildlife and restoring harmony to the inter-dependent relationship between humans, animals and our shared environment with current projects on Indian Pueblos in Northern New Mexico, in Mexico and South Africa. Originally from Northern California, Cynthia has lived in New Mexico since 1987 and grows flowers and fruit and vegetables on 7 acequia-fed acres at the base of the Sangre de Christos.
Stephanie Kaza - Meditation Teacher
Stephanie is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, where she teaches religion and ecology, Buddhism and ecology, environmental justice, ecofeminism, and unlearning consumerism. She is a long-time practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism, affiliated with Green Gulch Zen Center, California; she has also studied with Thich Nhat Hanh and Joanna Macy. Stephanie is the author of The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees, meditative essays on deep ecological relations with trees, and co-editor (with Kenneth Kraft) of Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, classic and modern texts supporting a Buddhist approach to environmental activism. She is also vice-president of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies and a member of the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter group and serves on the board for the Center for Respect for Life and the Environment. In 2002 she received the Kroeps-Maurisch teaching award for excellence at the University of Vermont.
Matt Kolan - Host
Matt finds his home at the edge of a Limestone Bluff Cedar-Pine Forest on the eastern shores of Lake Champlain. An avid naturalist and educator, Matt spends much of his time designing educational experiences that attempt to reconnect and realign human patterns with natural rhythms and cycles. As an adjunct faculty member at the University of Vermont, Matt teaches natural history, traditional skills, and environmental problem-solving. As a staff member for the PLACE (Place-based Analysis and Community Education) Program, he works with communities to rediscover and tell the stories of their town from deep time to present. Matt also works as an educational and ecological consultant for a variety of organizations and is currently combining his passion for ecology and education in an interdisciplinary PhD program where he is hoping to better understand the best practices and principles that guide design of educational systems toward healthy, sustainable, whole communities.
Melissa Nelson - Yeast
Melissa Nelson, Ph.D. is a cultural ecologist, writer, educator, researcher, and indigenous rights activist. Since 2002, Melissa has been an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University. For the past twelve years she has served as the executive director of The Cultural Conservancy (TCC), a twenty-year old native non-profit organization based in San Francisco. Before SFSU, Melissa taught ecological psychology and environmental justice courses at the California Institute of Integral Studies and served as editor for the Ecopsychology Newsletter. Melissa received her Ph.D. in cultural ecology with a designated emphasis in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis. Her teaching, research, and community activism is dedicated to decolonization and cultural recovery, environmental protection and restoration, and the revitalization and celebration of community health and cultural arts. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe.
Kavitha Rao - Host
Kavitha Rao is the co-founder of Common Fire which seeks to build a diverse and powerful movement of people with a shared commitment of creating a more just and sustainable world, starting with themselves. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest and oldest interfaith nonviolence organization in the world, and is the lead facilitator for FOR's Nonviolent Youth Collective, leading workshops and week-long anti-oppression and nonviolence trainings for young adults. Kavitha is a yoga teacher thrilled to share with others this practice that has fueled and sustained her own activism, helping her to ground her work from a place of love and creative action rather than merely anger and reaction. She has worked with grassroots organizations around the world and is humbled by the immense commitment and vision she has witnessed from people unwilling to accept that the violence, injustice, and poverty that may surround them is the only way things have to be.
Enrique Salmón - Yeast
Enrique Salmón (pronounced sahl-mohn), is a Raramuri (Tarahumara). He has dedicated his studies and work to Ethnoecology and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in order to better understand his own and other cultural perceptions of landscapes, philosophy, and place. Enrique has a B.S. from Western New Mexico University, an MAT in Southwestern Studies from Colorado College, and a PhD. in anthropology from Arizona State University, where he studied how the bio-region of the Raramuri people of the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua, Mexico influences their language and thought. Enrique has published several articles on indigenous ethnobotany and traditional knowledge. A former program officer for the Greater Southwest and Northern Mexico regions for the Christensen Fund, Enrique now works with the Marin Conservation Corps. He is also an accomplished bassist playing Jazz, Latin Beat, and Avant Garde Freestyle sounds.
Scott Russell Sanders - Yeast
Scott was born in Tennessee and grew up in Ohio. He studied at Brown University before going on, as a Marshall Scholar, to complete a Ph.D. in English literature at Cambridge University. In 1971 he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. He has published eighteen books, including novels, collections of stories and essays, and personal narratives, as well as seven storybooks for children. His work appears in such magazines as Orion, Audubon, and The Georgia Review, and it has been reprinted in The Art of the Essay, American Nature Writing, The Norton Reader, and other anthologies. His most recent books are Hunting for Hope (1998), an exploration of sources for healing and renewal; The Country of Language (1999), a brief memoir of experiences that have shaped his work as a writer; and The Force of Spirit, meditations on the sacred in everyday life. In his books he is concerned with our place in nature, the work of social justice, the practice of community, and the search for a spiritual path. He and his wife Ruth, a biochemist, have reared two children in their hometown of Bloomington, in the hardwood hill country of the White River Valley in southern Indiana.
Santikaro - Meditation Teacher
Santikaro is the founder and lead teacher at Liberation Park, an educational center near Chicago that serves those interested in Buddha-Dhamma. Liberation Park seeks to cooperate with all those dedicated to a peaceful & just society grounded in contemplative & spiritual practice near Chicago. Santikaro came to this work from extensive experience living and training in Thailand, which began when he served in the Peace Corps for over four years. From 1985-2003, he trained as a Buddhist monk, living at Suan Mokkh Monastery in Southern Thailand for 15 years. He was abbot of Suan Atammayatarama and translated and edited Mindfulness with Breathing and Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree.
Deborah Schoenbaum - Yeast
Deborah Schoenbaum became Deputy Director at the Marin Conservation Corps (MCC) in October 2005. For the past 10 years, Deborah has focused her professional and personal pursuits on issues related to conservation, environmental justice and social equity. Professionally, that focus began as a Government Relations Advisor for The Nature Conservancy, where she worked on community outreach, partnerships and coalition building, particularly within communities of color throughout the State of California. One of her undertakings was the expansion of The Conservancy’s public education program — reaching out to a more diverse constituency and encouraging all citizens to take an active interest in conservation issues that affect their quality of life. Prior to joining MCC, Deborah was the Director of Bay Area Urban Programs for The Trust for Public Land (TPL), managing and expanding TPL’s Bay Area Community Parks and Playground Program, designed to help communities create quality public spaces to revitalize neighborhoods, link residents to nature, preserve diverse cultures and history, and create a sense of place. This program focused exclusively on low-income, underserved communities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Deborah is a native Californian, with a Bachelors degree in Business Administration. She lives in Novato, California with her husband, Mark and two adopted daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah.
Mistinguette Smith
Mistinguette Smith grew up in the shadow of steel mills in Cleveland, Ohio, where her working-class grandparents taught her to grow food in small corners of land. Since 2002, she has worked to reconnect people and food in right relationship. At the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts she developed Target: Hunger, a program to address the root causes of hunger in urban and rural communities, and served on the Holyoke Food Policy Council. She is an award winning community organizer who uses house parties, writing groups, online communities and community theater to reveal unsuspected connections between disparate people and groups. With formal training as both a poet and an administrator, Mistinguette works as a management consultant, designing programs that can measure their effectiveness for economic justice, food security, and community wellness organizations. Holding conflict and contradiction with ease, she lately calls both rural Massachusetts and South Harlem home.
Kaylynn TwoTrees - Meditation Teacher
Kaylynn TwoTrees is a Maka Wicasa (earth person) guided by the Mystery, the Earth and the creative impulse. Her work has been built upon her relationship with the earth and with her training with elders from her own African, Native American and European heritages. Her work with individuals and groups has been fed by her relationship with the high desert of Arizona and New Mexico, where she has spent much of the last 17 years. She has developed Seven Directions Practice, an Earth-centered spiritual technology that enlivens and enhances our connection to Earth wisdom traditions, over the past 30 years with the support and help of many indigenous elders. She has carried the practice to prisons in both the U.S. and New Zealand, to universities and health care facilities, and to the Christchurch City Council and Department of the Environment, in New Zealand, to help them deal with Maori culture issues and the negotiations of the Treaty of Waitangi. She founded The Center for Seven Directions Practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico for its continued development and support of the community of practitioners. She has held Scholar in Residence positions at Miami University in Ohio and the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she focused on the validity and use of indigenous wisdom in academic curriculum and organization. Her long relationship with New Zealand and the Maori people began when she was sponsored there by Pu Hau Rangi Trust, a Maori ethno-botanical trust, as a recipient of the Lila Wallace International Artist Award. She is currently living in California and learning to read a new kind of sky.
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey - Meditation Teacher
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey is an artist, friend, brother, son and uncle holding it down in his home town of Holyoke, MA. He is a program consultant for stone circles, an organization committed to sustaining activists and strengthening the work for justice through spiritual practice and principles. With the notion that complete embodiment of his ideals lies somewhere in the dance between relentless struggle and "inspired laziness," he tries to keep it breezy and help himself and others fall into alignment with a revolutionary Way of being. Jesse is a board member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a war-tax resister, and a man who loves sitting around [which some folks call meditation].
Tom Wessels - Yeast
Tom Wessels is a professor of ecology at Antioch University New England where he was the founding director of the masters degree program in Conservation Biology. Tom considers himself a generalist with interests in forest, desert, and alpine ecosystems and the interface of culture and landscape. He is former chair of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation which fosters environmental leadership through graduate fellowships and organizational grants. Tom is an ecological consultant to the Rain Forest Alliance's SmartWood Green Certification program where he helped draft green certification assessment guidelines for forest operations in the northeastern states and adjacent Canada. His books include: Reading the Forested Landscape, The Granite Landscape, Untamed Vermont, and The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future.
Helen Whybrow - Host
Larry Yang - Meditation Teacher
Larry Yang, MFA, MSW, LCSW, teaches meditation retreats nationally and has a deep interest in creating access to teachings of spiritual liberation for diverse multicultural communities. Larry has practiced the Buddha-dharma extensively in the US, Burma, and Thailand, with a six month period of ordination as a Buddhist monk under the guidance of meditation master Ajahn Tong. He is a core teacher and leader of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, CA. Larry’s article, “Directing the Mind Towards Practices in Diversity” was included in Friends on the Path: Living Spiritual Communities, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He is a co-editor of Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, developed for building inclusive, multicultural communities within spiritual practice. Larry has contributed to the groundbreaking anthology, Dharma, Color, and Culture—a volume that provides the perspectives from practitioners of color across the entire spectrum of Buddhist traditions.
Born to and raised by immigrant parents from Shanghai, Larry has explored culture, race, gender, orientation, and the experiences of difference and commonality for most of his life. He maintains a strong commitment to himself to be guided by his curiosity, regardless of the cultural complexities that arise. He has been a National Park Ranger in the desert southwest and northern California, a trained forest fire fighter, an award-winning graphic designer represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a psychotherapist specializing in clinical work across different cultures.