TEAM
Michael Foster, Ed.D., M.P.H.
Dedicated to advancing equity through empowerment evaluation, throughout his career, Michael Foster, Ed.D., M.P.H., has worked on efforts to empower individuals from marginalized communities. He has worked for more than a decade as a consultant at the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The overarching goal of the Leadership Institute is to build leadership capacity within and across Native American communities throughout New Mexico. Through this work, Dr. Foster has contributed his expertise in program evaluation and curriculum development. To learn more visit Epic Evaluation Services.
Chief Jake Singer is an AVF advisor and sits on the Northeast Council for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He is a Dine Navajo Medicine Man, Sun Dance Chief, Ceremonial Leader and decorated Vietnam Veteran. He conducts many traditional ceremonies for his community and has been working for twenty-plus years on bringing awareness to support Native American Veterans, as the Commander of Walk with the Warriors, an advocacy and education organization for Native American Veterans. In that role, he walked across the entire continental United States and has held traditional ceremonies in Washington DC to bring awareness to this issue. Currently, there is a bill in the House, proposed by the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, Deb Holland, to officially establish November 7th as a Federally-recognized Native American Veteran’s Day holiday. Jake is also Lev Natan’s adopted grandfather.
Red Eagle (Shawn Stevens) is an AVF advisor and sits on the Northeast Council for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He is an enrolled member of this nation’s First People, whose ancestral homelands are the Berkshires, including the entire Hudson Valley. He is active in the organizing of our annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series. As a member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans, he is a Native American culturalist, artist, musician, and ceremonial helper, drawing on experience from living a Native American spiritual way of life. Apart from his beautiful artwork, which can be found in all 50 states and 14 countries, he is also a traditional Native American storyteller, drummer, dancer, singer, and flute player. Shawn is an ordained minister of the Universal Church of Light and a certified facilitator of White Bison’s Mending Broken Hearts.
Susan Jameson - Event Coordinator
Susan is a passionate interfaith minister who has dedicated the last four decades to the pursuit of awakening through multiple faith traditions including the non-dual path of A Course in Miracles. She is the Founder of Humanity in Concert and has served as co-founder and co-director of Healing winds, a not for profit organization which focused on Native American teachings, education, culture and healing traditions, and was the producer of the Rock, Rattle & Drum Pow Wow which was a well loved, signature event of the Berkshires for more than a decade.
Diana Chaplin - Communications Advisor
Diana brings over 15 years of experience in marketing and communications strategy in both nonprofit and startup organizations with a distinct passion for sustainability, regenerative leadership, and storytelling. Most notably her recent experience includes being the Marketing Director at global reforestation nonprofit One Tree Planted, establishing the organization as a media-savvy environmental brand and growing a robust internal team as the organization funded the planting of over 40 million trees. She oversaw content throughout all web, email, social media, and custom distribution channels, and developed key marketing and communication strategies across audiences that range from one-time donors to large-scale businesses seeking to fulfill sustainability goals. In addition to marketing, Diana's experience includes fundraising, publishing, wellness, and leadership development through the lens of emotional intelligence after working directly with bestselling author and executive leadership expert Daniel Goleman. Through her work, Diana seeks to develop and promote restorative leadership competencies that can lead to a more conscious, connected, and sustainable world.
Emily Costello - Social Media Manager & Content Creator
Emily brings a passion for sustainability and making the world a better place to every aspect of her work. Her most recent experience includes working with thought-leaders and companies advocating for diversity and ESG standards in the communications and consumer packaged goods industries where she designed social media strategies and creative photos and videos in addition to handling all community management to foster support around the brands' mission. Social media is just one of her many interests as a jack-of-all-trades that loves ecology, mycology, volunteering, mental wellness, art, photography, music, and anything science-fiction related. Above all, Emily believes in creating safe spaces for all to collaborate and be their authentic self.
Michael Johnson - Community Engagement, Training, and Strategy
Michael is a seasoned peace builder who draws on many years as a yoga practitioner for inspiration and inner tranquility. He has inspired people to take positive actions for peace through his writing, personal coaching, public speaking, documentaries, national and local media interviews and community events.
For many decades, Michael has used his creative talents to create documentaries on social issues and global peace initiatives, including the United Nations International Day of Peace
Lev Natan, MA | Founder & Executive Director
Lev Natan founded the Alliance for a Viable Future in 2018 to develop leadership for breakthrough climate solutions and intercultural peacemaking through programs and consulting in organizations, businesses and communities. Since 2010, Lev has been catalyzing breakthroughs for changemakers, as a leadership coach, organizational consultant, men’s group facilitator, & sound healer. He holds an MA in Organizational Leadership.
Lev is also certified as an Integrative Sound and Music Practitioner and Empowerment Life Coach; and walks a path guided by wisdom teachings from his heritage in Jewish mysticism and the indigenous ceremonial way of life. He pours sweat lodges in the Southern Ute tradition of his adopted grandfather, Jake Singer, who is a Navajo Medicine Man. He also vision quests, Sundances and is a pipe-carrier in the Lakota tradition.
He is also a proud husband and father, and lives with his family in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. To learn more about his work as a coach, consultant & sound healer, visit www.levnatan.com. To learn about his Tending Fire Men’s Groups, visit www.tendingfire.life.
Yonah Sadeh - Podcast & Video Production | yonahsadeh@gmail.com
Ryan Nelling - Photography | ryan.m.nelling@gmail.com
Dawn Kasper - Photography & Video Editing | dawnkasper@gmail.com
Advisory Board
Joél Mejia is an artist, entrepreneur, teacher, and social activist. He graduated in 2002 from Lehman College with a degree in Economics, but his passion was quickly becoming music production and filmmaking. Things Are Changing Productions, which he co-founded with his wife, is a pioneering social enterprise with a vision of creating a viable market for socially conscious media and to fill the educational space with programs around the principles of permaculture. As a self styled leader committed to speaking about the future in optimistic terms, his approach to creativity is rooted in co-creation and self-empowerment. He envisions a future that embraces diversity and sees the roots of our environmental crisis in the separation we feel from nature and ourselves that has caused this catastrophe for future generations; only through healing can we move forward and help leave this planet better for future generations.
Mr. Mejia has received numerous grants for his work and programs, including: NALAC Fund for the Arts (2007), Children for Children Teacher's Assistance Program Grant (2008), Brooklyn Arts Council Regrant Award (2008), and The Fund for the City of New York Incubator Grant (2009).
Dr. Kathleen Allen, Organizational Leadership Consultant
Dr. Kathleen Allen is President of the consulting firm, Kathleen Allen and Associates. She has been working in organizations for over 22 years and consulting with organizations and leaders for over 18 years. In her consulting practice, she specializes in leadership coaching and organizational change in non-profit organizations, foundations, small to mid-sized businesses, community development, higher education, and collaborative networks.
Dr. Allen has written and presented widely on topics related to leadership, human development, and organizational development. The earmarks of her work are the creation of shared ownership of the results of a change project, long-term sustainable change for the organization, and increased capacity for the staff members and leaders of organizations.
Dr. Allen co-authored Systemic Leadership: Enriching the Meaning of Our Work, has written many articles, and contributed to a variety of books, including The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the Twenty-First Century and Innovation in Environmental Leadership: Critical Perspectives. More recently, Dr. Allen has written Leading from the Roots: Nature-Inspired Leadership Lessons for Today’s World.
Jalaja Bonheim, Ph.D.
A visionary and group facilitator who awakens women to their true power as healers, peace-makers, and world-changers. In her circle gatherings, which are infused with profound sense of safety and sacredness, women connect in a spirit of authenticity, open-heartedness, freedom and joy. Inner peace and clarity emerge as participants learn to embody the essential attributes of the circle itself: Centeredness, sacredness, balance, unity and wholeness. Women rediscover their own unique beauty and power while simultaneously awakening to the true meaning and importance of sisterhood.
An engaging speaker and teacher, Jalaja has transformed countless lives with her wisdom, compassion, laser-sharp intuition, and warm authenticity. She has trained hundreds of female leaders from around the world to facilitate their own circles and has gathered special acclaim for her groundbreaking work with Jewish and Palestinian women in the Middle East. She led the first women’s retreat ever offered in the West Bank in 2010, followed by the Circlework Training in 2014.
Today, Circlework is practiced in India, Afghanistan, Europe, Kenya, Columbia and other places around the world. In the United States, Jalaja’s students have taken Circlework into diverse fields such as counseling and psychotherapy, spiritual practice, activism and healing work.
Books by Jalaja Bonheim include:
• The Magic of Circlework: The Practice Women Around the World Are Using to Heal and Empower Themselves (2018)
• The Circlework Training Manual (2018)
• The Sacred Ego: Living in Peace with Ourselves and Our World (2015). This book won the Nautilus Award for Best Book on Social Change and Best Book of the Year.
• The Hunger for Ecstasy: Fulfilling the Soul’s Need for Passion and Intimacy (2001)
• Aphrodite’s Daughters: Women’s Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul (1997)
• Goddess: A Celebration in Art and Literature (1997);
• The Serpent and the Wave: A Guide to Movement Meditation (1992)
Ann Renee Rosencranz
Everyday Mystic, Woman of Prayer, Ordained Minister, M.A. in Philosophy and Religion
Ann devoted more than a decade of service as Program Director and fundraiser to the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. She's an instructor in the Center for Sacred Studies Ministerial Training Program. As a devotee of the Mother Waters, Ann birthed the WaterSongline with Omileye Yeyeochun, and sits on the Mothers of the Water Council.
Through her life-long devotion to the Great Spirit, Ann has been guided by visions, dreams and miraculous encounters. In the last three decades she has received initiations into traditions from around the world. This journey brought her to the center of her Star origins in her ancestral Jewish and Moravian lineage. She sings and dances to celebrate the many faces of the divine, offering ceremonial ways of transmutation. For several decades she has joined with her beloved husband growing their spiritual prayer family.
Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D.
An associate professor of comparative literature and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, with a special interest in environmental literature, strategic communications and media campaigns for social and environmental justice.
Jennifer’s memoir, What I Forgot ...And Why I Remembered: A Journey to Environmental Awareness and Activism Through Purposeful Memoir, was one of six finalists for the 2018 International Book Awards in the memoir category. Her writer’s guide, The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer’s Companion won a 2017 Nautilus Silver Award.
The founding director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, which ran from 2011 – 2016 with the aim of nurturing and inspiring women writers of all ages and from many walks of life, Jennifer also founded and directed the Butterfly Leadership Project, a writing-intensive leadership program for teen girls. She is currently co-host, with Rosa Zubizarreta, of the South Berkshire Climate Change and Consciousness Hub, continuing the work of the Findhorn CCC19 Conference.
She offers workshops in purposeful memoir nationally, internationally and online, and provides coaching and manuscript review for authors in fiction and nonfiction. In addition to authoring many articles and book chapters, she is the editor of three anthologies of global women’s writing, including Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America & the Caribbean (Beacon Press, 2017). She is co-publisher, with Jana Laiz, of Green Fire Press; recent titles Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, by Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons (Nautilus Gold Medal, 2018), and Wisdom Lessons: Spirited Guidance from an Ojibwe Great-Grandmother, by Native American activist Mary Lyons. She is also the editor of the online magazine Fired Up! Creative Expression for Challenging Times. Find out more at http://www.jenniferbrowdy.com.
Debi Medeski
Debi has over 20 years experience teaching Yoga, running her own studio and leading Yoga teacher training programs. For 10 years she led retreats in Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru through her center, which she passed on in 2012. Debi has been apprenticing with her teacher, learning the healing power of medicinal plants for many years and continues to lead spiritual retreats along with her husband John, to sacred power spots throughout the mountains and jungles in North and South America. John has been a musician for his entire life and regularly tours with his band and with others. He brings his talent and love of music to the spiritual gatherings he and Debi lead together. They live in upstate New York and when they are not traveling, love to be home with their daughter and tending to the garden, the animals, their bees and their tribe. Debi recently completed her second year at Moon Dance in Mexico where John supported. They are part of a beautiful community of people who have been sitting together in various ways for over 13 years. They run sweat lodges and sacred circles and are eternally grateful to be able to pray in the ways they do and to share what has been shared with them from their teachers.
Allison advises clients on a wide variety of employee benefits and general employment matters. These matters include fiduciary duties under ERISA, prohibited transactions, negotiation and implementation of Department of Labor settlement agreements, tax qualification and fiduciary correction issues, severance pay issues, ERISA reporting and disclosure issues, employment agreements and policies, and employee handbook compliance.
Prior to joining the firm as Counsel, Allison had experience both in private practice and in government. She has gained valuable insights into the practices and priorities of agency investigations, based in particular on her government experience at both the federal and state levels. She served with the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration, where she investigated alleged violations of ERISA and of the Affordable Care Act. Allison had also interned at the New York State Division of Human Rights and Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, investigating alleged violations of state and federal non-discrimination laws.
Allison received her law degree and Certificate in Employee Benefits from Temple University Beasley School of Law.
Allison is a member of the Pennsylvania and District of Columbia bars. Allison is a member of the American Bar Association's Tax Section and Labor & Employment Section, and serves as Co-Vice Chair of the Defined Benefit Plan Subcommittee for the ABA Tax Section Employee Benefits Committee.
Yonah Sadeh, Podcast and Video Producer
Yonah Sadeh is a 16 year old filmmaker, drone pilot and producer from northwest Connecticut. A student at Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock, Yonah has been making films since a young age. He has created promotional content for local businesses and non-profits, filmed several weddings, engineered podcasts, and made multiple short films. His most recent film, PLUTO was a finalist in the young filmmaker category of “My RØDE Reel”, the worlds largest short film competition.When he isn't making films, flying drones or producing podcasts, Yonah likes to bike, box, and spend time with his friends and family. Through film and media work Yonah hopes to spread knowledge and joy, and bring attention to social issues. You can check out Yonah’s work at birdseyeviewfilms.org