Here’s a bit about me! I am a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied woman. I grew up teetering on the lower edge of the middle-class, in a family with both Jewish and Christian practice and roots. My Lutheran ancestors came as uninvited settlers primarily from Norway, and my Jewish family came from what is now Ukraine, Belarus + Poland. I was born in Madison, WI but since I was nine, South Minneapolis, on the ancestral and contemporary homelands of the Dakota people, has been home to me - and I am continually shaped by this community’s legacy of organizing, activism, community arts and interfaith solidarity. I’m deeply committed to this place!

My professional background is in experiential education for liberation and I spent almost a decade facilitating justice-oriented leadership development and community-based learning with young adults. Coaching and facilitation has been part of all of this work, in one form or another, and I continue to cultivate those skills today. My academic background is in sociology - the study of how systems impact our sense of ourselves and each other and these explorations have often had a focus on race.  In 2018 I was introduced to the embodied or somatic dimension of racial justice and anti-oppression work, and ever since, I have been studying and practicing embodied antiracism with mentors and community, now co-facilitating this work of building antiracist culture and community alongside beloved friends. These experiences included apprenticing for a time with Rachel Martin, learning from Resmaa Menakem’s work, and being mentored by Susan Raffo and Tracy Williams. You can learn more about the lineage of my work here.

In order to grow my capacity for somatic work with groups and individuals, I completed a three-year certificate program in Somatic Experiencing (more info here). My world and community has been touched by trauma in so many ways and I am deeply grateful to have found my way into practices that can make a tangible difference for anyone carrying the impacts of overwhelming experience - from the personal to the collective.