I am an embodied writer. I write with Chuyma. I write with Tukuy sunquywan. All of me participates in my writing process. I draw from my ancestors, because that's where our stories begin, where our present begins ... in some decision or some movement that took place years before we arrived to this plane of existence. I keep this in front of me as a reminder, as we also impact individually and collectively on future generations with our decisions. In essence, we are seeding the ground.

Being a writer is at the roots of who I am. Stories emerged for me when I listened to my father talk about our family's movements in the Andes mountains when he would describe walking up the mountain as a child on an old Inca trail or when my mother shared the playfulness of growing up between the hills of New England and the scrabbly rocks by the Atlantic Ocean. These became blueprints for me, the palette from which I would draw from to write moving between languages and worlds to express new ideas.

As a scholar, cultural worker and pathfinder I am in a continuous movement between the grassroots and institutional spaces. I work across socio-cultural worlds exploring relationships between cultural sovereignty and self-determination, between social movements of resurgence and transformation, between knowing and being - where individual transformation and collective liberation meet.

After ten years of walking through my own transformative processes with a healer, people began to come to me seeking their own healing process. Unsure how to respond at first I thought I should prepare with a Masters of Science in Clinical Psychology. Upon completion of my degree and all the hours necessary to become a therapist, I walked away knowing it was not my framework. I went back to the healing foundation I was given and began to work with others, steadfastly developing what would become Root Work.

Root Work is a process through which an individual develops a relationship with their inner reality. One’s inner reality is that invisible place where one’s spirit interacts with their human experience. The inner reality is not “in” the body and it’s not “out” of the body, it is in relationship with the interacting processes of the mind, the spirit, the emotions and the physical body grounded within a given context. These have all been deeply impacted by a colonial past that left insistent patterns of objectification and hierarchical ways of organizing the world according to race and capital (material and monetary). These patterns have impacted the inner reality of individuals, the collective understandings of communities and the ways in which institutions have organized and established themselves. Through Root Work we uproot patterns and beliefs that are not aligned with the nobility of human beings and instead nurture truer narratives reflective of the human soul. Root Work is grounded in the understanding that human beings are noble in nature and respond to higher, spiritual qualities and capacities.

Education & Affiliations

• PhD in Education for Social Justice
• Pepperdine University
• University of San Diego
• California State University, Northridge
• Member, American Educational Research Association
• Board Member, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Guiding Orientations

• Inner Discernment
  Learning begins with the ongoing work of listening inwardly and developing the capacity to move in alignment with one’s deepest truths and responsibilities.
• Purposeful Renewal
  Transformation often requires confronting inherited assumptions and long-standing structures that limit collective flourishing and imagination.
• Creativity & Reflection
  Reflection is not separate from learning; it is one of the conditions that allows new understandings, relationships, and possibilities to emerge.