Crystal McCreary has taught yoga and mindfulness since 2007. She is committed to creating and holding safe spaces for people to connect, heal, learn, and build resilience and equity in a world that often takes relentless hold of our bodies, minds, and hearts. Crystal supports organizations, individuals and groups through professional development workshops, trainings, yoga classes and lovingly curated yoga and wellness retreats internationally. Her programs feature embodied healing modalities including: yoga, mindfulness, breath work,restorative yoga and practices, discussion and reflection, ritual, and emphasize the importance of self-care and sustainability as the gateway to social justice and community healing in the world. All services are inclusive and adaptive, trauma-informed and accessible for all. She is registered with Yoga Alliance as an ERYT500 and RCYT.
Kavitha is a mother, facilitator, trainer, mediator, consultant, and healer. As a daughter of immigrants to the US, she has always been curious about difference and how we make meaning through connection to land, community, and place.
Kavitha brings over 20 years experience in the non-profit sector focused on transformational leadership and facilitation, building community and authentic partnerships across difference, and using creativity and collective visioning to work towards reparations and healing. Her understanding of the possibility of change and healing is deeply influenced by her training in yoga therapy, cranio-sacral therapy, ayurveda, and mindfulness. She brings these tools to her leadership and facilitation work recognizing how important knowing ourselves and personal healing is in our efforts to heal our planet and build community.
Since 2006 she has worked with the Center for Whole Communities facilitating retreats and consulting with organizations to cultivate transformative leadership that weaves together and strengthens movements for justice and the environment. Prior to that she co-founded Common Fire, a nonprofit that created intentional communities grounded on justice, equity and sustainability. Kavitha is a member of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute team of facilitators, mediators and coaches; serves on the board for Soul Fire Farm; and is a core consultant to the Wildseed Community Farm and Healing Village.
Over the years Kavitha has partnered with and led trainings for dozens of institutions and organizations seeking to center equity in their work including The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Omega Institute, the Yale School of Forestry, the Nature Conservancy, and the Good Work Institute. Her trainings span transformational leadership, cultural competency and humility, conscious communication, story-telling, nonviolence, consensus decision making, conflict transformation, facilitation and popular education, yoga, mindfulness, and more.
She offers deep gratitude for her many influences – the grassroots groups around the world that she has had the privilege to work with, her mentor Lillie Allen of Be Present, and her many colleagues, mutual-mentors, and teachers along the way.
Sandra Escamilla is a coach and master facilitator who has worked with executive leaders and organizations for over 20 years. Her work with executive leaders is rooted in the notion that transformation begins with a willingness to reflect on your practice, the courage to abandon what does not serve you, and the ability to imagine and apply what does. To that end, Sandra has supported hundreds of leaders to critically examine their work and adopt practices that help them to initiate individual, organizational and system level change towards a desired outcome.
Sandra specializes in working with leaders across different sectors, with sizable portfolios, and teams and who influence and set the culture of their agency and their field of practice. A hallmark of her work is the customization of effective leadership models and practices to respond to the holistic needs of her clients and in an effort to cultivate their voice and empower them to take steps to manifest their most powerful and authentic self. She intentionally integrates diversity, inclusion and equity practices into her work with leaders and supports them to make practice and policy changes that foster diverse, inclusive and equitable learning environments.
Her additional areas of expertise include-strategic planning, change management, theory of change/logic model development, team building and performance management. Sandra also incorporates neuroscience practices that bolster mind body connection and that remove barriers that block potential such as mindfulness and movement.
Sandra has held various leadership positions in NYC including as the Executive Vice President at Children’s Aid and as the Executive Director of the Youth Development Institute. She also founded her own consultant firm, PUSH NYC where she led various NYC mayoral projects that required collaboration and leadership development of executive leaders in city government including commissioner and deputy commissioner level; and she created a leadership model that leaders in the NYC Department of Education adopted and implemented.