Current Staff and Practitioners
ID: Photo of a dark-skinned Black woman with long curly locs smiles and looks into the distance. She is wearing a green top, and is surrounded by red and white hanging flowers.
amanda (director/ Mage of Operations, staff)
Amanda is a conjurer of freedom by way of community organizing and energy work. She is a practicing abolitionist working to co-create just - and therefore safe - communities through individual and communal transformative processes. Amanda is a Reiki practitioner who incorporates emotional support and accessible tools such as plant medicines, sound healing, and breath into whole-person wellness.
KAELA
Kaela Harris, also known as Kaela Wabanimkee-Harris is Anishinaabe from Northern Michigan. Kaela is a trainer, facilitator, and speaker addressing various health and social advocacy issues in Indian Country on a micro, mezzo, and macro level. She is a strong advocate for Native wellness initiatives in tribal communities. She is also a certified Reiki practitioner. Kaela enjoys drumming and singing in her language, Anishinaabemowin (ojibwe). She enjoys being part of traditional ceremonies, attending Pow Wows, beading, sewing and spending time with her family and friends. Kaela is the proud mother of one daughter, Kateri. Her lifelong goal is to teach her daughter the beauty of connecting the present world with the past, and to live a well-rounded healthy life with the knowledge of our ancestral ways.
ID: A brown-skinned person with short, curly brown hair is wearing glasses, a gray shirt, and light orange lipstick while looking back at the camera smiling and standing on a nature trail with trees in the background.
Kulkiran
Kulkiran Nakai (they/she) is a fat, neuroEMERGENT, Desi-American queer femme who is located on the traditional land of the Anishinaabe people in Ypsilanti, MI. They are an intersectional feminist and liberation-focused psychologist who loves to serve individuals with multi-marginalized identities. They practice decolonized healing justice work with the use of somatic internal family systems, psychodramatic group practices, play, and plant-medicines to help dismantle systems of oppression at inner-child, intergenerational, collective, and ancestral levels.
ID: Photo of an east asian american woman with shoulder length black hair. She is smiling, wearing purple, and standing outside. To her right is golden rod and behind her is a brick building.
MARCIA (Former co-Madre/Founding Member)
Marcia Lee seeks to create a more just and compassionate world through individual and collective healing. She is a founding member and current co-lead of Healing by Choice!. She is the co-founder of Taproot Sanctuary, an intentional community in Detroit that strives to live in right relationship with ourselves, the earth, and our neighbors. Marcia is a leadership coach that focuses on somatically embodied leadership. She is a restorative justice/peacemaking circle keeper and trainer; facilitates Circles of Trust(c) through the Center for Courage and Renewal; teaches tai chi; trainer of online facilitators; and is a mentor and facilitator for PeoplesHub, an online movement school. She loves to laugh, craft interesting/useful questions, and making things.
ID: Photo of a smiling Chinese-American woman with brown and black hair hanging past her shoulders. She is wearing a dark v-neck shirt and glasses with blue frames. Behind her is a bright white kitchen and a wall of photos.
Marie (Superstar Volunteer, Staff)
Marie is a Chinese-American woman working in international sourcing and procurement. She has a BA in Economics and an International MBA. She has been living abroad since 2004; first in China, and now in Germany since early 2017. She resides just outside of Frankfurt where she works remotely across a several time zones. Currently, she’s at a small Ann Arbor-based company as an international sourcing and procurement specialist. In her free time, she reads, knits, crochets and loves to sing. She enjoys giving back and giving her time to her community.
With a background in e-commerce and digital-tech, she brings her tech savvy and general can-do attitude to HbC! to assist with any general admin needs that can be handled remotely. She has been a volunteer for HbC! since 2020.
ID: Photo of a Hawaiian woman with long, black hair standing outside on a sunny day. She is smiling while holding a straw hat on her head with her right hand. She is wearing two necklaces, a sleeveless, blue top, and a Lauhala bracelet made from the Pandanus tree. Behind her is a sidewalk, a patch of grass, and a black car.
Schantell
Schantell Puameole Taylor is a seeker and keeper of Hawaiian culture. Protector of land, and advocate for culture-based education. She is a practitioner of Hula and holds space for others' transformation and healing that uses dance as a grounding practice. She has studied and practiced lomilomi, cranial sacral, chi nei tsun, aroma therapy, acupressure, wellness consulting, breath work, esthetics and yoga.
ID: Photo of a Latina woman with long, black hair smiling. She is standing outside and wearing a black t shirt and necklace. Behind her is a patio with umbrellas standing over chairs and tables and a reddish brown tiled floor.
YExenia (Director of Healing Arts and Youth Programming)
Yexenia Vanegas is a Colombian American artist, healer, educator and organizer who grew up in New York. She has been working with women healing circles since 2012, elementary school children since 2013 and engaging in political organizing since 2010.
Yexenia is a permanent resident and co-founder of MingaHouse, which has a vision of creating physical space that respects mother earth, promotes collectivity, and creates peace. She envisions a home where all are welcome, warm food is available and political education takes the form of engaging conversations.