I am a teacher, coach, group facilitator, modern ritualist, and entrepreneur. 

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My work centers on helping individuals, families, and organizations to co-create meaningful personalized rituals and rites of passage to strengthen resilience through major life transitions.   

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I am the co-founder of Pandora's Way, a company that helps parents guide their children through the most consequential rite of passage of our time for youth: Owning their first smartphone. 

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Before this, I facilitated several groups through major transitions at TED Courses. I lead presentations and interactive workshops on Thriving Through Major Life Transitions, Family Rituals: Meaningful Practices to Deepen Connections, and The Empress: A Rite of Passage for Heartful Badasses.  I am the author of the Resilience Through Ritual Toolkit, a 5-step process which I researched and produced with the generous support of the Mira Fellowship in 2020.  In spring 2019, I received my MA in clinical psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University’s Spirituality Mind Body Institute. My research focused on how we might integrate evidence-based psychology and educational practices with ancient traditional ritual forms to design personalized initiation rites of passage, imbuing today’s young people with the skills and dispositions they’ll need for the uncertain future they face. 

 

Before my ritual work, I was blessed to spend a decade in senior editorial leadership at the George Lucas Educational Foundation where I saw first-hand the incredible benefits of engaging the inner lives of young people and the adults who care for them. I have consulted on youth rites of passage with the Institute for the Future, and TRAILS Carolina. I have published several articles on Better Humans, Edutopia, the Greater Good Science Center, Education.com, and the Shame Pinata podcast. I consulted with the Institute for the Future, and have presented keynotes and workshops at conferences including The Hero Round Table, Learning and the Brain, Wisdom 2.0, Maker Faire, and SXSW EDU.