Attendee Bios
Curious about who else is coming? Here’s a glimpse at the other amazing folks will be sharing their unique presence and gifts at Stillheart.
Lina is an entrepreneur, educator, and strategist, trained in several bodywork and energy work modalities. Lina brings an embodied approach to enabling professionals and organizations to thrive and collaborate with agility, clarity and alignment in the quickly shifting landscape of the 21st Century.
Happy Memory: Jumping up and down on mom’s bed with my (at the time) 6 year old nephew followed by a very enthusiastic and memorable pillow fight - giggling so loudly that the upstairs neighbors started pounding on the ceiling (they might have been surprised to find out that one of the “kids” making all that ruckus was in her 40s )
Lina is one of the co-organizers of the Happiness Retreat
Christine is a perpetual adventurer, who recently left her corporate consulting gig to explore what it means to truly have a fulfilling career. She is especially intrigued by the intersection of human health and wellness, and environmental sustainability. She’d never pass up an urban hike, dark chocolate bar, or handstand contest.
Happy Memory: A recent sunny summer day at Point Reyes, which included perusing the farmers market, tasting (ok gorging on?) Cowgirl Creamery cheese and wine by the bay, and an impromptu hike, with a couple of my best girlfriends.
Christine is one of the co-organizers of the Happiness Retreat
I am a wellness and CSR enthusiast and love to hike, travel, read, spend time with friends & family, cook and explore novelties that life has to offer!
I have to come to realize that in order for us to give more fully in the world, our own souls need to be replenished and well fed.When we live authentically, speak our own voices, and connect to our deepest purpose, it has a ripple effect on our families, workplaces, local and global communities and our wonderful planet.
I have lately been observing how some of the simple things in life bring some much joy and happiness. One day that comes to mind is a sunny Saturday when my husband and I spent the day hiking, meditating on the beach and engaging in conversations, and then a trip to baker beach with some wine, cheese & crackers (all layered up!!) followed by a simple home cooked meal at home. Just thinking about it, brings a smile on my face:-)
Neha is one of the co-organizers of the Happiness Retreat.
One of the clearest ways I experience happiness is when I’m dancing, connecting with music without thinking about it, and especially when I’m “grooving” spontaneously with someone else.
I remember specific events as happy often when they either involve just chilling with a group of longtime friends or when I’ve met and really connected with some cool new folks. The first, most recent, happy memory that came to mind was my wedding weekend. Too many great happy moments to list here.
I’m a Manager for BSR, a global member-based consultancy, based in SF but frequently overseas. I’m Canadian, born in Brasil and raised in the US. I love being an aunt to my niece and nephews, playing soccer, tennis,hiking, and laughing with friends.
I have many “happy memories” from going to a small island on Lake Ontario every summer with my relatives and friends, swimming and bathing in the Lake, getting used to an outhouse, seeing the stars, sailing and canoing around the island, playing cards…
Maryline Daviaud Lewett specializes in green and social innovation as a key business driver for competitiveness and long-term success. Maryline has combined her expertise in strategic business development, sales and sustainability, applied to the sectors of technology/internet, social enterprise, and media for the last 20 years. She received her MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School in 2006. She recently joined Schneider Electric, North America as Business Development Manager EV Business, West coast.
I am an enthusiastic engineer and a UN online volunteer. I love to play with gadgets and think about how they can make our lives better and easier. Photography is my new found passion. I love playing tennis and ping pong, hiking, traveling and pretty much anything outdoors.
One of my many “happy memories” is a very recent trip to New Zealand with my wife where we backpacked all around the south island; kayaked and sailed in the pacific ocean, hiked to the top of hills, ate delicious food and absorbed the beautiful scenery everywhere.
I am an artist, a student, a traveler, an idealist, and an environmentalist. When I was little, mom would take us hiking in the forest and sometimes we would do a silent walk- for just a short distance, we’d space ourselves a minute apart and walk as quietly as possible, to see what we could each see and hear. Then we would compare notes and try to identify the birdcalls and animals we had glimpsed in the bushes. I thought of this time as “hiking without my feet”, because it was then that I used all my senses and forgot it was a hike. I smelled the forest, felt the breeze on my cheek, and heard the trees creaking as the wind touched them. It didn’t matter that I was walking, just that I was aware of the world.
I am a meditation teacher based in the Bay area. I began meditating in the late 1990s as a way of dealing with the stresses of balancing a demanding legal practice in New York City with a busy family life. My meditation practice has helped me appreciate how very much happiness there is in life if we can manage to see it, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.
I’m a certified Integral Coach, and I work with people to get to the root of what happiness means for them so they can take joy in the process of finding it. Helping other people accept just how amazing and powerful they really are, and supporting them as they do things they never thought possible, is part of what happiness means for me.
I was recently reminded of a dream I used to have when I was very young, in which I would spend time with a white seal. In my dream, I was the happiest I’ve ever felt–I felt totally safe, secure, filled with purpose, and totally loved, and everything was exactly as it should be. The more I learn about myself and the world, the more I think that my dream was a glimpse of the ultimate reality, kind of like seeing the world with X-ray goggles. Over time, we inevitably learn to fear and doubt and worry and think that things should be different than they are. Finding happiness, I find, is summoning enough faith to let go of the fear and experience the world like I did in my dream.
I’m an author, speaker, happiness expert and business leader who left a successful career in high tech to be high touch. My personal mission is to help people be happy and successful in life, work and home through positive change. I’ve written two personal growth books: The Goddess of Happiness and Vita’s Will. As the President and CEO of Stillheart Institute, my clients range from spiritual gurus to corporate executives.
When I’m not working you can find me cooking (I’m Italian), exercising (to work off all that food), shopping (no woman has enough black shoes), dancing (by myself like a wild woman), and laughing (especially with my husband and two huskies).
Happy Memory: When I realized I wasn’t the queen bee I once thought, in control of everything, but rather an ordinary goddess with the power to be happy no matter what was happening outside of me.
www.stillheart.org
www.reallifelessons.com
I have cultivated a life-long interest in helping people heal themselves via the mind-body connection. I believe in the importance of treating the whole person and their body according to their particular situation. Teaching the Gokhale Method Foundations course combines my love of movement, fascination with human anatomy, and desire to help others to restore their primal posture—the posture we were all born with.
Finding the Gokhale Method was the missing piece in keeping my body healthy through nutrition, movement, and balance. I have even taken up running since learning the Gokhale Method.
Happy Memory: So many happy memories of raising five children! Seeing the mystery of the world through their eyes, dancing with them through their days, playing games, eating together has given me a lifetime of happiness and pulled me into living in the present moment; where happiness truly resides!
Most of my life was spent at record-breaking speed. It wasn’t until the birth of my son, Teo, that I was forced to slow down. Trust me, this was not easy, but after settling into a new pace I found I had created the space to see what I really wanted for my life. With Teo in tow, I discovered a new way of being and a life I always dreamed of.
My mission is to manifest simplicity and ease in our fast paced world; where creating space, living full, and being you, are all one in the same. For more about the work I do check out my website.
Oh I create happy memories daily – just yesterday my husband, son, and I out on a family bike ride. The wind in my face, the sun on my back, the loves of my life laughing by my side – HAPPY!
simplylivingcoaching.com
blog.simplylivingcoaching.com
I am on this journey called life, just like everyone else. I’m fortunate to have found yoga to help me along this journey. I’m currently studying Integral Counseling Psychology and hope to merge the insights of yoga with western modes of psychology in my work.
I remember the joy of sitting quietly on top of Mt Haleakala in Hawaii with my husband. Oh the beauty and stillness of that moment….
I have enjoyed a long career in public service, helping communities be all that they can be. Most of the time, this makes me happy. Even when it doesn’t, I leave it at my office door and go home where there is lots to be happy about – my creative, loving husband, my two hefty tabby cats, my new goofy puppy and my handsome, sweet horse (although he lives a short distance away).
With Ohio roots and California wings, I am a “down home” kind of person who also loves to explore the world. One of my zillion happy memories is having a September evening picnic and bottle of wine on the Pont des Arts in Paris on a milestone birthday. Musicians, dancers, lovers, students, tourists – the bridge was alive with joy. My photographer husband captured this memory and I love to look at our photo and remember this magical night.
I am the Human Resources Director for the Town of Los Gatos and I love my job, home and family. I am most happy when I am doing creative things — home decorating, baking pretty treats, making jewelry or planning parties. One of my happiest memories is when I sent my children to Grandma’s for the weekend and I did an “extreme makeover” in their room. My husband and I completely transformed their room into a beach paradise with paint, tiki torches and new bedding. We filmed them coming home for the “reveal” just like a TV show. It was so much fun and they loved it!
I am a former flight attendant who grew up in the beautiful state of Colorado. I was fortunate enough that I got based here in the bay area with United Airlines after I finished my college education from CSU in Ft. Collins. I love traveling; swimming and a variety of sports; reading good books; playing fun games of many varieties (Pictionary, ping pong, croquet, etc.) with family and friends; watching “chick flicks,” good dramas and lively musicals; and eating many types of tasty foods. A particularly happy memory was experiencing almost all of those things on a trip to the San Juan Islands last summer where the beauty of the surroundings made the experience even more memorable.
Things that make me happy and are a core part of my identity: Curiosity and the questing, exploration, experiments, wonderment, empathy, relationships, creation, and helping derived from satiating it.
A super happy early childhood development moment: Soviet Union, 1985. I’m a 10-year-old American ambassador of peace touring with a half-Soviet/half-US cast of teenagers and a popular Soviet rock band. We’re performing an idyllic musical about the future in which Americans and Soviets are friends and there is no fear of nuclear war…
Professionally, I’ve worked in market research, strategy, marketing, product development and general management within the outdoor recreation and natural products industry. I began my career as a corporate spook – solving more banal mysteries relating to a competitor’s line speed or strategy for penetrating an obscure market. Somewhere along my path, I amped up my potential to create ‘sustainable global prosperity’ while leading an international MBA program’s Net Impact chapter.
I am an ex -consultant and enjoying journey of finding something fulfilling for next phase of my life / career.
My happy memories are associated with time I spent with my parents, brother, husband, and friends. A particular happy memory I recently experienced is when my husband and I roamed around Sausalito and walked on Golden Gate early in the morning, it was magical!
I am a part-time MBA student at Presidio Graduate School with a passion for personal sustainability.
A happy memory in my life was my first yoga class. I was in college, trying to figure out what to direction to take. A friend of mine encouraged me to sign up for yoga, and I was amazed at the clarity and peace I felt after practicing. It’s been ten years since that first class, and yoga still makes me smile.
I am a Qi Gong and Tai Chi practitioner. I will be in the Tassajara zen monastery in may for a week helping my teacher to lead a workshop. I am a soto zen practitioner attached to the SF Zen Center. I am fascinated bu the brain and how we can acquire tools to develop a way of life that lead to happiness and serenity.
I am an educator & strategist who strives to inspire greater awareness, larger hearts and dirtier hands for a healthier and more prosperous tomorrow. I have been a sustainable business consultant for 5 years, since obtaining my MBA concentrated in sustainable enterprise from The University of North Carolina, and I am currently the Marketing Manager for The Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business. A “happy memory” to share is when I climed the 14,000+ foot Mount Shasta in Northern California in order to raise funds for children in-need, served by the non-profit Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT). This incredibly difficult and humbling experience showed me how hard it is to bootstrap a non-profit and yet how rewarding it is to care for others in one’s own community.
I have dedicated 2012 to Happiness. I read the Happiness Project and have been trying to see my life through different eyes. Finding this retreat today was one of those serendipitous life events that help me to see I am on the right path.
A Happy Memory: Dancing in the living room on Sundays after church with my Dad while we played “Daddy’s Little Girl” on the phonograph.
Lover of natue & animals. Always looking for opportunities to learn and grow.
I am
a woman, a wife and a mother.
I strive, love to live,
and live to love.
I care.
I dare.
My recent happy memory is sitting hand in hand with my husband watching our daughter play on the slide. Simple but bliss. Nothing else I can ask for in life 
.
After working in the computer industry since 1982, I take delight in spending the majority of my energy these days offering mindfulness and stress reduction programs to corporate and community organizations, groups and individuals.
I began practicing meditation in 1985, subsequently practicing with Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center starting in 1993. The practice of mindfulness (insight meditation) has been so impactful in my life, that I returned to graduate school for a doctorate in psychology to explore how I could share these practices with others. My dissertation enabled me to cross the bridge between meditation and business: I studied business people who meditate and the impact that has on their experience in the workplace. Subsequently, I completed a professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. and through the Stress Reduction Clinic at El Camino Hospital.
I currently teach programs on a regular basis at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, and I present workshops at local corporations. Awareness practices, including mindfulness meditation, constitute a foundation for the work that underlie my approach to helping people improve their quality of life, physically, emotionally and interpersonally. Ultimately, my intention is to impart the practices that have made such an undeniable difference in my own life.
www.mindingyourstress.com / www.julieforbes.com
I happily practice child, adolescent and adult psychiatry and psychoanalysis in the San Francisco Bay Area, and am affiliated with UCSF and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Before attending medical school, I was an environmental educator in the redwoods and tide pools of northern California. Since 2009 I have been pursuing my dream of being “”a psychoanalyst in the woods”". In addition to my practice, I founded Profound Sustainability Educational and Consulting Services in order to work on projects at the intersection of mental health and environmental sustainability.
My work in Haiti has included the drafting of sustainable rebuilding recommendations to the Prime Minister and President of Haiti on behalf of the Haitian Private Sector Forum just after the earthquake of 2010. I have been particularly interested in “”rethinking garbage, internal and external”", which has led to my facilitating the inclusion of ecological sanitation in Haitian rebuilding projects, as well as developing environmental sustainability projects that work synergistically to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I taught a course at Occupy San Francisco called “”Composting Anger”".
Many of my happy memories are brief snap shots of feeling, light, or movement. They involve giggling, warmth, love, excitement, sunshine and nature. I have impressionistic recollections of walking in the woods as a little girl with my brother and our dogs, laughing and collecting fresh mint by a mountain creek.
I self identify as a “contagiously enthusiastic joy-spreader” who enjoys creating safe and fun spaces for people to share, heal, laugh and learn. My favorite “safe spaces” from childhood to now include: tree and blanket forts; girls empowerment and book clubs; health and/or empowerment retreats and trainings; and in my 14ft. rubber boat while rafting down class II and III rapids.
Professionally I have a Masters Degree in Applied Health Science with a focus in human sexuality. I have over 18 years experience as a trainer, educator and program director primarily in the areas of sexual and relationship health, personal safety, sexual assault prevention and professional development & empowerment.
One happy memory…
In the summer of 2007, I decided to NOT wait until I lost weight, NOT wait until I was in better shape, NOT wait until after knee replacement surgery and instead DID “the thing I did not think I could do” and became a white water rafting guide. This was a much more challenging and healing experience than I had imagined and I was not even sure I’d be able to do it.
I have been a very fun, skilled and safe class III white water rafting guide for 5 years now. I am happiest when taking first-timers on a river trip. I love sharing the laughter, screams and bonding that happens on these trips. I now have many happy memories created on many rivers in California.
My latest happy moment was throwing a great looking plate in my pottery class. I just hope it doesn’t crack when I fire it!
I am deeply devoted to sustainability: being eco-conscious and having balance in my life is incredibly important. I am of the “all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl” train of thought and play can mean anything from doing yoga,
exploring nature, enjoying time with family and friends, going out dancing, etc.
I received my MBA in sustainable management and have worked with a number of companies in the sustainability sector. I am highly involved with Net Impact San Francisco, and volunteer with local organizations (e.g. the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition) and other non-profits, causes and events.
I heard once that if you like the color pink you had a happy childhood: I love pink.
My happy memory currently…is being with my grandchildren in Hawaii.
I am happiest when engaging with family and friends. Relationships are important to me. For example, my family has spent 20 of the last 22 Christmas holidays on the Monterey Peninsula. Everyone is happy there and we love bouncing off friends that are also visiting the area. I am most at peace there…. relaxes me just to think about it!
I am Jasmine–I grew up in Southern Ca and the Philippines and now live in the Peninsula. I would describe myself as a creative person and love theatre, writing and crafts. I’m always looking for ways to improve myself as a person through books and workshops. One of my happiest childhood memories is spending time with my mom baking and drawing.
I live in Mountain View, retired; enjoy being in CA with all the opportunities. This will e my first time at the Retreat
Sitting on a surf board down in Santa Cruz, just waiting for a wave. I have not surfed for some time, but I loved the flow of just watching the wave patterns.
I’m a bankruptcy lawyer and a part time writer. My blog is scriptinghappiness.com
There are many happy memories but the most recent one was getting married in July 2011.
I am an Executive Director of a nonprofit in the Bay Area. I work with healthcare professionals and local entities and individuals that are focused on improving access to care for all people. Prior to moving to the Bay Area I worked as an attorney. Prior to law school I considered myself a “musician” but singing songs in cafes was… challenging in many ways. One happy memory from my life that stands out is a few years ago when I was weighing and measuring my food (and not eating anything out of a box or bag – everything in its natural state) and was healthier than I have ever been before or since – just the feeling of moving so freely and being free of the desire for more – that was happiness for me.
I am a healer and a creator. I live a vibrant and joyful life. My passions are wellness coaching, vegetarianism, soulful living, world travel, blogging and writing. My favorite memories are watching Friday night movies with my husband and the kids over dinner. That is my definition of pure happiness.
Brief history:
I used to be a programmer (studied CS at Harvard, had programming jobs for a few years afterwards), but eventually became more interested in personal growth and understanding the human mind.
Happy story:
I remember sitting at my computer late at night at a freelance programming job I had in New York watching video from the first seasteading conference feeling inspiration welling up in me. It was then that I decided I had to move to California!