Wellness Practitioners
Raji Ganesan
Raji is the daughter of Tamil immigrants from South India, a tenacious sister, and a really fun aunt. She has nearly 10 years of teaching artist experience, including 2 years of teaching high school full time. Through her current independent facilitation practice, she offers peer counseling, bodywork, yoga & meditation guidance. Outside of that, she supports the Health & Wellness programming at ReFrame Youth Arts Center in South Phoenix. Whether it’s through the facilitation of yoga & meditation, restorative justice & de-escalation, or growing & cooking food, Raji believes in the full-spirited grassroots vision of community health that taps into our wisdom and intuition, outside of institutional barriers. She centers the transformative power of love, creative expression, self-determination, authentic reflection, and deep listening in her life and work.
Natasha Burrell
Hello! I am Natasha Burrell, a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist in Phoenix, AZ. I currently work at Mountain Park Health Center in the women’s health department providing nutrition counseling to people before, during, and after their pregnancies. I have a bachelor’s degree in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Arizona. I completed my dietetic internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, CT. I am pursuing further certification in lactation counseling.
D'Hasan
D'Hasan is a Family Life coach who helps fathers, families and single parent households navigate balancing daily career and parental obligations.
As a father of adult and teenage children D'Hasan started his coaching in 2013 to help other families deal with the challenges of maintaining a career while remaining centered and successful in the midst of daily responsibilities.
D'Hasan offers a wide range of coaching services from individual coaching to webinars and keynote speeches.
Kimberly Moore-Salas
Kim is born for Naakaii Diné (Mexican People) and from Tsi’naajinii (Black Streak People) clans. Born in Tuba City, maternally from Tolani Lake, AZ located in the southwestern area of the Navajo Nation. Growing up on and off the Navajo Nation, and residing in various tribal communities throughout her life, Kim is passionate about utilizing her education and experience to promote healthy living through kinship values.
Kim has over nine years of experience in peer-counseling, clinical and educational lactation. Kim’s work has been inclusive of Tribal and culturally diverse communities serving the needs of prenatal, newborns, and post-partum mothers and families. Currently, Kim continues to work at ValleyWise Health Medical Center as a lactation consultant for seven and half years and is serving the front lines assisting families and COVID mothers during the pandemic with breastfeeding and hospital policies.
Currently a member of the Advisory Council Committee for the Navajo Nation Breastfeeding Coalition and she will the Urban Dine’ Community Representative for the Phoenix area. This new role will include breastfeeding home visits and telehealth lactation support serving the BIPOC community. Kim's extensive experience in this field has led to opportunities in consulting, which along with her husband synthesized their consulting business in Tribal Indemnity. Within three years, Tribal Indemnity has assumed responsibility of complex projects and strategic planning with one of the largest Tribes in Arizona. She recently established her own small business, Indigenous Breastfeeding Az, dba.
Kim enjoys spending time with her husband of twenty-three years and three daughters of whom she breastfed until they were 2 years old. She also loves early morning runs, hiking, boxing and yoga.
Sarrah Davis
“Challenges are opportunities for healing and expansion. I am uncovering the gifts found within these experiences.”
Since 2011, I have been practicing yoga and meditation as a way to manage a healthy body and mind, and what became was profound wellness and self-awareness. It became evident that this is a practice conspiring within me, transforming my life in many different areas of health and wellness.
Like many people who begin a yoga practice, I fell in love with the physical benefits of yoga. However, as I continued my yogic journey, it became more than just a workout. I began to feel a change of heart and mind when dealing with depression, anxiety, stress, self doubt and have been on this journey of PTSD recovery and self love ever since. Yoga and meditation transformed into an outlet to access universal wisdom for my body, mind, and spirit. In order to take yoga with me everywhere I went, I obtained my 200-hour yoga teacher certification in 2015 from Vinyasa Arts in Encinitas, California.
For the past five years, I've had the privilege of introducing, sharing, and teaching various styles of yoga and meditation with my Phoenix community. I’ve become versatile in my teaching styles, specializing in beginner, vinyasa, ashtanga, yin, prenatal & postnatal, pranayama (breathwork), and meditation. Due to its tremendous healing scope, it has become a passion of mine to share this ancient knowledge and technology with my community as a true source of medicine and self-healing.
Marcus and Sydney
Marcus and Sydney are a young, dynamic couple residing in Phoenix, Arizona with a budding love for everything moms, dads and babies! As first time parents the twenty somethings made a decision for their new family that changed their lives forever: birthing their son (Mars) at home. Their unique experience birthed a new found love for indigenous resistance and fighting to decolonizing pregnancy and birth. The two of them have made a commitment to use their experience to help empower other young couples in their community to return to native pregnancy, birthing, and parenting practices.
“Fam[ILY] is the only thing a man and woman makes for themselves and by themselves.”
Erik O'Neal
Erik “King Savior” O’Neal is a poet, storyteller, spoken word artist and community activist. Hailing from Long Beach, N.Y., King Savior began his journey of expression at a very young age being inspired by James Earl Jones and Yul Brynner after seeing both thespians on Broadway. King Savior's poetry, a catalyst for change through lyrical expression, a musician, actor, playwright, an overall renaissance man. A true believer in the philosophy of “each one, teach one”, King states he is a Poor Righteous Teacher, sent here to teach, to uplift, to inspire, and to empower others through his words and actions as he must be the example of being true to oneself.
Robert Eugene Carter
Robert is a self-described fiber fanatic, who enjoys sharing the benefits of plant-forward eating with anyone who will listen. As a registered dietitian nutritionist, Robert has experience in counseling individuals and groups, with a focus on self-determination built through nutrition education.
Robert has a B.S. in Food Science and Human Nutrition from the University of Florida, and completed master’s training and a dietetic internship in Phoenix at ASU and the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center. When he’s not cooking, you can find Robert playing music, riding his bicycle, or climbing the nearest mountain
Luz Chavez
Born in El Paso, Texas, and raised until adulthood in Cd. Juarez Chihuahua, Luz Chavez is a Mexican-American Certified Lactation Counselor and HUG Your Baby Teacher. Her journey as a Breastfeeding Lactivist started in 2004 under the guidance of Certified Professional Midwives at an El Paso Birth Center serving the Latin community. Since then, her goal has been to support and empower families as they become parents. She advocates for pregnancy, birth, and parenting autonomy.
She attended a workshop in 2019 about how newborns communicate and their sleep cycles, Luz reclaimed 4 hours of sleep that same night of the workshop, and her daughter was already 2-years-old. Seeing what it had done for her, she went on to become a Certified HUG Your Baby Teacher that same year.
As a first time breastfeeding mother at 35 years old, she has endured the lack of encouragement and the judgment and misunderstanding that society can have towards breastfeeding. This inspired her to create A Parent Is Born, a place to promote, educate, and provide resources that will remove uncertainty and myths about postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, and life with a baby.
"An educated parent is a skillful and confident parent!"
Luz continues to breastfeed her 3-year-old daughter, thanks to the unconditional support of her husband. They still have the great fortune of living in the borderland and enjoying the best of El Paso and the best of Juarez, the twin cities where two cultures coexist as one.
Luz offers classes in both English and Spanish!
Luz Chavez
Certified Lactation Counselor & Hug Your Baby Teacher
LaVern Calvin-Stevenson
Ms. Calvin-Stevenson is original from the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Via Chicago, Il. El Paso, TX and now Phoenix. A mother of four children and eight grandchildren. Midwifery has been a desire from childhood, and she perused since 95 and continued her journey by helping others on their journey in the art of midwifery. Currently Ms. Calvin-Stevenson works in the community educating at several levels. In the recent past she worked teaching students and families in the midwifery arena. Teaching and advising women and their family’s things that support the woman and their family. Her passion for bringing information that is relevant to the individual woman and her unique needs.