Summit Presenters

Kerri is the founder of CTZNWELL, an emerging movement to mobilize people into a powerful force for wellbeing for all. She spent seven years as Executive Director of the non-profit Off the Mat, Into the World and is currently board chair. She is relentless in her commitment to elevating leaders, groups and projects to next-level social change makers through her work with The Catalyst Collective, an innovative consultancy designed for mission-based individuals, groups, and organizations that want to be successful and make a difference in the world. Kerri is a skilled yoga teacher, motivating students to effect change in their lives. She’s a fierce coach, whose ability to turn ideas into purpose and action is a gift. And she plays big; straddling the mindfulness and political worlds, so that the social change makers—the visionaries—she works with can mobilize and organize effectively. To learn more about Kerri Kelly and her work in the world go to thecatalystcollective.com.

Pamela Stokes Eggleston, MBA, E-RYT 500, YACEP, is the Founder and Director of Yoga2Sleep. She is a contributing editor of Best Practices for Yoga with Veterans, researcher/author of Yoga Therapy as a Complementary Modality for Female Veteran Caregivers with Traumatic Stress: A Case Study (Maryland University of Integrative Health, March 2018), and a current Yoga Therapy graduate student at the Maryland University of Integrative Health. Additionally, she is the Creator of Sight Beyond Solutions, a business coaching initiative and a cofounder of Retreat to Spirit. An accomplished consultant, advisor, published author and national speaker, Pamela has worked with numerous agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Labor and as an advisor on Congress-supported publications centering on substance abuse, mental health, criminal justice and military and veteran family matters. She has an MS and MBA in management from the University of Maryland University College and served as President of the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors.

Susanna Barkataki is a yoga culture advocate, trainer, writer and teacher. She is the Director of Education for Ignite Institute for Social Change and Yogic Studies. She is the creator of the Honor {Don’t Appropriate} Yoga Summit and Framework and creator of www.honoryogacourse.com dedicated to bringing yoga and equity tools where they are needed most. She is the author of the book Honor Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice. She has an Honors degree from UC Berkeley, a Masters in Education from Institute of Humane Education, and is an E-RYT 500 Teacher, Yoga Therapist and an Ayurvedic practitioner. She is honored to teach in the Sri Adi Shankaracharya lineage in the Hatha yoga tradition and is ordained into the mindfulness tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Susanna supports clients in expanding their leadership integrating authentic yoga through training, speaking, online courses, consultations for studios, companies and nonprofits. Learn more and get your free Yoga Manifesto gift with 15 ways to Honor Yoga at www.susannabarkataki.com.

Luvena Rangel comes with over 15 years of experience in International Oil & Gas, Aviation and Logistics. Born and raised in the Middle East and with an academic background in Science and Medicine from Ukraine, she deepened her knowledge and skills in Holistic Health, Wellness, Yoga, Ayurveda & Meditation to build a reputation as a certified Coach and Trainer alongside her career. Her repertoire includes training with Deepak Chopra’s Center for Wellbeing in Ayurvedic Lifestyle and Meditation. Since moving to India in 2014, she has carved a niche for herself as one of Bangalore’s leading educators in Yoga Anatomy. Being a plus-size yoga practitioner and senior instructor, Luvena is the founder of The Curvy Yogi, redefining wellness by embracing diversity and inclusion through practices and education that goes well beyond stereotypes. She advised Yoga Alliance on the recent Standards Review Project, and is a Community Partner with the Yoga and Body Image Coalition and Accessible Yoga. Luvena has been showcased as a Fitness Ambassador for Deivee, Milind Soman’s brand for sustainable athleisure clothing for women. Recently, she was one of the expert speakers on the international Honor Yoga Summit with over 21 yoga educators and social justice agents speaking about honoring the culture, tradition and roots of yoga and working to eliminate cultural appropriation. A powerful motivational speaker, she is a strong advocate gender equity and structured organizational culture. She is a vocal social change agent and lends a strong voice against sexual harassment and domestic violence. Luvena is currently the India Chairperson for Body Positivity with the ALL Ladies League and has received the Exceptional Woman of Excellence 2017 award at the Women Economic Forum.

Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor of Dance Studies in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UC Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. Blu Wakpa is a scholar and practitioner of Native American dance, North American Hand Talk (Indigenous sign language), martial arts, and yoga, and performs and publishes her poetry in a variety of venues. She is also a co-founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Race and Yoga, the first peer-reviewed journal in the emerging field of Critical Yoga Studies. For her scholarly and creative writing, she has received prestigious fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the UC President’s Postdoctoral Program, and grants from the American Philosophical Society. Blu Wakpa has also taught a wide range of interdisciplinary and community-engaged classes at public, private, tribal, and carceral institutions. She is married to Dr. Makha Blu Wakpa and the mother of their two children.

Kelley Palmer is a writer, wellness advocate and community organizer committed to using the tools and philosophies of yoga to cultivate liberation, joy and peace for herself and others. Her connection to the living practice of yoga, a path of mindful wellness and self realization fuels her work, impacts her life and propels her to want to share it with others through her writing, events and guest teaching opportunities. She remains focused on making this healing practice accessible to all, connecting to communities that are normally excluded or ignored in mainstream wellness circles. Being a mother of two liberated souls has created a point of focus that brings these tools to the way she is mothering them and also calling her to share this with all parents. Through in person and online offerings, she centers her work on making these connections with authentic and sustainable tool building. Her writing, offerings and more about her can be found at www.peacefilledmama.com.

Rina Deshpande, Ed.M., MS.T., ERYT-500 is a writer, artist, and teacher of yoga and mindfulness. Rina grew up with Yoga as a first generation Indian American in Florida, at times taught through lectures and mantra led by a guru invited into her home or Temple to share with the community, at other times indirectly, such as waking up with morning practices she still observes in her parents of not talking until the mind has been cleared and gratitude has been offered. As a new public school teacher in NYC in 2004, she suffered from severe stress and found herself in a Yoga class where she was happy to reconnect with Ujjayi breath, for the first time in a class and on a mat. For 15 years, she’s taught academics and pedagogy to kids and teachers in the U.S., helping to found Relay Graduation School of Education. Concurrently, she practiced Yoga and completed her 500-hr Yoga teacher training at ISHTA yoga while learning from her parents and gurus brought by the Indian community in Tampa, Florida and Bangalore, India. In 2015, she graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education Mind Brain and Education program, where she has since designed meditation and yoga research curriculum for the Marines and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her first published book of handwritten, hand-illustrated Yoga-inspired poetry, Jars of Space, comes out in 2020. Learn more @rinathepoet and rinadeshpande.com.

Having been steeped in the stories and philosophy of yoga and Ayurveda from a young age, Lakshmi formally studied yoga at Vivekananda Yoga Kendra and Kaivalyadhama Ashram in India in 2002. She also attended 4 years of graduate study in South Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, where she studied Sanskrit, Tamil, and contemporary South Asian literature. She has been teaching yoga in Denver since 2005, focusing primarily on gentle, prenatal, Trauma Sensitive Yoga and teacher training. She has taught trauma sensitive yoga for Center for Trauma and Resilience and currently teaches at 3 Little Birds Counseling in Littleton and was a lead instructor for Littleton Yoga Center’s 200 hour teacher training program, as well as an adjunct instructor for various 300 hour teacher training programs in the Denver metro area. In 2014, Lakshmi started Satya Yoga Immersion for People of Color, the country’s first and perhaps only yoga immersion and teacher training programs exclusively for people of color. Since 2014, Satya Yoga Immersion has grown into Satya Yoga Cooperative, the first POC owned and operated co-op on the country. In 2016, Lakshmi was a panelist at the 3rd annual Race and Yoga Conference at Mills College in Oakland, California. She writes about her experiences as a South Asian American yoga teacher and about her journey to POC yoga in the Yoga and Body Coalition’s new book Yoga Rising: 30 Empowering Stories from Yoga Renegades for Every Body, edited by Melanie Klein, available via Llewelyn Worldwide. She was a guest expert in season 2 of Susanna Barkataki’s Honor Dont Appropriate Yoga Summit and will be guest-editing the 2020 issue of Race and Yoga, an e-scholarship journal, along with Arushi Singh.

Colin is a nurturer who works with young people to help them better connect with themselves and block out the noise in order to realize their full potential. Colin founded Multitasking Yogi in 2017 as a platform to bring the tools of mindfulness and self-care to vastly diverse spaces and populations: teaching in public schools; leading educator professional development workshops; servicing community events; self-publishing the picture book “Phoenix’s First: An Introduction to Mindful Breathing”; and presenting at conferences. No matter what we are juggling, there is a Multitasking Yogi in all of us and his launch of Multitasking Yogi School (MY School) is an innovative way to nurture the next generation of wellness leaders. High school juniors and seniors already taking Colin’s classes have the opportunity to be placed on a specialized and supplementary mentorship and support track to complete a 95-hr Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher certification (certified by Yoga Alliance). This ensures wellness grows from a grassroots level and empowers young people to graduate high school and immediately have access to employment opportunities and help spread the important message of mindfulness and self-care in their communities.

Michelle C. Johnson is an author, yoga teacher, social justice activist, licensed clinical social worker and Dismantling Racism trainer. She approaches her life and work from a place of empowerment, embodiment and integration. With a deep understanding of trauma and the impact that it has on the mind, body, spirit and heart, much of her work focuses on helping people better understand how power and privilege operate in their life. She explores how privilege, power and oppression affects the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and energy body. Michelle is the creator of Skill in Action, a 200hr teacher training program focused on the intersection of yoga and social justice.

Dr. Terry Harris is a transformative educational leader, specializing in educational equity and justice, racial trauma, emotional liberation, restorative justice, and healing practices in public education. As a yoga and mindfulness practitioner, Dr. Harris seeks ways to explore the intersectionality between ancient healing practices and our current educational systems to help young people and adults to “BE on Purpose.” Dr. Harris, is the cofounder of THE COLLECTIVE STL, a vibrant group of Black yoga and wellness instructors, fully committed to improving the health and wellbeing of Black communities in St. Louis. Our non profit studio intentionally create a healthy and safe experience catered to Black people by offering compassionate wisdom that helps heal the mind, body, and spirit through techniques of yoga, mindfulness, and culturally relevant self care strategies. Our approach is to offer donation based yoga classes, mindfulness trainings and self care workshops to the community.

Dr. Christa Kuberry, E-RYT 500, leads Yoga Alliance’s ongoing efforts to help evaluate and evolve yoga teacher training standards. A yoga teacher, yoga student, and yoga scholar, Christa has been practicing asana for more than 15 years and received her PhD in 2015. Christa currently serves on the steering committee for the Yoga Theory and Practice Group at the American Academy of Religion and has most recently been a professor of Yoga, Comparative Religions, Ethics and Wellness at the University of Denver and the University of Colorado. She has extensive experience in corporate wellness and is a nationally recognized educator who is frequently asked to speak and teach at workshops and events around the United States.

Andrea R. Jain, Ph.D. is associate professor of religious studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014). She received her doctorate degree in religious studies from Rice University in 2010. Her areas of research include religion under neoliberal capitalism; global yoga; South Asian religions; the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion; and theories of religion. Her second monograph, Peace, Love, Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

Melanie Camellia (they/them) is a yoga teacher, writer, and agency actualizer, called to create profoundly accessible spaces for self-inquiry by integrating mindfulness and adaptive movement practices with the spirit of social justice. They believe that the goal of yoga, as of life, is collective liberation and in turn challenge contemporary yoga practitioners to dismantle the systems and beliefs that hold us all back. Melanie teaches group and private classes in the Washington DC Metro Area and as a Founding Instructor on the online class platform Core to Coeur. They offer regular workshops exploring queer identity, body image, pleasure, and agency. Beyond their direct work with students, Melanie co-leads the Yoga & Body Image Coalition and trains teachers in accessible teaching methods for all bodies and abilities, working with queer and trans communities, and understanding power dynamics and consent in the yoga classroom and beyond. They’ve been called a “tour-de-force of encouraging radical self-love” (DC Refined) and listed among the “top thinkers and activists in the field of body positivity” (OmStars).

Amanda Lucia (MA, PhD, History of Religions, University of Chicago) is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her current research focuses on sexual abuse in guru-led religious communities, with emphasis on celebrity and the circulation of scandal in media. Her forthcoming book, White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals, investigates the intersections of whiteness and religious exoticism among the “spiritual, but not religious” at transformational festivals, such as Bhakti Fest, Wanderlust, and Burning Man, with a particular focus on yoga practice. Her first book, Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014) investigated gender and ethnicity in Mata Amritanandamayi’s (Amma’s) transnational guru movement. Broadly, her research engages transnational, global Hinduism by focusing on the dialogical exchange between North America and India since the early-19th century. Her articles have been published in top journals in the field, including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, History of Religions, the International Journal of Hindu Studies, the Journal of Hindu Studies, and CrossCurrents.

Anneke Lucas is an author, speaker, advocate for survivors of sexual abuse, founder of the non-profit organization Liberation Prison Yoga, and creator of the Unconditional Model.  Anneke collaborates with Yoga Alliance to offer support to survivors of sexual abuse in yoga. Her work with survivors is based on personal experience of overcoming obstacles on a 30-year healing journey after being sold as a young child into an elite pedophile network. After nearly six years, she was dramatically rescued and given instructions by which to live. Her adult life was spent healing through psycho-therapy, writing, yoga and meditation, and was synthesized during a decade of service with incarcerated populations and with survivors inside and outside of prisons.  Sharing her healing shaped her message for personal and global healing through the Unconditional Model, a healing modality she developed to empower the self and become free from the vertical power structure. Anneke is currently working on a new book and is represented by Sam Hyate from the Rights Factory.

Matthew is a nationally recognized yoga teacher, a sought-after public speaker, founder of the non-profit Mind Body Solutions, and a paraplegic for the last forty-one years. He is the author of the critically acclaimed WAKING: A MEMOIR OF TRAUMA AND TRANSCENDENCE (Rodale: 2006) and speaks at conferences, corporations, and higher learning institutions nationwide. Matthew has also emerged as a leading voice in the integrated health movement. He won the 2010 Pioneer of Integrative Medicine Award from the California Pacific Medical Center’s Institute of Health and Healing. Previous recipients include Dr. Deepok Chopra, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. Mehmet Oz. He also has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, People Magazine, and American Public Media’s On Being. For more information: www.matthewsanford.com or www.mindbodysolutions.org.

Jivana Heyman, C-IAYT, E-RYT500, is the founder and director of Accessible Yoga, an international non-profit organization dedicated to increasing access to the yoga teachings. Accessible Yoga offers Conferences, Trainings and a popular Ambassador program. He’s the author Accessible Yoga: Poses and Practices for Every Body (Shambhala Publications, November 2019), co-owner of the Santa Barbara Yoga Center, and an Integral Yoga Minister. Jivana has specialized in teaching yoga to people with disabilities and out of this work, the Accessible Yoga organization was created to support education, training, and advocacy with the mission of shifting the public perception of yoga.

Dianne Bondy is a social justice activist, author, accessible yoga teacher, and the leader of the Yoga For All movement. Her inclusive approach to yoga empowers anyone to practice—regardless of their shape, size, ethnicity, or level of ability. Dianne is revolutionizing yoga by educating yoga instructors around the world on how to make their classes welcoming and safe for all kinds of practitioners. Dianne is the author of Yoga for Everyone (DK Publishing, Penguin Random House) and a frequent contributor to Yoga International, DoYouYoga, Yoga Girl, and Omstars. She has been featured in publications such as The Guardian, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, and People. Dianne’s commitment to increasing diversity in yoga has been recognized in her work with Pennington’s, Gaiam, and the Yoga & Body Image Coalition, as well as in speaking engagements at Princeton and UC Berkeley on Yoga, Race, and Diversity. Her writing is published in Yoga and Body Image Volume 1, Yoga Rising, and Yes Yoga Has Curves. Find Dianne online on IG, Facebook and Twitter or at diannebondyyoga.com and yogaforalltraining.com

Ryan McGraw approaches every class with the belief that everyone can do yoga. As a person with cerebral palsy who has been practicing yoga for 15 years, Ryan is well aware that yoga poses can be adapted to meet the needs of the student, no matter what their ability level is. Ryan earned his 200-hour yoga teaching certificate in 2011 and has completed two adaptive yoga teacher training with Matthew Sanford. Ryan received his Master’s Degree in Disability and Human Development from the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 2013. For his Master’s Thesis, Ryan created an adapted yoga manual for people with disabilities. He has written about his yoga experience in Yoga and Body Image, a collection of essays from people who are not the average yoga practitioner and recently published an article in Yoga International why it is essential to teach accessible yoga in 200 hour teacher training courses. Ryan is the Healthcare Community Organizer at Access Living in Chicago, where he advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of society.