Our Collective

Collective Member

Jessica (she/her) is a first-generation Kenyan American cultural producer and healing artist, working in the modality of meditation. In a constant state of process, she facilitates intimate community through the exploration of art, justice and contemplative practice.

Photo: Angeliea Stark

Collective Member

Chelsea (she/her) was born in Brooklyn and raised in London, she returned to NY in 2018 seeking a change in her life and craving new experiences in a place that she longed to know. Chelsea carries a background in fashion design, textiles, and art and, since moving back to New York, has been using her knowledge, passion, and skills as an educational learning tool in the realm of early childhood education. Chelsea comes to Inner Fields to share space and to be in communion with others–together to explore what it means to be human, what it means and looks like to move towards and abide in a place of wholeness as individuals and as a collective through spiritual and creative practice.

Administrative Director

Darlène (she/her/they/them/li) holds a Ph.D. in (Engaged/Applied) Anthropology from Columbia University and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh in Cultural Anthropology, concentrating in Race, Representation, and Systemic Racism. Darlène works at the intersections of Black feminist theory, crisis, and Black futurity. She is a Dharma and yogic philosophy student dedicated to creating healing justice spaces for women of color.

Collective Member

Pia (she/her/they/them) works at the intersection of art, healing and justice. Like Nature, she is always changing; creativity not conformity is her native state. Navigating a truth seeking path, she’s been shaped by her experiences in artist advocacy, creative social practice, social services with houseless young folx, and transformative change studies. Pia is rooted in an ethos of Self-realization as dissent and exploring community-based practices of collective care as modes of healing. Based in Oakland, CA, she holds an M.A. in Transformative Leadership with California Institute of Integral Studies.

Collective Member

Amira (she/her) teaches essay-writing to International students at NYU. Inspired by experiences she's had and stories she's heard living and traveling around the world, she writes fiction and nonfiction with hopes of finding beauty through brokenness. Born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, Amira speaks Levantine Arabic and studies Quran as a way to connect with her family's traditions and know (and un-know) herself. Along with mentorship and therapy practices, meditation has been a big part of her healing journey.

Collective Member

Amanda (they/them) is a queer and nonbinary seed of African diaspora and Ukrainian descent, teaching artist, facilitator, experimental mapmaker, collaborator and farmer-in-training from the Bronx, New York - unceded Wappinger Munsee Lenape land. As a co-founder of alternative education programs, they are trained in Reggio Emilia pedagogies focused on project-based learning that evolves from play, forest school exploration and empowerment through art. Through Map Your Play, they create offerings and hold space for the rituals of decolonizing and becoming through play, mapmaking, creativity and connecting with the ancestral wisdom of the land to empower individual and collective liberation.

Founder, Artistic Director

Elaine (she/her) is an artist, facilitator, and dharma practitioner, living in unceded Gadigal country (sydney, australia). Her work aims to be a direct expression of her dharma practice, and an invitation into radical, ecological consciousness as a necessary curriculum for social, economic, and environmental change. As a facilitator and an artist, her intention is to generate meaningful human connection and a felt sense of community, beyond the confines of transactional, consumerist experience. A question is her favourite kind of muse.

Photo: Georgia Blake