About Me

Born in Edgewater Park, New Jersey, I spent the first decade of my life on the East Coast.  I shared my Italian and Assyrian heritages with my family who enriched me with homemade culinary delights, folk dancing, and Christian customs when celebrating the holidays.  I loved nature where I grew up in the country with an inviting forest in our backyard.  My interest in environmental sustainability began when traveling to nearby cities, like New York City and Philadelphia: recognizing the degradation outside my family's automobile window, I hoped to change things for the better, memories that influenced me to join environmental groups in my adulthood. 


For the remaining four decades, I had resided in the Bay Area of California, where the opportunity for advancing my education, making new friends, delighting in outdoor adventure, and realizing my spiritual identity presented itself. 


My junior high, high school and college years had impacted my young adulthood for what I imagined as possible for my life vocation in education and administration.  It was at graduation at Joaquin Miller Jr. High where I read the names of graduating students with my classmate, since we were the top two (2) students in English out of a class of over 700 students.  Thereafter, I was inspired to pursue an academic career.   

In my college years, my philosophy professor Dr. Carol White, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Santa Clara University, had a strong impact on my awareness, and after college graduation, I assisted in copyediting her manuscript on Martin Heidegger while enjoying friendship and piano playing at her home.  Like a Baba Yaga to Vasalisa the Wise, it was a time of my sorting the seeds for growth.
I began employment teaching preschool and third grade.  Later, having been employed at a variety of high technology, consulting and philanthropic firms, my experiences initiated a growth mindset and spirit for diversity, inclusion, and an agenda that respects technical and societal growth with environmental sustainability. 


My volunteerism included expressing my altruism, such as ecological restoration with Acterra and Save the Bay for the land and waters of the Bay Area, California, replacing non-native plants with native plants, as well as leading and supporting women’s and interfaith church groups.  As a former Vice President of Programs for the American Association of University Women (AAUW, Palo Alto), I gratefully was awarded "Best Programs" (Spring 2006) by the community who inspired my support of women's and girls’ education, health, and leadership.  With People Acting in Community Together (PACT, San Jose), I assisted supporting diverse humanitarian projects. 


This decade, while at home in New Jersey where I care for my mother, I re-envision my educational, humanitarian, and environmental endeavors while engaged in the organizations the Global Institute for Evolutionary Women (GIFEW) and The Sophia Circle (Soul of Money). 


I am here to manifest my spirit and vision as Sophia.  I reimagine my life from the perspective of aligning myself with what brings mutual sovereignty, creative expression, and peace with others.  I am an advocate and progressive educator who loves to contribute to the growth of children and families in a healthy, holistic manner as well as to advance organizational development.  My Sophia Teachings advance the equality, equity, and empowerment of both women and men to engage in both public work and life activities in a balanced, harmonious manner. 


I care to contribute to groups such as GIFEW and the Sophia Circle in California and well as those that emerged in other parts of the United States and abroad.  For instance, in Charleston, “The Sophia Institute and Sophia Circles are uniquely positioned to support persons on a spiritual path who seek to grow in the wisdom of the Divine Feminine and whose calling is to work toward a world that could be called a wisdom society. The Feminine Principle is found in the hearts of women and men. The Sophia Institute envisions a 21st century that could be called The Sophia Century: a conscious enlightened world, a compassionate, global community, where wholeness, oneness, sustainability, the conscious heart, deep wisdom, and the sacred are
at the center of life.”  The sacred is where we are embedded as well as envision with planned effort. 


I have been impacted most profoundly by my role models Lynne Twist, Marianne Williamson, Ervin Laszlo, and Brené Brown as well as my educators and GIFEW contributors.  I care to continue educating in schools, as a home teacher, and curriculum writer as well as an advocate for just social policy.  My aspirations include impacting the community for unity, supporting the full expression of our lives in a collaboratively creative way for sustaining both peaceful prosperity and our unified harmony in diversity. 


Let's make a difference in celebrating our similarities and differences by acknowledging, appreciating, understanding and taking action for each other's mutual and beneficial growth!  Being and becoming a world that stands with guided grace in multiple avenues of focused generativity, sustained plenitude, and an attitude of loving gratitude can bring us the foundation we need, now and for future generations.  Peeling off centuries of dualistic thinking and overly competitive attitudes that potentially compromise our potential discoveries and shared lives by instead creatively collaborating within dynamically open spaces of inter-dimensionality---mutually respected with others---is the new balance that can be established and maintained. 


Sustaining a respected and healthy balance that accepts differences while exercising gratitude in what we bring to each other, individually and collectively, can promote the possibility for an enduring world with less suffering.  Expressing gratitude for each other is the beginning of entering and being in The Sophia Century.