our story of leadership
The Healing Clinic Collective is proud to have been built with the work of some of the Bay Area's most radical, loving healers and organizers. When we began our work in 2013, our first 2-day healing clinic was organized by Carla M. Pérez, Atava Garcia-Swiecicki, Angela Angel, Sara Flores, & Suzanne Snyder. Although it was not called the "Core" at the time, this original organizing committee brought the HCC's vision and our model of ceremonial organizing to life for the first time!
In 2014 we began long-term planning and developed our Core Collective structure. The Core then became Carla, Atava, Sara, Suzi and Summayah Franklin. Tre Vasquez then joined the Core in 2015.
We are so thankful to these foundational members of the Healing Clinic Collective! We wish many blessings upon their life-work and look forward to continuing our relationship with them as leaders within the HCC Network !
The HCC Core & Staff 2022
HCC STAFF
Carla María Pérez
Founder, Core Member, Lead Coordinator
(she/her)
Carla is a dedicated mother and community organizer of Native Mezo American and Spanish heritage residing in Oakland, California. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999 with a BS in Conservation & Resource Studies with an emphasis on Environmental Racism. She has worked on issues of environmental justice and sustainable agriculture with community groups from Yucatán, Mexico to Bay Area environmental justice communities such as Richmond, East Oakland and Bay View Hunters Point in San Francisco.
Prior to joining Movement Generation (MG) in 2007 as a co-founder of the Justice & Ecology Project, Carla spent 8 years as staff at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE). She is certified in Popular Education Training and Indigenous Permaculture Design. Carla also actively organizes in her spiritual community, convening women’s circles and leading or participating in rites of passage and prayer ceremonies.
Today, Carla continues to be a member of the MG collective in addition to being the founder & Lead Coordinator of the Healing Clinic Collective. She is dedicated to developing her healing and spiritual work including studying with her teachers around plant medicine, prayer, energy healing and the traditional Mexican temazcal.
Carla’s hard work is done in dedication to her parents, her daughters and to the Spirit of Creation.
Abi Huff
Admin & Program Assistant
(she/her/they/them)
Abi Huff is an ever- evolving community & clinical herbalist, Herbal Educator, medicine maker, intuitive, community activist, and overall plant nerd. Her passion lies in connecting people to their inner wisdom, and responsibility to the planet and each other through gratitude for, and relationship with the plant kingdom. Acknowledging our ancestral connection to the medicinal, spiritual, and cultural uses of plants is, in her vision, the foundation to understanding plants as medicine and inspires a deeper connection to the magic of our amazing planet.
Abi’s work is rooted in radical resilience and self care, celebration of our ancestral bloodlines, and herbalism as an act of reclamation, ancestral healing, and community activism. Abi has been seriously holding plant medicine for fifteen years.
Admin & Program Assistant
(she/her/they/them)
Abi Huff is an ever- evolving community & clinical herbalist, Herbal Educator, medicine maker, intuitive, community activist, and overall plant nerd. Her passion lies in connecting people to their inner wisdom, and responsibility to the planet and each other through gratitude for, and relationship with the plant kingdom. Acknowledging our ancestral connection to the medicinal, spiritual, and cultural uses of plants is, in her vision, the foundation to understanding plants as medicine and inspires a deeper connection to the magic of our amazing planet.
Abi’s work is rooted in radical resilience and self care, celebration of our ancestral bloodlines, and herbalism as an act of reclamation, ancestral healing, and community activism. Abi has been seriously holding plant medicine for fifteen years.
HCC Core Members
adélàjà simon
Core Member
(they/them or he/him)
Raised in Baltimore MD, adélàjà simon is a first generation U.S.er of Yoruba, Ayisyen and Arawak/Taino descent living and offering a deep exploration of the question, ‘What does a truly regenerative, purposeful and place-based human lifeway, rooted in ancestral praise look like, feel like, and take to create and sustain?’
The process of chewing on this question is bringing forth the work of emergeazurescens, integrating modalities of bodywork, somatic healing, dream work, Holistic healing, grief work, Permaculture, ancestral arts, and processes for mapping the human psyche and framing the stages of human development.
adélàjà lives in Oakland CA bringing forward this practice, working with the Growing Together Project, and building community at Nafsi Ya Jamii.
Core Member
(they/them or he/him)
Raised in Baltimore MD, adélàjà simon is a first generation U.S.er of Yoruba, Ayisyen and Arawak/Taino descent living and offering a deep exploration of the question, ‘What does a truly regenerative, purposeful and place-based human lifeway, rooted in ancestral praise look like, feel like, and take to create and sustain?’
The process of chewing on this question is bringing forth the work of emergeazurescens, integrating modalities of bodywork, somatic healing, dream work, Holistic healing, grief work, Permaculture, ancestral arts, and processes for mapping the human psyche and framing the stages of human development.
adélàjà lives in Oakland CA bringing forward this practice, working with the Growing Together Project, and building community at Nafsi Ya Jamii.
Angela Raquel Aguilar, MA, MPH
Core Member
(she/her/they/them)
Angela is life-long student, mother, and health worker with a passion for learning and teaching others about sexual and reproductive health/care/justice, self-healing, and healing our communities. She is a full-spectrum traditional birthworker, supporting people during moontime/menstruation, miscarriage, abortion, labor, birth and parenting. Angela incorporates the teachings of curanderismo and her ancestral indigenous knowledge in all her offerings; from plants and palabra/laughter, to massage and gentle herbal teas.
In 2013 Angela co-founded Nueva Luz Birth and Family Care alongside her birthworker sister, Alejandra Olguin. Together, they consult about and facilitate womxn's healing circles and community workshops in the Bay Area on the interconnection of self-healing, birthwork, and curanderismo.
As a parent, partner, and community member, Angela is dedicated to teaching and promoting radical social justice principles based on teachings by communities of color and local and global indigenous knowledges. Her commitment to ensuring that mental/physical/spiritual/environmental health are understood in relation to one another are based on her foundational intention of passing this knowledge to the generations that follow, and reigniting the memories and knowledges of those that came before. Angela also teaches reading and composition at UC Berkeley in the Chicanx and Native American Studies Programs.
She is a proud community college transfer student who graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and Anthropology in 2009, holds a Master of Arts degree in Ethnic Studies and a Master of Public Health degree, and is currently completing her PhD in Ethnic Studies. Angela is excited to have joined the HCC Core in 2018!
Core Member
(she/her/they/them)
Angela is life-long student, mother, and health worker with a passion for learning and teaching others about sexual and reproductive health/care/justice, self-healing, and healing our communities. She is a full-spectrum traditional birthworker, supporting people during moontime/menstruation, miscarriage, abortion, labor, birth and parenting. Angela incorporates the teachings of curanderismo and her ancestral indigenous knowledge in all her offerings; from plants and palabra/laughter, to massage and gentle herbal teas.
In 2013 Angela co-founded Nueva Luz Birth and Family Care alongside her birthworker sister, Alejandra Olguin. Together, they consult about and facilitate womxn's healing circles and community workshops in the Bay Area on the interconnection of self-healing, birthwork, and curanderismo.
As a parent, partner, and community member, Angela is dedicated to teaching and promoting radical social justice principles based on teachings by communities of color and local and global indigenous knowledges. Her commitment to ensuring that mental/physical/spiritual/environmental health are understood in relation to one another are based on her foundational intention of passing this knowledge to the generations that follow, and reigniting the memories and knowledges of those that came before. Angela also teaches reading and composition at UC Berkeley in the Chicanx and Native American Studies Programs.
She is a proud community college transfer student who graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and Anthropology in 2009, holds a Master of Arts degree in Ethnic Studies and a Master of Public Health degree, and is currently completing her PhD in Ethnic Studies. Angela is excited to have joined the HCC Core in 2018!
Rachel Bryant, MA, Associate MFT
Core Member
(she/her)
Rachel Bryant, MA, is an educator, leader, and healer with more than two decades of experience in public and community mental health. She currently serves as the Chief Diversity Officer at California Institute of Integral Studies, where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds.
With a pedagogical and therapeutic orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis, Rachel is dedicated to working alongside others to heal the soul wounds of poverty, violence, and addiction in our communities. She has administered behavioral health services and programming at the Alameda County Public Health Department and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, where she championed the peer provider model of behavioral healthcare.
With roots in South Berkeley and East Oakland and a background in community-based radio broadcasting, Rachel self-identifies as Blaxican and believes in the innate wisdom and intelligence of all people to heal themselves and others. She serves as a board member of the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness, which provides culturally responsive health and wellness services to San Francisco’s Black communities, and as a Core Member of the Healing Clinic Collective, which promotes ancestral ways of healing and healthcare for traumatized populations in the Bay Area
and beyond.
Core Member
(she/her)
Rachel Bryant, MA, is an educator, leader, and healer with more than two decades of experience in public and community mental health. She currently serves as the Chief Diversity Officer at California Institute of Integral Studies, where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds.
With a pedagogical and therapeutic orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis, Rachel is dedicated to working alongside others to heal the soul wounds of poverty, violence, and addiction in our communities. She has administered behavioral health services and programming at the Alameda County Public Health Department and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, where she championed the peer provider model of behavioral healthcare.
With roots in South Berkeley and East Oakland and a background in community-based radio broadcasting, Rachel self-identifies as Blaxican and believes in the innate wisdom and intelligence of all people to heal themselves and others. She serves as a board member of the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness, which provides culturally responsive health and wellness services to San Francisco’s Black communities, and as a Core Member of the Healing Clinic Collective, which promotes ancestral ways of healing and healthcare for traumatized populations in the Bay Area
and beyond.
RaheNi Gonzalez
Core Member
(they/them)
Our newest core member, RaheNi Gonzalez I'naru is a Two-Spirit Boricua Taino Ceremonialist, Sacred Artist, Healer & Activist. They are committed to healing the earth, the waters & our collective wounds of colonization, modernization & industrialization. They are passionate about creating sacred space & altars dedicated to ancestors & community healing.They have taught meditation in many settings including prisons and to women with cancer. As a caregiver, they have helped many in their journey to the other side. They have completed a year long Mindfulness Yoga & Meditation Training, a year long intensive in Commit to Dharma and a year long intensive in the North American Nonviolent Communication Leadership Program. RaheNi has over 2 years of accumulated silent retreat practice, they have completed 4 traditional vision quests & 20+ years of Indigenous ceremonial & Vipassana practices. They are also a Master Gardener & Indigenous Permaculturist.