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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" then, 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
HCC STAFF
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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. |
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Samantha Garcia
Staff - Programs Coordinator & Resident Herbalist (she/her) Samantha Garcia is a student of her ancestors. She is dedicated to walking in the footsteps of those who came before her as curanderxs, healers, and seers. She came to Yelamu/San Francisco as a small child in the early 80s due to the civil war in her mother country, El Salvador/Cuscatlan. Early assimilation in the U.S. has given her many privileges but reclaiming her cultura is her joy and soul's work. She knows that to share her indigenous wisdom is to heal intergenerational ancestral wounds. Samantha has a B.A. in Psychology from U.C. Berkeley. Other relevant studies include: Shamanic Apprenticeship including the rites of the Munay-Ki transmissions with Earth Caretakers, Flower Essence Practitioner Certification, Herbal Foundation Certification from the Berkeley Herbal Center, Indigenous Holistic Womb Wellness with Panquetzani and Metztli Torres, Ancestral Healing Practices with Daniel Foor. She also has ongoing studies in curanderismo and indigenous wisdom with various teachers including Veronica Iglesias and Lisa Martinez. |
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Yoli Alma-Flor
Staff - Digital Comms Coordinator (they/elle/flor) Yoli is an interdisciplinary performance artist and embodiment facilitator exploring the intersections between queer intimacy, playful choreographies, land-based sentience, curanderx medicine ways, and indigenous cosmologies. They are the “creative visionary” of Teatro De La Vida, a fluid “performance-based healing ensemble” where the roads of ancestral arts and healing practices meet performance art and experimental theatre. They have a BA in Studio Art from Pomona College and a permaculture certificate through Soulflower Farm, and is currently working on their DIY PhD on “El Cuerpo Presente”, an embodied research project centering the connection between our body, our presence, and the Teachers of La Tierra rooted in “Mexican Curanderismo'' traditions. IG: @este_embodied Website: esteembodied.com |
HCC Core Members
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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. |
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Christhmus Presence Core Member (she, we, Soul) Christhmus Presence is a Chinese-American Queer, 3.5-generations settled on Muwekma Ohlone land (San Francisco) by Ancestors’ way of Guangdong Province, China. Pillars that guide them are liberation psychology, narrative psychology, somatic psychology, spirituality, and expressive arts. Tools held in support of self-resourcing and liberation, clarity, and ancestral connectivity include Meditation, Tapping, Ritual, Brainspotting, and ongoing training under Resmaa Menakem: LCSW & author of My Grandmother’s Hands. Christhmus enjoys the outdoors, creative expression, the power of community, and being in water. Website: www.christhmuspresence.com Email: [email protected] FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/christhmus Group Therapies: https://tinyurl.com/GroupTherapy4BIPOC |
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Nekia Wright Core Member (she/her) Nekia Wright is an education specialist, wellness & healing coach and facilitator, and musician based out of San Francisco, CA with over 10 years of experience teaching adults and children globally. Music, self-care, & community are her primary tools as an advocate for healing, self-determination, and justice. She serves as a special education teacher with the Oakland Unified School District. She’s a certified African traditional healer through the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healer’s Association and will be expanding her teaching and healing practice to Africa. |
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Rachel Bryant, MA 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 Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 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 works 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 Behavioral Health Care Services and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, where she championed the peer movement working with transition-age youth. 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. |