We want to build a community of ripples: individuals transforming themselves and their relationships in order to spread outward.
Amanda Ford
Amanda Ford is a certified yoga instructor and currently teaches classes at the Sacred Falls International Mediation Center. She works at BYU-Hawaii and teaches courses for the Intercultural Peacebuilding program. Her classes focus on mindfulness, building and improving personal and family relationships and working through personal conflict to find deeper inner peace.
Amanda’s passion is teaching and helping students improve relationships and find peace in who they are and who the want to become. She also has a strong belief in empowering women and helping them feel confident and able to use their voice.
Amanda has a bachelor’s degree in Social Work from BYU-Provo and a master’s degree from the University of Utah in Social Work, with an emphasis on Mental Health and Counseling. While studying at BYU, she worked closely with families in the community to help build better parent-child relationships. She also has experience working with individuals with disabilities.
In her free time, Amanda loves to explore the island, either in the ocean or hiking in the mountains. She loves practicing and teaching Yoga and meditation. She is currently taking courses and learning more about mindfulness and meditation so she can incorporate these skills into her classes and will be teaching a mindfulness class at BYUH this winter semester. She has a big blended family with eight beautiful and amazing children who keep her life busy and full of excitement and joy. She is continually striving to find balance between being a mom, a wife and fulfilling her vocation as she teaches and serves in the community.
Sharla Watene
Sharla Watene grew up in Los Angeles, California. She attended Brigham Young University-Idaho and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science in Child Development. She then attended Loma Linda University in California graduating in 2008 with a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy with an additional certificate for Counseling in Drug and Alcohol Counseling. Since then she has worked in several different clinical treatment agencies working specifically with families, couples, addictions, and chronic mental health. She has also taught as adjunct faculty at both Brigham Young University Idaho and in Hawaii teaching Psychotherapy, Parenting, and Family Science courses.
Sharla has been married for almost 13 years to her husband and has 4 children. Sharla and her family moved to Auckland New Zealand as an opportunity for family to learn more of their cultural heritage, and provide an opportunity for her children to understand Pacifica and their ties to it.
Sharla is passionate about mental health and especially how approaching clinical care holistically can help to strengthen and tie families together across cultures. She currently works part-time at LDS Family Services in Auckland providing psychotherapy to families and individuals.
Paula Airth
Paula Airth loves connecting with people, running slowly in beautiful places and making things people can see and touch.
She designs visual systems and experiences with an emphasis on information graphics and publications for non-profits and social entreprenuers. Her work has been recognized by How International’s annual design competition and Creative Quarterly as well as design competitions in the Intermountain and Pacific Northwest United States. Paula is a former chapter president and education chair for AIGA, the professional association for design.
Paula is an Associate Professor of Design at Western Washington University. She recently returned from a year in New Zealand researching co-design practices and looks forward sharing her experiences with her students. She teaches everything from the foundational design courses through capstone seminars and workshops.
She practices her design thinking, power sharing and teaching skills with four daughters, who are (mostly) willing betas.
Paula is interested in the overlap between mental wellbeing, creativity, collaboration and community. She is a contributor to the Enspiral network and Heartwork.
Guest facilitators
Lorrine Headrick
Lorrine Headrick was born in Auckland, new Zealand. She left one paradise for another and graduated BYU-Hawaii with a BS in Exercise Sports Science, a husband and a baby.
20 years later raising four daughters has not only taught her how to be a professional taxi driver, hair dresser and 5 minute meal prep specialist, but also developed a deep awe and appreciation for women.
Lorrine is Certified as a Precision Nutrition Health Coach, ACE Personal Trainer and Sports Conditioning Specialist.
She is passionate about raising and uplifting women to recognize their worth, act on it and make meaningful connections with each other.
Shannon McCune Dickerson
Shannon McCune Dickerson loves being with people and helping them find more ease with themselves and their loved ones. She feels most deeply herself when she’s outside, on the water, camping, writing, with horses, or deep in conversation with dear friends. She is in the midst of raising four wild and woolley children with her husband and learning from the five of them daily. She loves learning and trying new things, especially alongside friends who know what they are doing.
Shannon has a masters in Adult and Community Education from University of British Columbia, and has worked in experiential education and social services for the past 15 years doing everything from wilderness therapy in the Utah dessert to leading parenting groups to teaching teens social and emotional skills through their relationships with horses to providing in home family counselling.
Nita Harker
Nita was born in Vancouver, BC but is happy to call Bellingham home today. She is a mom of three, has a PhD in sociology, and teaches at a local community college. Her research has often centered around gender and motherhood. In recent years she has been practicing meditation techniques, in her own life as well as in the classroom. She loves to travel, make things, and hang out with her people.
Pamela Pursley
Pamela Pursley was born and raised in Whatcom county, Washington. Her life has been a beautiful and terrifying experiment in finding joy and learning love and patience. She is the daughter of Latino parents with two younger brothers, one of whom has severe autism. She studied Communication Sciences and Disorders, Spanish, and English language education at Western Washington University, where she met her first husband and married in 2015. Their daughter was born in 2017.
*cue trial of faith*
*fast forward 2 years*
She’s since changed careers twice. Cosmetics became a therapeutic outlet and she decided to journey into makeup artistry. Since then she found her way back into the world of education and advocacy. She is now married to her second husband, a loving, patient, and compassionate partner that has brought happiness and peace into her life. She shares the stories of her challenges as a way to help others find their own inner power.
Chad Ford
Chad Ford is an associate professor of International Cultural Studies and director of the McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU-Hawaii. He has led peace building workshops and meditations around the world and has served as a senior consultant and facilitator for the Arbinger Institute for the past decade.
Chad is also an executive board member of the non-profit organisation PeacePlayers. He designed the peace building curriculum used by PeacePlayers in the Middle East, trained thousands of coaches, staff and participants in Arbinger-inspired workshops, helped start PeacePlayers’ programs for inner city youth and law enforcement officers, and guided efforts to bring together participants from conflict zones around the world.
Chad has a bachelors degree from BYU-Hawaii, a masters degrees from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law School.
He was a co-founder and former CEO of Sportstalk.com, a successful internet start-up that was purchased by ESPN in 2001. Chad spent 17 years as a senior editor and writer at ESPN focusing primarily on the NBA draft. He is the author of a number of articles about peace building both academic journals and the popular press and the forthcoming book Dangerous Love: Letting Go of Fear in the Face of Conflict.
Venerable Fred
Venerable Fred is a former scientist, ordained Buddhist monk (2012), and teaches meditation. He is the vice-president of Sacred Falls International Meditation Center.