Recess Collective

There are few things in life that bring me more joy than helping people like you move from "eh" to "HELL YES" in your life and career. I strongly believe that life is too short to be in work or interpersonal relationships that bring us down rather than lift us up. Our time here is limited and I'm determined to help you make the absolute most of it. As a coach, I'm deeply passionate about creating the space for you to pause, breathe, and look at your life from new perspectives- especially the helicopter view. I see what you're capable of (hint* hint* more than you think possible!) and my goal is to help you see it too. I’ve been on the giving and receiving end of coaching and I know intimately how powerful this process can be. I wholeheartedly believe in its ability to break us out of our spinning minds and into our intuition where the truth lives. I can't wait to see where coaching will take you. CERTIFICATIONS & EDUCATION Certified Co-Active Coach trained at The Coaches Training Institute (CTI), CPCC, PCC BA in Human Development & Family Studies Certificate in Nonprofit Management BACKGROUND Ever since I was little, I knew (without having the exact language) that I wanted to work in the "people development field" in some way. This thread has been consistent throughout my career. After graduating from college with a degree in Human Development and Family Studies, I went on to teach ESL in Costa Rica. Following those adventures, I worked in educational and workforce development nonprofits in the Bay Area for 10+ years. Since starting my coaching business in 2015, I've clocked over 1000 hours doing my very best work to date - the work I feel called on this earth to do: helping my clients step into their power and fulfill their career & life aspirations. My roots are planted firmly in the Midwest (Nebraska to be specific) and my wings are very happily spread here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm married to my love and we have two awesome daughters.

Kelsey Maki is a third year clinical psychology doctoral student at the University of San Francisco and a counselor at Parentline, a free telehealth service for parents with children ages 0-3. Kelsey brings her experience working with young children and families in a variety of settings and enjoys helping new parents navigate the transition to parenthood.

Kelly is a mother, educator and community organizer. When she’s not sitting on a birth ball with a model pelvis in her hand, she’s creating forums to raise awareness and expand access to birthing options in Sonoma County. Kelly has been teaching her popular Holistic Childbirth Prep Workshop for over seven years in the North Bay and Bay Area, and spent several years attending low risk and high risk births in San Francisco, and spent three years as a manager of a birth center in the North Bay running their community education center. She has curated an on-going column about reproductive experiences in SQUAT Birth Journal and has been included in the anthology Birth Work As Care Work. Kelly's focus on hormones and the mind~body connection, building intimacy between partners, and evidence based care sets her teaching apart from the standard birth class; participants leave feeling excited and confident about birthing their family. Kelly is passionate about providing up-to-date information and insights into birth research, support measures, community resources, communicating collaboratively with your providers, and all the powerful dynamics parents face as their children enter this world. Kelly sees the work that she does in helping women and families have empowered births as one part of a life long love letter she is writing to her daughter.

Sydney Gressel, CCRN, MSN, ACPNP PRESENTER BIO: Sydney Gressel is an Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Public Health Nurse and Pediatric Emergency Nurse with a background in Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care. Sydney earned her BSN from Samuel Merritt University, then completed her Masters of Science in Nursing and Nurse Practitioner training at University of California San Francisco. She currently works at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in the Pediatric Emergency Department. Sydney is passionate about health education, and particularly enjoys working with parents and young children. When she's home from work, she's busy chasing after her two girls, ages 1 year and 3 years old.

Join Rebecca Walsh, Director of Early Childhood Matters and mother of three, to learn strategies for supporting your child in the transition to a new baby, and laying the foundation for a lifetime of positive sibling relationships. We will also discuss self-care strategies to support parents in this transition to a bigger family, and screen-free activity ideas to keep older siblings engaged while you nurse, swaddle or maybe even take a shower!

Lisa completed the Advanced Teacher Training program at The Pilates Center of Boulder, Colorado in 2009. Since then, she has taught Pilates in San Francisco and in communities along the Coast. She currently teaches at The Pilates Workshop in San Francisco, where she works with private clients and teaches classes, including those for pre and post-natal mamas. She has also studied anatomy and kinesiology, and is always learning — taking continuing education classes from master teachers in the field.

Leah is a certified personal trainer and the founder of Every Mother™ (formerly The Dia Method®), a fitness system endorsed by medical and birth professionals worldwide. With over two decades of fitness experience, Leah empowers and equips women to restore core strength and surpass their total body fitness goals after birth – no matter how long it’s been. Leah has been featured as a women’s health expert by major media outlets, including NPR, Goop and Good Morning America. Leah lives in San Francisco with her husband, 5-year-old daughter and baby boy.

Dana Lazarovitz Thompson is an RN, IBCLC and certified CPR instructor through AHSI (American Health and Safety Institute). Dana's CPR class is focused on helping parents and caregivers learn how to identify and respond to emergencies, while also learning how to prevent life-threatening accidents by understanding child development, and learning best practices.

I am an independent Autism Specialist, providing direct support to people with Autism, their family and friends, and their service providers in California's Bay Area. It is my mission to connect people with Autism with resources that are necessary for personal success within their community. Using a variety of evidence-based practices, I offer direct support in any environment. By providing families, educators, friends, and other community members with individualized services, I empower people with Autism to be more successful in all areas of daily living. I am also able to help build collaborative communities around the person with Autism in order to have a strong and reliable network of support. People with Autism and their families are presented with an onslaught of information and recommendations when they are first diagnosed. They can spend hours reading through all of the paperwork and meetings with professionals, but at the end of the day, they are still on their own. They have a million and one questions, worries, and challenges. They experience daily successes and struggle to celebrate them. Their therapists go home and they're expected to do all the things they were taught with consistency, enthusiasm, and reliability. I have found that for a person with Autism to be truly successful, they need an entire village to support them. I can help you and your village with life's daily questions, big and small. Let me help you address some of these everyday questions: "How do we approach a family gathering?" "What can we do to make birthday parties more fun?" "How do we cut his hair? Nails?" "How do I prepare for a job interview?" "How can we teach her school about her strengths?" "When will he make friends?" "Who should tell his brother/sister?" "Can we go out to eat at a restaurant?" "Should we have ABA? OT? Speech? PT? Music Therapy? Horse Therapy?..." Anything else that comes up????

I am a child development specialist, education entrepreneur, and school administrator with 25 years experience in Education. I create strategies, tools, and programs that empower adults to create interactions and environments that encourage children to be curious, compassionate and capable. I have consulted with leadership teams around the United States and abroad through their messy starting process, and turned around schools to have positive morale between staff, and between adults and their children, and between children. I have opened schools large and small by designing and implementing systems, and hiring/training talent. I have designed, developed and beta-launched two different tools/services to support parents in guiding their child’s developing independence. I am driven to support parents in the most challenging and consistently changing time in their child’s life so both parties feel empowered, confident and capable whether the child is throwing tantrums, experiencing sleep challenges, going through major life transitions or just looking for something fun to do. My curiosity keeps me learning the latest science in brain development, and my travel keeps me connected to the universal challenges all children experience, and honoring our connection to each other.

Bill White is the founder of the Happy Baby Signs and co-author with Kathleen Harper of the internationally best selling book, Signs of a Happy Baby. He facilitates baby sign language programs at Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health, Sutter Health, Harmony Birth and Family, Blossom Birth and Family, Stanford Work-Life, Cisco Systems, Children’s Creative Learning Centers, Genentech, Bright Horizons, and many other locations. Bill occasionally fills in for teacher Lauren at Recess Collective. He is passionate about the benefits of signing with babies and is the proud father of two hearing sons who both sign.

Charity Kahn is a musician, teaching artist and mindfulness instructor based in San Francisco, CA. She has released seven albums of award-winning music for families with her band “Charity and the JAMband”, and a collection of guided meditations for kids and their grown-ups. She is the founder of The JAM Experience, sharing music, movement and mindfulness with families around the Bay Area and beyond through her beloved classes, camps and concerts. Charity also combines mindfulness and a passion for social and climate justice in recordings and meditation concerts for grown-ups with her band, "The Invisible Bee”. Charity has been practicing Insight Meditation for fourteen years, and teaching meditation and mindfulness for the last seven. She’s currently studying with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield via SoundsTrue's Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, and has also received training from Mindful Schools, Gil Fronsdal, Kaira Jewel Lingo, Thich Nhat Hanh, Susie Harrington, Vinny Ferraro, Matthew Brennsilver, Erin Selover and others. For more info, visit www.jamjamjam.com, www.invisiblebee.com, and www.charitykahn.com.

Erika Vetter fell in love with sign language in her childhood, when she befriended a Deaf girl in her Brownie Scout troop. This friendship continued for many years and led her to volunteer in the hard-of-hearing preschool during recess when she was still in elementary school. Erika received her Bachelor of Science in Speech Pathology and Audiology with Teacher Certification at Elmira College. She earned her Master's Degree as a Teacher for the Deaf for grades K-12 from Canisius College in upstate New York. Erika has taught both Deaf and hearing children for the past 18 years in schools such as the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and the California School for the Deaf in Fremont and currently works as an ASL interpreter and instructor. Erika's thesis on teaching ASL to pre-verbal hearing children, along with her recent coursework in bilingual education, has reinforced her belief that signing with children can produce amazing results. All three of her children started signing between six and seven months old and still sign on a daily basis. Erika delights in seeing ​children empowered with a tremendous ability to communicate effectively at a very early age and is eager to share her experience and enthusiasm with you.

Trained originally in the Ashtanga Vinyasa style of Yoga, Kate Sosnowski’s teaching has grown to include pre and postnatal movement, yoga for students with unique needs such as physical, developmental and cognitive disabilities, restorative yoga, flow, hatha and pilates. Kate led a mindfulness and yoga program in the San Francisco Unified School District for 10 years and directed Kid’s Yoga teacher trainings all over the country. Her goal is to support her students in fostering a connection between their own body, breath and mind while downing the tools to feel their very best daily Kate holds a California Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential as well as multiple certificates from various Yoga teacher trainings. She creates a safe, extremely approachable, light-hearted space for all of her students with mindful sequencing and thoughtful movement. With her husband and three wonderfully wild boys by her side, Kate loves to hike, wander the coast, run along the ocean and attend as many live concerts as possible.

Maliya Rubio- Mills is a full spectrum birth worker, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Maliya’s practice is rooted in relationship, kindness, and a human centered model of holistic care and support. Passionate and committed to a practice that supports safe & empowered reproductive care practices, community building, and social justice, Maliya is always seeking knowledge and new perspectives. Through a trauma informed lens, she recognizes that there is no “one size fits all” for supporting folks through their reproductive journeys. Born at home and the youngest of three children raised by a single mama, Maliya has been interested in family care & birth practices for as long as she can remember. Her journey in community care started long before the path to Doula training in 2016. Outside of the birth space, you will often find Maliya walking in the trees or alongside the ocean, with her dog, Kahlo, or cozy at home with her plant & animal family. Maliya’s favorite things include (but are certainly not limited to): cloud shadows on a mountain range, ice cream, and gathering with humans around nourishing food. To learn more about her and her practice, please visit River Blue Birth.

Patricia is passionate about providing estate planning services to parents with minor children and has dedicated her career to helping people protect themselves, their assets, and their families. In 2016, while at Golden Gate University to earn her LLM in Estate Planning, Probate, and Trust Administration, she established De Fonte Law PC to work with families and individuals to provide the much-needed stability and peace of mind that comes from knowing an estate is in order. She is also a mom, to two wonderful boys, which informs why and how she works with clients. Patricia finds the time to play with family and friends, support causes that are important to her, and read the New Yorker cover to cover every week. She will treat you as one of her own until Cards Against Humanity comes out, then all bets are off.

Sierra is originally from San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood and is the mother of two children, Noe (6) and Nico (5). Having recently served as President of the Board of Directors at Sunset Cooperative Nursery School she developed a deep appreciation for community and family education. She believes in the power of connection and helping to foster a welcoming environment for families to have access to social, emotional, and developmental support. She is a survivor of postpartum depression and anxiety and wants every parent that might be struggling to know that these perinatal mood disorders (affecting 1 in 5) are treatable and will get better with help and support. Sierra has a background in non-profit marketing, worked for over a decade at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and holds a B.S. in Journalism from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She enjoys photography, exploring tidepools, and always appreciates a good burrito.