OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Kat Haber:

From Alaska, California and Colorado, Kat actively engages her communities to collaborate beyond the box to refresh ideas. Daily, as a mom, wife, HaberVision.com affinity rep, activist, conservationist, guide, and dreamer, she connects doers and thinkers to change worlds. On the Board of WILD, TED, CACS, BFAG, walking mountains provide challenging, earthkeeping outlets. She is sustained by wide open white spaces of Vail's back bowls, her son's hug and husband's humor, Alaska's beauty, desert hikes after a rain, wild silence, leading-edge technology, global exchanges, young leaders' emergent voices, and hearts expressed in any form.

 Leslie Kerr:

Leslie Kerr has worked as Refuge Manager for Kodiak and Selawik National Wildlife Refuges and as Chief of Planning for the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She is a registered Landscape Architect and a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Flows of energy from the land have been an enduring source of inspiration in all aspects of her life. Her years living in the Arctic and her work with circumpolar conservation of protected areas strongly influenced her spiritual path. Her professional role as steward to millions of acres of remote Alaskan wildlands was a natural outgrowth of her intuitive connection with the living landscape.
She is now developing RoseConsciousness.com to meld use of affirmation and a complementary line of flower essences into a spiritual healing method. She encourages people to change their lives and their world through the practice of affirming love, grace and oneness.
Leslie has traveled with the Grandmother Drum International Peace Project in Guatemala, Alaska, and Hawaii. Her practical sense and enormous heart bring a wealth of power and purpose to the organization.

Jim Petruzzi:

With a BS degree in education in the seventies – theater and communications – Jim began and operated many entrepreneurial businesses on the East Coast for twenty years. During this time he also supported non-profits and worked for environmental causes.

In 1992 Jim moved to Colorado and began his tenure at Colorado State University. His main goal was to earn advanced degrees in the environmental field. The University asked him to run their non-profit Environmental Learning Center. He began teaching courses at the same time.

Shortly after his arrival Jim met Carolyn Fiscus, a member of the Blackfoot tribe. Carolyn served as Jim’s first teacher in indigenous people’s studies. Through Carolyn Jim met Lawrence Little Thunder and began more in depth studies of Lakota spirituality, beliefs and ceremony. Lyman Yellowhair, a medicine man of the Lakota, also began instructing Jim shortly thereafter. George Two Bears a year later.

A Rock People’s Lodge was built on University property and many Indian and non-Indian people’s were invited to ceremony there. Jim worked with Lawrence and Lyman and, over some six years, learned a great deal from these teachers. Jim was honored with the name Red Wolf and was later allowed to carry the pipe and lead ceremony. During the 1990’s Jim also worked extensively in Central America and learned healing arts from Mayan teachers there. Jim has been blessed by being invited to diverse ceremonies by many peoples during his travels and participating in their spiritual work.

Jim has provided shamantic healings and journeying for individuals and groups, led pipe ceremonies, drum circles and Sweat Lodges for people in many parts of the country. He has delivered programs on Native American topics and shared teaching with his Indian friends on spiritual, cultural and environmental topics. He has been a pipe carrier in several circles in the Mountain West and the West Coast. In 2006-07 Jim ran a land trust on California’s North Coast and worked with, and learned from, Native American people there.

As Jim has accepted that he now moves into the winter of his life circle, he has dedicated his time to teaching and healing. Jim is also a principle of Natural Leadership Way; a nationwide organization committed to providing educational and spiritual opportunities to groups across the globe to help with personal growth and an exploration of the Great Mystery through indigenous practices.

White Eagle Medicine Woman (Suraj Holzwarth)

As the youngest woman to climb North America's highest peak Denali (Mt. McKinley) in her late teens, starting the first non-profit wilderness spiritual programs for women in Alaska in the early 80's (Alaska Women of the Wilderness) and having built the largest crystal drum in North America indicates that White Eagle Medicine Woman has enormous vision, creativity, and determination, all gifts of a far seeing leader.

White Eagle Medicine Woman (Suraj Holzwarth) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Whirling Rainbow Foundation and drum keeper of the International GrandMother Drum Peace Project. She is an international shamanic healer, seer, and ritual and performance artist who has traveled the world for over thirty years, performing, teaching, healing and inspiring tens of thousands . Her CDs include Journey of the Heart, Songlines of the Soul and Living Waters of Grace. She is the director and co-producer of the newly released documentary film GrandMother Drum: Awakening the Global Heart. She is also the founder and director of Rainbow Fire Mystery School in Palmer, Alaska.

White Eagle's voice has a primal and mesmerizing quality, penetrating to the very heart and soul of our indigenous connection with each other and the earth. White Eagle's dynamic performances, ceremonies and workshops are well known for transforming the hearts of all involved, leading audiences in unified action on global issues of world peace, racial reconciliation, environmental stewardship and earth sustainability.