Council Members

Founder

The motivation for SOTEM came from a vision Jim had during a vision quest in the mid 1990’s. Jim has walked in, studied and melded with nature and its creatures his entire life. He has dedicated the last twenty years of his path to serving people through providing educational, spiritual and healing opportunities. His degrees are in education and Masters in environmental interpretation and natural resource management. His real degrees are in what he has acquired from his indigenous teachers and directly from Mother Nature. In 1990 Jim began studying with indigenous people; Native American; Mayan; Australian; African and other. He has run non-profits and served on the boards of others for over twenty-five years.

As the Chair of Sanctuaries of the Earth Mother, I am committed to the organizational and operational structure and governance of SOTEM. As a healer, both energy and plants, I am dedicated to truth, light and love in a world that needs more of the same. As a visionary, I see SOTEM creating real opportunity to bring like-minded people and organizations into right relationship for the healing of the people, planet, and all creatures great and small. SOTEM exists to answer the call to weave a new pattern dramatically different from what is available in today’s world. I am honored and excited to be working with such a great group of individuals working collectively and in harmony to bring together the threads for the new tapestry of life.

Wild woman, earth activist, nomadic body worker and architectural designer/builder. Ancestral roots of Cuban, Sicilian, and Hungarian. My hands claw and bare feet dig into the soil soaking in its nutrients and ions. Water cleanses my energy and flows the blood. Fire powers my spirit. Air elevates my breath. Ether is the space between of heart-based conscious connection to divine guidance.

Born in Los Angeles, raised in Florida, and harmonized in remembrance of my true  connection and vibration with “self” and wisdom of Earth Mother in the midst of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I lived nomadically in my van for the past 3 years traveling from the Pacific to Atlantic oceans, simplifying life, detaching from societal normalities, connecting with community, herbalism, and curating healing sanctuaries at special events. Currently, I am nestled in the sacred lands of New Mexico directing a wellness center called Wild Sol Sanctuary at Leaping Deer Ranch. Every day is an opportunity growing with my soul purpose of guiding healing journeys through integrating massage therapy, reiki energy alignments, sound therapy, and curating sanctuary spaces with my. My journey on the road has deepened my connection to the ancestral ways of living symbiotically with the earth and all living beings. The elements alchemize my body, mind, and spirit.

I deeply believe in the earth-driven, spirit-guided mission of Sanctuaries of the Earth Mother. Cultivating connections and uniting sanctuaries to share sacred wisdom from cultures around the world is crucial in our current, shifting atmospheres. It is a time of heavy transformation, rebirthing, in need of conscious support, reverence, and growth. It is a pivotal moment to shift the flow of energy and the way in which we navigate life for the greater good of the whole, for seven generations forward. The relationship between huemans and our Earth Mother is one that should be of mutual symbiosis, not driven by greed, ego, or ignorance. One that uses ancestral wisdom to support the collective vibration of all living beings. One that respects and honors the cycles of our internal and outer world, navigating with softness between the divine masculine and feminine energies, the forces of yin and yang. Through sharing our collective, generational wisdom and moving forward consciously in nourishing a symbiotic relationship with the earth and each other, we can cultivate a powerful future for generations to come.

Founder, TRUST Climate Action Strategists

Hey there! Kat Haber here, meow! I get to 💃 through life as a climate action strategist, TEDxVailOrganizer & world ☮️ advocate. ♻️ I help climate-concerned & their networks identify solutions to do daily in their lives. TRUST certifies teens to be Peer Climate Coaches. 

What I do:
💥 Climate Reality Leader/Mentor in Chicago since 2013.
👣 Activist: walked across the country (USA) in the Great March for Climate Action from LA to DC from March to November in 2014 & was arrested on November 4, protesting the rubber-stamping of fracking infrastructure at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission HQ in DC

☮️ Promotor of World Peace as the Charter & current President of the virtual global WE Rotary Club of International Peace in 2014 

✅ Plant HEIWA Rotary Hiroshima Survivor Peace Trees 💚⛷️ Competed for the 1988 Calgary Olympics in aerial freestyle skiing 🇺🇸 Special trick: a quadruple daffy (4 splits 75 feet in the air). 🏅

🏴‍☠️ A mentor with Moonshot Pirates 🏳️‍🌈 World Pulse Digital Empowerment Ambassador🦋 Coalition WILD 🐸❤️ Inspiring teens & young professionals for world wilderness conservation, serving on the 

WILD Foundation Board of Directors for 18 years. 💥🐅🕒 In 2020 lockdown, I curated & produced 28 TEDxVail COUNTDOWN COVID Clues, Climate Acts, Local Impacts online conversations with elders, youth, indigenous, Xperts, CEO’s, NGO execs. 🇺🇸

💜 TEDxVail Organizer since 2009. The top talk has racked up 3.1+ million views (& counting)!🌞Handy links:💡TEDxVail Follow @TEDxVail on IG & Twitter & Facebook & all our talks are on YouTube & TED.com 💃

☮️ Great March for Climate Action

📲 DM me on LinkedIn & Facebook

Alyen Foning resides in her ancestral home, Kalimpong -the Lepcha community, with its sacred mountains and rivers, at the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas. Inspired by her Lepcha roots and reflections of her life’s journey, Alyen uses her art and storytelling as a medium to help others remember their own ecological connections. Using fabrics, colours, music and design, her work serves as a bridge between the fields of art and research, and between ancestral pasts and future generations. 

Through her storytelling we journey through longing, loss and disconnection. Finding our way forward through remembrance we delve into our origins, shamanism and our deep connection and interdependence to nature. 

She is a textile artist who has studied Textile and Apparel design at NID, Ahmedabad. Her works are inspired by Nature and indigenous world cultures. She is the creator of the installation ‘The Story of Munn’ ,which was exhibited at ‘So Many Feminisms!’ conclave by Godrej India Culture Lab in collaboration with Zubaan Books in February 2019. 

She also runs a design label-ALYEN FONING that believes in the power of Mother Nature, communities, upcycling and the skills of local artisans in narrating stories through Art, Words, Music, Artisanal Creations inspired by Mother Nature, Our Roots, Oral histories and Inner journeys.  Her label represents like minded people coming together to create, collaborate, celebrate, empower and to raise awareness about our dwindling natural heritage while joining together in remembering, celebrating and reconnecting to Mother Earth and her biodiversity to honour, preserve and protect her.

She is also a visiting faculty at various design colleges in India.

Leeachum feels deeply for fabrics, colours, collaboration with people, art, crafts, design and music in all forms. She is currently learning about her ancestral roots and shamanism through various research and art projects/grants, and is in a process of starting her training under a shaman of the Lepcha tribe.

Alyen has experience of  weaving magic with textile art, clothing, textiles, printmaking, accessory designing, shoe designing, product designing, styling, Illustrations, Interior designing, lifestyle product designing, event and store décor, doll making, music, storytelling, teaching and research writing.

Christopher grew up on a farm in rural New Zealand which he left to do an apprenticeship as a fitter in the railways from there he went on to develop an interest in personal growth and self-development.

Many years later he learnt from 20 different meditation traditions such as Theravada Buddhism, Vipassana, and Raja yoga which are my mainstays, as well is being trained in NLP, hypnotherapy, reiki, rebirthing and various communication techniques.

From far back as he remembers he had a connection with nature which has developed into an ability to communicate with nature, and helping others to learn to do so.
Returning to the connection we all have with the earth which many of us have slipped out of as we got caught up in the everyday world.
For Chris, our connection with nature is an inherent part of who we are and as part of finding and understanding who we are as part of the world, and the environment we live in.
To look after one. we look after the other, it is a symbiotic relationship, which is found through direct experience.

Coming back to nature is coming back to who he is.

He has a range of psychic abilities and various other skills some of which he had since birth others have been developed through the exploration of consciousness and finding we are this consciousness expressed through human form.