Advisory Board
Prashanti de Jager
Advisory Board
President, Instructor
Eliza is passionate about making the world a better place through cultivating personal balance and awareness and facilitating others doing the same. For Eliza, connecting with the natural world and yoga have been two powerful forces for growth and peace. In her work she aims to share these experiences so that others may reap the benefits.
Eliza has been living in Yosemite since graduating from UC Berkeley in Conservation and Resource Studies in 1993. She has been leading people on adventures in the outdoors since 1989, working for Yosemite Institute, Outward Bound in Colorado and Alaska, Where There Be Dragons in Tibet, and Wild Women Workshops in Alaska and Yosemite.
Eliza first discovered yoga in 1991 while living and studying in Nepal and India for a year. Since then she has been a passionate practitioner, studying a variety of styles including Iyengar, Bikkrim, and Ashtanga with Pattabhi Jois and her primary teacher, Richard Freeman. Eliza has been teaching a blend of these styles in Yosemite since 1995 with an emphasis on breath, flow and joy. She was certified as a Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist from the California College of Ayurveda in 2000 and is currently practicing Ayurvedic medicine in Yosemite.
Eliza lives with her husband, Nate, and two daughters, Calliope and Scarlett. While not busy with her little girls, she enjoys rock-climbing, surfing, and playing guitar.
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Treasurer
Marcia was a participant on the very first Wild Women Workshops yoga/writing and backcountry trip in 2000. After this life empowering experience, she's been an enthusiastic participant, donor, and volunteer ever since.
From a very young age, Marcia's family took frequent camping trips to local, state and national parks. She still enjoys birding with her Mother of 80 years old. She's become an avid bicyclist, hiker, kayaker and tri-athlete. She focuses on being in a state of meditation during these activities.
Marcia has worked in the nonprofit sector for 30 years, with 25 years experience as an executive supervising staff, balancing budgets, fundraising and working with Boards of Directors. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer for YMCA of the East Bay in Oakland, CA. Prior to that assignment, she was the Vice President of Operations for Yosemite National Institutes.
Marcia is excited to be linking her love for the outdoors and creative arts with her nonprofit management expertise to help launch Balanced Rock. Real joy is in helping others find inner peace.
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Marketing Specialist
Sharon has worked for almost 20 years as a speech-language pathologist serving the needs of mostly Spanish-speaking children in the public school system. She lives in the Eastern Sierra with her husband, Stan, where she volunteers during the summer months as an interpretive guide at Mono Lake. Sharon's interests include hiking, travel, and quilting.
Sharon's involvement with Wild Women Workshops began several years ago when she participated in weekend workshops as well as backcountry trips in Yosemite and Alaska. These experiences have contributed to the direction her life as taken as her appreciation and love of nature surfaced and the practice of yoga became a part of my life.
Sharon looks forward to contributing to the mission and vision of Balanced Rock and working with this inspiring group of people.
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Board of Directors
Anne is a psychotherapist who has had a private practice for over twenty-five years. She works with individuals and families. Her psychotherapy is grounded in a spiritual orientation. She began her own meditation practice in the early 1970's with Suzuki Roshi and Kobun Chino Roshi. This has provided a touchstone for her work and her life ever since. Before getting her license in psychology, she taught in the public school systm and ran the Environmental Education Program for the Redwood City School district. She also led Wilderness Trips for Carlmont High School and taught for Outward Bound. The Sierra mountains have always felt like home to her.
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Board Member Emeritus
Yvon Chouinard is founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc., based in Ventura, California. He began in business by designing, manufacturing, and distributing rock climbing equipment in the late 1950's. His tinkering led to an improved ice axe that facilitated the French ice climbing technique and is the basis for modern ice axe design. In 1964 he produced his first mail order catalog, a one page mimeographed sheet containing advice not to expect fast delivery during climbing season. Business grew slowly until 1972 when Yvon added rugby shirts to his catalog and his clothing business took off.
In the late 1980's, Patagonia's success was such that Yvon considered early retirement. In some ways he would have preferred to disappear into the South Pacific with his fly rod and surfboard. However, he decided to continue directing Patagonia's course, in part to use the company to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. As part of this goal, Patagonia instituted an Earth Tax, pledging 1% of sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. In 2001, Yvon, along with Craig Mathews, owner of West Yellowstone's Blue Ribbon Flies, started One Percent For The Planet, an alliance of businesses that contribute at least 1 percent of their net annual sales to groups on a list of researched and approved environmental organizations.
Yvon spends much of his time in the outdoors and serving on the boards of numerous environmental groups. I work every day of my life. My job is to be the "outside" man, studying lifestyles around the world, coming up with ideas for new products, new market trends, seeing that Patagonia stays relevant in a rapidly changing world.
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Advisory Board
At sixteen years of age Ron Kauk went climbing in the Sierra for the summer and found the miracle of life. The natural world became his teacher and he signed up for the school of granite walls, rivers, oaks, and the mystery of changing days and seasons.
For years he lived in Camp 4 with an international group of nonconformist climbers, existing simply, stimulating his senses, and learning how to live in harmony with the vertical world. He found all his relations right there in Yosemite-the falcons, bears, deer, rock - a feeling that everything belongs.
Over two decades he made legendary first ascents throughout Yosemite, including bouldering in Camp 4 on Midnight Lightening, pushing the standards with Magic Line, recognized as the most difficult crack climb in Yosemite; and hanging on all the big walls for days at a time, including two first ascents on El Capitan.
Staying true to this way of life, Ron's work has connected him to Patagonia, Inc. as a rock climbing ambassador and working with Emmy-award winning filmmaker Sterling Johnson to create Ascending Rhythm and Return to Balance: A Climber's Journey, which is featured on PBS. As one of the worlds most accomplished and well rounded climbers, Ron has written a book, Spirit of the Rock, and been featured in magazines and on TV. He was a Hollywood stunt double for Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone.
Now, thirty years into his climbing adventure, Ron's commitment is to be of service to the natural world through raising awareness in the community, protecting the earth, and helping new generations recognize the values of respect and responsibility to our source of life.
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Advisory Board
After earning advanced degrees and entering a PhD track in Electrical Biophysics at the University of Michigan, Prashanti went to India in 1990 to study the Vedic sciences from their Advaita roots to Ayurveda, Rasa Shastra, Jyotisha, Yoga and Vastu Shastra. Since then he has thrived in India for about a decade total.
His Advaita/dzogChen teachers include Sri H.W.L. Poonja, Lakshmana Swami, Annamalai Swami, Jomgang Kontrul Rinpoche and Tulku Urgen. He studied Ayurveda with such luminaries as Professors Dr Chunekar, Dr Tiwari and Dr Singh at the BHU in Varanasi as well as Kaviraj Nanak Chand Sharma and dozens of other Vaidya and Yogis across India. His mentors Dr Narendra Singh and Dr Brijnath Singh taught him much about using Ayurveda and Allopathy together as well as copious hands-on ethnopharmacology throughout the forests and mountains of North India. The Ganga, Grandmothers, Spice Sellers, the Puranas and years of wandering the Tirthas of India, wove him into the living spirit of the tradition. He has studied Jyotish and other Vedic Sciences for several years with Hart de Fouw and is lucky to have Shandor Remete empower him in Hatha Yoga.
He co-founded Organic India in Lucknow in the early 1990's, a Vision which has now grown to have created about 3000 certified Organic, certified Biodynamic and Fair Trade sustainable havens in India and trained about 25,000 tribals to sustainably wildcraft in the jungles of central India. Organic India's work has earned them the Award for the most Socially Responsible Company in the Natural Food Industry.
As a consultant he has also served several high-end companies in the cosmetic and herbal industry. He has published dozens of articles and photographs in Yoga, Ayurveda and Indian Magazines and Newspapers, published several books on Vedic topics and is on the boards of several of the leading Vedic/Ayurvedic/ Herbal organizations in the USA. He has taught hundreds of workshops on vedic topics in India, Europe, and across America to the public, Yogis, Ayurvedic Practitioners and to conferences of Medical Doctors.
Currently, he lives with his 11 year old son on Tomales Bay in West Marin.
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Monte Meyers
Advisory Board
Monte S. Meyers, MBA, CMA, has over 25 years of experience in the fields of accounting, strategic planning, budgets, financial systems and processes, and financial reporting. He is the founder of Shining Star Consulting, helping nonprofit organizations improve their financials systems and processes, pass audits, create effective budgets, develop clear policies, create financial reports and provide financial analyses.
He has a passion for helping nonprofit organizations achieve their missions. His work in creating sound accounting systems and practices for his clients helps the leadership and managers of these organizations to understand their financial position and capacity, make important decisions with timely and useful information, meet government and other funder requirements, and develop effective strategic plans.
Monte is married to Wanda. They have four children (3 girls and one boy), and one grandson. An avid outdoor enthusiast, Monte has served on the Board of Directors of the Yosemite Institute for 9 years, and on the audit and finance committees of the parent organization, Yosemite National Institutes. He also served for six years as Chair of the Backpacking Section of the Sierra Club’s highly acclaimed Inner City Outings program in the SF Bay Chapter. For pure enjoyment, Monte sings Tenor with the UC Alumni Chorus.