FOUNDER & OWNER

Anna has a background in Community Organizing and Cooperatives. She loves travel and working with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

She began her non-profit work over 20 years ago, using her Spanish to coordinate volunteer doctors and dentists to support on-the-ground teams to treat prisoners across Latin America. She continued supporting and connecting local prison groups worldwide through Communications & Marketing, including Graphic Design and Branding.

From there, she taught special needs children, volunteered alongside a village of people struggling with leprosy in China and supported local community projects based out of York, England, that provided home repairs to public housing residents and worked with youth who had been expelled from mainstream schools.

In the DC area, Anna case-managed families facing eviction and later ran a community center in a majority Arabic-speaking public apartment complex. Anna connected resources and residents to create a diverse offering of programming and supports that were often led by community members themselves: from a Community Garden where indigenous food was grown, to Community-led cooking classes where neighbors taught each other dishes from their home countries. She also supported the neighborhood residents’ setting up an Arabic Preschool Class and K-12 after-school program.

Moving to Asheville gave Anna the opportunity to further explore Permaculture and plant medicine before taking a job at Red Oak Recovery as their first female Wilderness Guide. She then helped start a small parent-run Preschool Cooperative with friends to support families, like her own, who struggled with a lack of affordable childcare options. in 2019 she joined the Flying Bike, an independent local electric bike company, where she gave tours of Asheville, including the rich Cherokee and Black history of Western North Carolina.

Anna began participating in Trinity UMC's Shelter Steering Committee and later was an Operations Manager of Trinity UMC's Emergency Winter Shelter, which served those who could not access other shelters such as couples, intact families, people with dogs and particularly vulnerable folks. Learning, living and sharing a meal alongside her family and this community, renewed her commitment to dissolve the "us" and "them" and rather come together to support one another.

You are likely to find her biking, eating, exploring, gardening, foraging, organizing or running in Asheville and surrounding wild spaces.

FOUNDER & OWNER

Anna has a background in Community Organizing and Cooperatives. She loves travel and working with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

She began her non-profit work over 20 years ago, using her Spanish to coordinate volunteer doctors and dentists to support on-the-ground teams to treat prisoners across Latin America. She continued supporting and connecting local prison groups worldwide through Communications & Marketing, including Graphic Design and Branding.

From there, she taught special needs children, volunteered alongside a village of people struggling with leprosy in China and supported local community projects based out of York, England, that provided home repairs to public housing residents and worked with youth who had been expelled from mainstream schools.

In the DC area, Anna case-managed families facing eviction and later ran a community center in a majority Arabic-speaking public apartment complex. Anna connected resources and residents to create a diverse offering of programming and supports that were often led by community members themselves: from a Community Garden where indigenous food was grown, to Community-led cooking classes where neighbors taught each other dishes from their home countries. She also supported the neighborhood residents’ setting up an Arabic Preschool Class and K-12 after-school program.

Moving to Asheville gave Anna the opportunity to further explore Permaculture and plant medicine before taking a job at Red Oak Recovery as their first female Wilderness Guide. She then helped start a small parent-run Preschool Cooperative with friends to support families, like her own, who struggled with a lack of affordable childcare options. in 2019 she joined the Flying Bike, an independent local electric bike company, where she gave tours of Asheville, including the rich Cherokee and Black history of Western North Carolina.

Anna began participating in Trinity UMC's Shelter Steering Committee and later was an Operations Manager of Trinity UMC's Emergency Winter Shelter, which served those who could not access other shelters such as couples, intact families, people with dogs and particularly vulnerable folks. Learning, living and sharing a meal alongside her family and this community, renewed her commitment to dissolve the "us" and "them" and rather come together to support one another.

You are likely to find her biking, eating, exploring, gardening, foraging, organizing or running in Asheville and surrounding wild spaces.