Seane Corn

Founder, Social Champion

Seane Corn is an internationally celebrated yoga teacher known for her impassioned activism, unique self-expression, and inspirational style of teaching. She has been featured in numerous articles, news programs, and has appeared on the cover of over a dozen magazines. As a strong and articulate voice for social change she was named the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS, and shares their mission to raise funds, provide service, and spread national awareness about the global emergency of HIV/AIDS. Seane has spent time in India, Cambodia and Africa working with impoverished prostitutes and street children, teaching yoga, providing support and aid, and educating them about HIV/AIDS prevention. She participates on the boards of the Cambodian Children’s Fund and the Engage Network. Seane also created the yoga program for “Children of the Night”, a shelter near Los Angeles dedicated to providing education and services for adolescent prostitutes. In 2005 Seane was honored with the “Conscious Humanitarian” award for her outreach efforts. Her award winning DVD’s “Vinyasa Flow Yoga”are available through Gaiam International, her “Yoga From the Heart” DVD can be found through Yoga Journal, and most recently “Detox Flow Yoga” from Sounds True.

Hala Khouri, M.A.

Social Champion, Director, Urban Seva Challenge

Hala Khouri, M.A., E-RYT, has been teaching the movement arts for almost 20 years. Her roots are in Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga, dance, Somatic Psychology, and the juicy mystery of Life itself. Creative movement and honest self-exploration has always been a source of tremendous healing for Hala, and her calling to pass this on to others has been clear to her since she began teaching at the age of 16.

Hala earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Religion from Columbia University and has a Master's degree Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She wrote her thesis on using yoga and other complementary disciplines such as eco-psychology and somatics for self-empowerment to inspire a global shift towards peaceful and sustainable living. She is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and focus on trauma's impact on the body-mind and ways to resolve it.

Hala has taught yoga and the movement arts to a wide variety of people ranging from schizophrenics and at-risk youth to mommies and rock stars. Teaching is her absolute favorite thing to do! She currently lives in Venice, California with her husband Paul and their sons Sebastian and Marley.

Suzanne Sterling

Social Champion, Director, Global Seva Challenge

Suzanne is an ecstatic vocalist and composer whose devotional music has been called a "groove-loving and seductive journey into Spirit" and whose music has been commissioned for film, theatre and DVD. She has enjoyed mainstage billing at festivals such as Earthdance, Burning Man, Reggae on the River and The World Festival of Sacred Music (hosted by the Dalai Lama). Suzanne has also been a ritual designer and priestess for many years and has developed curriculums, teacher trainings and apprenticeship programs combining ritual and activism for numerous communities nationwide. She offers a unique blend of yoga, music, sacred ceremony and activism to conferences and festivals worldwide — most recently as featured speaker/artist at several Yoga Journal Conferences, The Esalen Institute, The Institute of Noetic Sciences. and Earthdance where she led the worlds largest Spiral Dance for 5000 people. www.suzannesterling.com

Kerri Kelly

Global Catalyst

Kerri was drawn to the healing power of yoga in 1999. On her mat, she discovered a new vitality that awakened her purpose and desire to serve. Kerri immediately recognized the opportunity to share this gift and has been teaching for over 7 years. Her purpose is to invest in the greatness of others and use her teaching to help individuals discover themselves and their potential to shine. She has been instrumental in catalyzing the San Francisco community around yoga and service and mentors local leaders on how to be purposeful and effective in their activism.

Kerri has been an active member of Off the Mat, Into the World™ for over 2 years, facilitating local yoga in action groups and building community around yoga and activism. In 2010, she took on the role of National Catalyst and has helped OTM develop a strategy and infrastructure to support its growth. Kerri feels blessed to be a part of this movement and is truly inspired by this growing community of change-makers.

Annalise Oberts

PROJECT MANAGER

In 2007, Annalise strapped on her backpack and traveled through South America for half a year. Upon her return, she stumbled upon OTM and has been an integral part of the team ever since. Combining her love for yoga, service and travel, Annalise took on the 2008 OTM Seva Challenge, raised $20,000 and made the life-altering journey to Cambodia. Returning with a fresh perspective on life, Annalise sees the true value of yoga in action and enjoys coordinating and mentoring others through the process. In her spare time, Annalise enjoys active adventure, adrenaline-pumping thrills and traveling to all corners of the world. She lives in Santa Monica, has a degree in Asian and Pacific Studies and names her passport as her most valuable possession.

Claire Williams

PROJECT MANAGER

Claire found Off the Mat in 2009 through the Teaching Yoga to At-Risk Youth and Adults Training, Esalen Intensive and joined a Yoga in Action group in 2010. Claire graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005 with a B.A. in Sociology and certificates in Peace and Conflict Studies and Leadership Studies from the INVST Community Leadership Program, earning an Americorps scholarship for over 450 service hours. Prior to joining our team, Claire was the Development Associate at GirlVentures, a San Francisco based non-profit. She is passionate about learning how to successfully build organizational capacity for non-profit organizations which led her to pursue an MBA in Sustainable Management at Presidio Graduate School for which she is currently a candidate. In 2008, she became a Certified Yoga Instructor through Yoga Tree SF's 200-hour Program. She has led two seasons of service learning trips for college and high school students both domestically and internationally. She is trained in facilitation, consensus decision-making, grant-writing, and project management and brings strong experience collaborating in teams.

Leigh Ferrara

New Media Manager

Off the Mat, Into the World's new media gal, Leigh Ferrara, is part journo, part yogi. Based in San Francisco, Leigh has written for local pubs like San Francisco magazine, as well as national ones like The American Prospect and Mother Jones (in her previous life, she worked here full time). When she's not managing OTM's FB and Twitter communities, she's teaching vinyasa flow classes in the Mission or out of her home studio that she absolutely adores. She'll be editing the Off the Mat blog, writing for online wellness pubs like MindBodyGreen, and toiling away on the OTM site.

Somatics, yoga, and service have been an integral part of Leigh's life for the past 10 years. Off the Mat couldn't be a better fit.

Website: leighferrarayoga.com
Twitter: @leighferrara

Sara Levine

marketing MANAGER

Sara knew, while completing her Bachelor's degree in Human Science at Montana State University, that she would utilize her skills to help people discover their greatness. She sprouted an interest in working with at-risk populations while taking her first sociology class, focused on youth in prisons. After moving to SF in 2004 and working as a marketing coordinator for 3 years, she knew that her true passion was her daily yoga class. She completed her first of many teacher trainings in August of 2007 and quit her job to pursue teaching full-time a few months later. Her teaching style has become a connection between her practice on the mat and off. To Sara, yoga is the bridge that keeps us in-check and continuously reminds us that we are all made of the same thing.

When Sara met Kerri Kelly, and consecutively completed her first Yoga in Action group training, OTM became a part of her life. She was contracted to work on the Wanderlust festival in 2010 after completing the Leadership Training in SF and continued to work closely with the organization until she found the chance to become a permanent member of the staff.

Rebecca Rogers

seva PROJECT MANAGER

Rebecca first discovered yoga in 2001, and has been teaching since 2007. Dedicated to promoting peace, well-being, and sustainability on a global scale, she has taug ht human rights to high school students, trained Peace Corps volunteers, volunteered in an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and worked with Fortune 500 companies to reduce their environmental impact.

Rebecca believes in the transformative power of yoga to build leaders and activists, by guiding them through experiences that inspire them to mobilize around a common intention of service. A passionate yoga teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, Rebecca is known for leading students through classes that are physically and emotionally challenging, uplifting, and rewarding. As Global Seva Manager for Off the Mat, Into the World (OTM), Rebecca provides guidance and support to all participants who have committed to the Global Seva Challenge, OTM’s international service project.