Emily Frost and Quetzal Francois are the heart of Love Your Nature and core facilitators of Real Talk Curriculum. They bring over 30 years combined experience working with youth and families around the Bay Area. From the classroom to the back-country, they have worked with almost every age. Quetzal and Emily met in 2015, and it was love at first sight! Since then they have joined forces to offer Real Talk and model true sisterhood to hundreds of teens and families.
Founding Director
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EMILY FROST is an artist, educator and contemporary rites of passage guide working with youth and families around the Bay Area. She is also a devoted mama, wife, sister and daughter. She is the Founding Director of LOVE YOUR NATURE, a movement devoted to girls and women awakening to their inherent wisdom, power, and purpose. Emily offers 1:1 sessions with teen girls, young women and parents in her private practice in Berkeley, CA, and facilitates programs that develop social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, with a focus on girls coming of age.
Learn more about Emily... |
Director
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QUETZAL FRANCOIS is an educator, mentor, and activist. She works with young people and adults, in groups and individually, all over the Bay Area. Quetzal Francois brings 15 years of experience designing curriculum and facilitating groups for teens and people who work with teens. Her focus is on social and emotional intelligence, communication skills, intimacy, gender, empowered sexual health education, self harm, developing self confidence, building healthy and nurturing relationships (romantic and platonic), and LGBTQ matters.
Learn more about Quetzal... |
Guides
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CAITLIN MCNEELY grew up exploring the gentle sandy beaches of the southern Gulf coast and the giant sprawling oak trees in her urban Houston neighborhood. In the summer, her favorite time was spent road-tripping to the magical tide pools and rocky beaches of a small island off the coast of Maine. She has studied the intersection of nature, spirituality and creative writing in the US and abroad. She follows a path of learning from and supporting indigenous cultures and wisdom-keepers.
Caitlin holds training from the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington and is currently training in Somatic Ecopsychology and is deepening her ecotherapeutic skills. Caitlin holds experience and knowledge in permaculture, organic farming, folk herbalism and ancestral bushcraft, and is Wilderness First Aid certified. Learn more about Caitlin... |
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ISABELLA MASTERSON is a graduate of UC Davis, double majoring in Psychology and Human Development with a minor in Asian American Studies. During the school year, she worked at the university Sexual Violence Prevention office creating curriculum and working to educate the campus community on how to prevent sexual violence. She has been in one of Emily's groups since 6th grade, about 14 years. It is one of the best spaces she has ever had the honor of being a part of and cannot recommend it enough! She is grateful to have assisted Love Your Nature programs, and lead her own Davis group.
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CORALIE BORDER is a college graduate, writer and creative. She received B.A.s in Sociology and English (creative writing) at UC Davis in 2023, where she also worked as an academic advisor and journalist. She has been a part of the Love Your Nature community since she joined a group in her youth, and has helped mentor teens at Summer Retreat for years. Some of her passions include mental health, queer empowerment, visual arts, poetry, and music. She hopes to foster spaces where young women and queer people are free to express themselves and find their places in the world.
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Advisory Council
Our project is blessed to have strong circles of support informing, advising and inspiring our work. Our Advisory Council includes individuals with key expertise in our area of focus. We are so grateful for all they have done to become the friends, mentors, and anchors along our journey as we evolve our work.
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CHARIS DENISON is a nationally recognized youth advocate, teacher, parent educator, and expert on what teenagers need to develop new life skills. She brings 23+ years experience to Prajna Consulting, empowering young people to make choices that end in honor and joy rather than guilt, shame, or regret. She partners with youth, families, schools, organizations and communities around human development, social justice, and ethics. Charis has received national recognition for her work and has been on the faculty of the Urban School of San Francisco, Branson School, and Marin Academy in San Rafael CA.
Learn more about Charis via her TedX Talk or her website. |
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For twenty years, VANESSA STONE has served as a visionary, teacher, humanitarian leader, inspired speaker, group facilitator, and mentor. Vanessa has initiated and served as lead facilitator in many transformational projects including Amala Foundation, The Global Youth Peace Summits, African Youth Summits, Camp Indigo, Bhatti Mines School Project in India, Camp Mana, One Village Prison Project, One Village Farm Project, and currently co-founder of The Institute for Emerging Visionaries. All of Vanessa’s humanitarian work is now under the One Village Project, a regenerative model of visionary education and engagement that unites a global community of active and engaged humans in service to the highest expressions of ourselves, one another, and the earth.
"Our work is a response to the rising generation of young people seeking to reimagine new models of transformational education and meaningful community engagement united in service for the restoration of our sentient nature and collaborative potential." - Vanessa Vanessa is devoted to co-create in service with community, and continue to mentor and inspire people from all over the world to put voice to vision, serve creation, study nature, realize authentic freedom and live for the soul. |
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DIANA DIVECHA, Ph.D., is a Berkeley-based developmental psychologist who consults, writes, and speaks about the science of how children, teens, and families grow and develop. She is a research affiliate with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and is an advisor to The Greater Good Science Center, Futures Without Violence, Stepping Stones, and the National Partnership for Women and Families.
She has written about children’s needs in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Washington Post, Psychology Today, The Hill, Time, Inc., and regularly on her blog. In an earlier life, she taught developmental courses and was the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development at Sonoma State University. Diana and her husband have two daughters happily launched into adulthood. |
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MARILYN HENDEE brings her Elder wisdom to the Love Your Nature community. She generously shares a lifetime of lived experience, from the early contemporary rites of passage world in the West, starting with the Wilderness Guides Council in the 1980's, and currently as a grandmother of a young women in our program. Marilyn has personally led more than 30 Vision Quests! We are blessed beyond words to benefit from her wisdom, grace, and humility. Photo Wilderness Guides Council 1980's.
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Affiliated Organizations...
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We donate annually to the following...
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