Sacred Roots seek to center low-income people of color – Black, Indigenous, API, immigrants, queer, and womxn – in our pursuit of shared healing and liberation. We hope to cultivate and grow our collective thrivership through cultural & spiritual healing practices, liberatory pedagogy and practice, as well as community organizing and activism. Our Facebook page.
Martha Martinez – Martha Martinez is a member of the Sicangu Band of the Lakota Nation from South Dakota. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Human Development with a Child Development Concentration and Master’s in Public Administration with an Organizational Change Concentration from California State University East Bay. She is the first urban born generation of her family and actively involved in the Native community in the Bay Area. Born and raised in the Oakland she has extensive experience and knowledge of the Bay Area Native community and is focused on utilizing culturally and spiritually based approaches to build and strengthen healthy individuals, families, and communities.
Angelita Di Natale – Certified spiritual director from Mercy Center and have served individuals and groups for over 15 years. As an interfaith spiritual director and holistic counselor, she has presented workshops on grief, the immigrant experience, and facilitated dream groups and women’s groups. She uses the skills and knowledge learned in counseling psychology, with the gifts of compassionate presence and deep listening, to discern together with her clients, where and how the Divine is moving in their lives.
Donna Battle – Donna Coletrane Battle is a spiritual practitioner focused on justice and holistic wellness as it relates specifically to the intersection of race, gender, and spirituality. She is a mother, wife, sister, and friend who also coaches leaders, pastors those without a pastor, partners to cultivate healing in relationships, and commits everyday to a life of being present, though not always successful! She holds a B.A. from North Carolina A&T State University, a M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and a Ph.D. from Eastern University. She is also a co-founder of GAWD-The Grown Ass Women’s Delegation- clergywomen, pastor, therapist, leadership coach, five sister-friends seeking to support each other in life and work as we navigate this world as black women.
Lisa Castellano – A Xikana born and raised in California by way of México and the Arizona Sonora desert. Lisa has over 25 years of organizing, membership, leader development, political education, policy work, grant writing, and movement-building experience as an independent consultant, coach, and advisor with local, national, and international organizations. Lisa is a graduate of the Center for Third World Organizing’s Minority Activist Apprenticeship Program. Lisa currently serves on the Leadership Circle of Mijente, a national network for Latinx/Chicanx changemakers, and sits on the Advisory Committee for the Transnational Villages Network, a human rights network of Mexican indigenous communities and their diasporas in the U.S. As a member of Essie Justice Project, an organization for women with incarcerated loved ones, she has facilitated the Healing to Advocacy Series and sits on the research committee. Lisa graduated magna cum laude and received her B.A. in Feminist Studies with an emphasis on Social Movements and the Law from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Lisa finds great joy (and challenge) in helping to build leader-ful organizations, and is especially interested in membership models that can scale up and build political homes for frontline communities through organizing, campaigns, and cultural work.
Jiling Lin – Licensed Acupuncturist (L.Ac), herbalist, and yoga teacher in Ventura, CA. Jiling specializes in treating pain, trauma, and complex chronic conditions. Passionate about living life as art and environmental stewardship, Jiling brings years of outdoor education, improvisational dance, and global adventures to her Earth- centered teachings and practices. Her adventures through mountains, oceans, deserts, and rivers re-inspires her daily loving commitment to reconnecting the wilderness of the human spirit with the wild world surrounding us.
