Lisa Pedersen Executive Director
Lisa comes to The Art of Yoga Project as a former Vice President at Nokia. She has an impressive track record in the corporate sector, has lived and worked internationally for many years and has experience in fund raising and non-profits through volunteer work for the Junior League of Palo Alto Mid Peninsula. She is also a certified yoga instructor and has been mentoring women for many years. Lisa believes that empowering women and children builds healthy families and vibrant communities. She has been the Executive Director for The Art of Yoga Project since January 2009.
Mary Lynn Fitton
Founder and Program Director
Mary Lynn began teaching yoga in 1998 after completing the White Lotus yoga instructor certification program in Santa Barbara. She started teaching yoga to young girls in East Palo Alto, CA and Ashland, OR, where she saw first-hand the power of yoga in helping girls to identify and address their physical and emotional issues. She created The Art of Yoga Project in 2002, which combined yoga with creative arts, to bring together two powerful forces that had shaped her own development as a woman: creative writing and yoga. Mary Lynn began designing a program to teach girls yoga’s physical exercises for strength, health and vitality, and meditative practices for self-reflection and centering, and combine them with creative arts and writing. She purposefully wove these disciplines together in the Yoga and Creative Arts Curriculum, creating powerful tools for girls to access as alternatives and remedies to drug and alcohol abuse, disordered eating, regrettable sex, self-mutilation, depression and anxiety.
Sarah Barnard
Site Director, San Mateo
Sarah Barnard comes to the Art of Yoga Project with a diverse background in yoga, nutrition and working with teens. She is a certified yoga teacher through San Francisco’s Yoga Tree and has advanced trainings in teaching yoga to children and adults. In addition to teaching yoga in multiple San Francisco locations, Sarah leads a cooking class for high school students in the Mission District. She’s currently in training at the Integrative Institute of Nutrition to become a certified Holistic Health Counselor. Sarah feels so blessed to be a part of the Art of Yoga team and enjoys every opportunity to be in class with the girls. With each class, Sarah finds new ways that yoga can help these girls find their strength and, with art, an opportunity to express this strength to others. Sarah currently lives in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Catherine Killon
Site Director, Santa Clara
Catherine has been practicing yoga since 1983. She attended her first teacher training in 2000 with Aadil Palkivala. She has completed the 200 hour White Lotus Teacher training, the advanced teacher training, and is on track to complete her 500 hour teaching certificate this year. She teaches 40 classes per month at various locations in Los Gatos and San Jose. Catherine is also certified in yoga-thai massage and is currently enrolled at The Institute of Integrated Nutrition to become a certified health counselor. In addition, she has a jewelry company and enjoys painting.
At the Art of Yoga Project, Catherine encourages the girls to find their own passion, joy and loving hearts and believes that her background of yoga, thai massage and holistic health mentoring is integral to her work at the Wright Center. Catherine currently lives in Los Gatos, is married with four children and three stepchildren. All are in college or beyond!
Courtney Woodrow, RYT 500
Site Director, San Francisco
A practicing yogi since 1990, Courtney Woodrow is a certified Yoga Teacher through the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, and has completed the advanced teacher training at White Lotus. She also assisted the teacher training at San Francisco's Yoga Tree, and studied the art of teaching with Manouso Manos.
Courtney's passion for her work with The Art of Yoga Project stems from her own struggles and delinquency as a teen. Her dream is to help her students rediscover the beauty and magic of life. Courtney resides in Half Moon Bay with her loving family.
Shikha Prasad
After Care Director
Shikha was the executive director at the non-profit yoga studio CHANGE of the Peninsula, she has worked for the youth empowerment organization Power of Hope and has been a high school literacy tutor. She began her yoga practice in her teens, eventually came back to the practice, and completed her teacher training at Avalon Yoga in Palo Alto. She currently continues her studies with her mentor Anirudh Shastri.
From the moment Shikha heard about The Art of Yoga Project in 2005, she wanted to be involved. In her own turbulent teen years and in later life, yoga kept her sane with her feet on the ground. She believes it's important to meet teens where they are in life, and hopes the young women in The Art of Yoga Project will learn to draw on their own power and to chart their lives by their own inner compasses. Her experience teaching these young women has reinforced her belief that they have enormous inner resources. They need support; yoga is a path to self-support. This hard but simple truth is what she hopes to model through the mentoring program and her yoga teaching with the Art of Yoga Project.
Danielle A Harris PhD
Research Director
Danielle is an Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at San Jose State University (SJSU). She joined the Art of Yoga Project as the Director of Research in 2010. Originally from Australia, she has travelled to 19 countries, studied in three and lectured in two.
Her research interests include various elements of sexual aggression and family violence including child abuse, female perpetrators, and gender-responsive treatment and public policy. She has worked with a broad range of at-risk populations including survivors of institutional child abuse, civilly committed adult sexual offenders, and men recently released from custody. She has published multiple articles and book chapters and has presented her work at over 20 international conferences.
Dr. Harris is collaborating with the Center for Justice Research, Policy, and Training at SJSU for a full scale process evaluation of the Art of Yoga Project Yoga and Creative Arts Curriculum for girls in custody. She is delighted to be a part of such an important cause. When she is not preparing classes or grading papers, yoga is the only thing that quiets her mind.
Laura Koo
Development Director
Laura brings a background of non-profit grant-writing, marketing, operations and management experience to The Art of Yoga Project. Her formal training includes a doctorate from UCSF in 2001 in Chemistry & Chemical Biology and a B.A. in Chemistry with minors in Music & German from Rollins College in 1995. After working for several years at the Community School of Music and Arts in the Silicon Valley, she resigned to enter a three-year open retreat to deepen her spiritual practice and nurture a deep appreciation for the philosophies and practices of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual balance common to the Eastern healing arts. She has since pursued hatha yoga, traditional Chinese medicine, qigong and meditation studies. Her other hobbies include hiking, gardening, fashion and classical guitar.