meet the onespirit team
Welcome to the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation family! We’re a small, passionate team working remotely from various corners of the UK — connected not by one building, but by a shared commitment to compassion, spiritual exploration, and deep care. From tutors guiding students through transformative journeys, to staff weaving together the threads of our day-to-day operations, to trustees shaping our long-term vision — every person here plays a part in holding this work with heart. We’re so glad to introduce you to the people behind OneSpirit.
THE ONESPIRIT STAFF TEAM
The organisers, communicators, and quiet champions behind the scenes — keeping things flowing with warmth and care.
Alan (he/him)
Executive Director
Alan was a builder, tree-feller, furniture maker, and woodturner before he started work in the charity sector supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Now with over 17 years of experience gained across the fields of mental health, youth justice, and drug and alcohol services, Alan’s work is driven by his passion for innovation and finding creative solutions.
Danielle (she/her)
Finance Officer
Danielle left her native Texas in 1983 intending to travel around Europe for a year or so. She never went back – and is now settled in the UK with dual nationality. She is fluent in French and speaks a little Spanish and Italian. She comes from a business background in sales, theatre design and architectural administration, and along the way also picked up bookkeeping skills.
He led a national programme to roll out gatekeeper training in Wales to equip frontline services and community members with the skills and confidence to prevent suicide and advised the Welsh Government on the development of a national suicide and self-harm prevention strategy.
Alan has five grown-up children and two grandchildren. In between work and shed-building (Alan believes you can never have too many sheds) relaxation takes the form of long walks with the dogs, reading, painting and meditation.
She trained as a labyrinth facilitator in 2002, which then led her into training as a OneSpirit interfaith minister. Ordained in 2006, Danielle took on the role of Finance Officer with OneSpirit a year later. She trained as a teacher in The Spiritual Laws of Prosperity with Rev Maggy Whitehouse in 2013 and now incorporates that work as a way to support students with their fees and money/scarcity issues. Her hobbies are crafts, knitting, swimming, walking on the beach, watching movies and dancing the Dances of Universal Peace.
Maddy (she/her)
Learning Design Specialist
Maddy has always had a deep interest in spirituality and went on to complete a degree in Theology and Religious Studies. Maddy trained and worked as a secondary school Religious Studies teacher before moving into SEN education, working holistically with young people with autism; seeing first-hand the power a holistic approach to education can have on the lives of young people.
Kailee (she/her)
Communications & Marketing Lead
Kailee’s lifelong fascination with diverse cultures has taken her around the globe, both as traveller and educator. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Global Studies online from Arizona State University, which gave her the flexibility to explore the world while studying. With minors in History and Women and Gender Studies, Kailee turned her passion for communication into action, teaching English to children in Italy and China.
She returned to university, completing a master’s degree specialising in feminist Biblical studies in relation to motherhood, identity, and Goddess spirituality. Having always been passionate about social justice work, Maddy was drawn to working with OneSpirit to reconnect with others committed to building a compassionate and thriving global community.
When she’s not working, Maddy loves to spend as much time as possible outside exploring the world around her. Having recently become a new mom, she is connecting with the world in totally different ways than she ever had before. She loves travelling to different places (near and far!) with her favourite places being India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Her time in these places taught her to always look for the sacred in the everyday.
Originally from Boston, her academic journey continued in Scotland, where she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in History, focusing on the religious, cultural, and gender dynamics of the Middle Ages. Her creative talents extend into social media and marketing, where she believes inclusive communication can spark innovation and connection.
Previously, she worked in Washington D.C., serving as an Inclusion Programme Coordinator, advocating for youth engagement, disability rights, Indigenous rights, and gender equality. She remains passionate about intersectional justice and empowering marginalised communities.
In her free time, Kailee enjoys reading, rewatching Indiana Jones movies, listening to music (too loudly!), and experimenting with vegan recipes. A solo traveller at heart, she loves meeting new people and experiencing the world’s rich cultural diversity.
Lavinia (she/her)
Community Development Lead
From London to Jamaica to Liverpool and many flights in between, Lavinia has always been passionate about community building and the many forms this can take. Her goal is to empower individuals to recognise and harness their power and influence within their community spaces. Within her local community, she functions as a project manager, consultant, and support for local organisations.
Kim (she/her)
Operations Manager
Kim has worked in operations management within charities and not-for-profits for over 15 years. She’s passionate about creating easeful, supportive processes and brings a natural ability to problem solve and hold space, seeing through complexity to the heart of what matters. Having grown up in South Africa, she reflects deeply on what separates people, from one another, the more-than-human world, and the Earth, and explores the pathways back into connection.
Her work focuses on area regeneration, social justice, and empowering individuals to take ownership of their community’s transformation.
Alongside her role at OneSpirit, Lavinia is actively engaged in community projects focusing on mental health and emotional well-being. She’s committed to creating inclusive, diverse environments that speak to and actively support their members. She believes in building communities where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued. Additionally, as a Hypnotherapist and Healing Practitioner, she works with people one-on-one and in groups to support their healing journeys through generational and intergenerational trauma.
When not working, Lavinia enjoys watching Star Trek, reading Sci-Fi, and being defeated in rock paper scissors by her son.
These wonderings have led her to the way of council, grief tending, and transformative justice spaces, both in learning and facilitation.
Kim is also an avid reader, practicer of Ashtanga yoga, dancer in her living room, carrot cake maker, succulent enthusiast, mountain hiker, aunty, barefoot walker, wild swimmer and potter.
THE ONESPIRIT FACULTY TEAM
The guides, mentors, and space-holders who accompany students through their two-year journey of growth and discovery.
Annie (she/her)
OneSpirit Core Tutor
Annie’s passion for experiential spirituality and for the profound heart of humanity has led her, over the last three decades, into diverse faith paths, spiritual traditions and cultural communities. Through study but also relationships with friends, neighbours and colleagues, Annie has been touched by the privilege and challenge of being welcomed into others’ worlds.
Dawn (she/her)
OneSpirit Core Tutor
Dawn’s greatest passion is to be part of the human experience that unfolds when we come together in a heart space to achieve something for the greater good for all. She started her working life in therapeutic communities and worked with many aspects of psychotherapeutic practices such as art therapy, psychodrama and group dynamics.
Annie shares this ongoing and self-reflective enquiry into how to really listen deeply to and connect with another in the Ministry training programme.
Alongside her tutor role at OneSpirit, Annie is currently engaged in a ‘grassroots’ voluntary ministry in a local urban project, where she is the ‘garden chaplain’ of a therapeutic gardening project for vulnerable members of the local community. Annie is drawn to this ministry through her lifelong affinity with the natural world and finds meaning in empowering others to share in cherishing and regenerating green spaces, particularly in improving the quality of life for all in urban environments. Annie is an experienced spiritual accompanier/coach and qualified chaplain, with NHS training in mental health spiritual care in an interfaith context. She draws on a degree and MA from Cambridge University in Theology and Religious Studies and her professional formation as a teacher, undergirding her commitment to diversity and social justice issues of inner cities.
Annie joined OneSpirit as a tutor in 2016 and is ordained. She enjoys working with classes in day workshops, residential and online contexts and is interested in how we form deep, mutually enriching connections through these different approaches. With a side-line in mural painting and a prolific writer, Annie has published numerous books and articles offering reflections and ceremony resources, particularly about key interests in the Feminine Divine, deep ecology and the mystical heart of sacred texts.
After many years of exploring earth-based spirituality and healing practices (often under the umbrella name of shamanism), she became co-director of Eagle’s Wing College of Contemporary Shamanism, and co-founder of both Celebrating Woman and Medicine Woman, Medicine Ways.
Over the last 20 years, Dawn has been offering one-year courses and short courses in healing, earth connection and practitioner training. She has also developed a one-to-one practice offering many lenses to help people know, love, heal and accept themselves, and in turn to know themselves as part of the Divine, Great Mystery of life.
Dawn was ordained with OneSpirit in 2018.
Monica (she/her)
OneSpirit Group Tutor
Monica shares her time between Birmingham and Barbados. She shares her ministry online through The Wild Wisdom Sanctuary, Wild Wisdom Oracle Cards, Wild Wisdom Groove and Ritual and offline through retreats, ceremonies and workshops. In her daily work, she is a love alchemist and certified relationship coach who helps courageous souls to heal their hearts and love again after break up, separation or divorce.
Una (she/her)
OneSpirit Group Tutor
Una has worked as an Occupational Therapist and mental health service manager for over 3 decades in Ireland and London. She is a qualified Gestalt psychotherapist who believes that allowing vulnerability in a safe situation will lead us towards experiencing sacred support. She has trained in Family Constellation work. She was ordained as a OneSpirit Interfaith minister in 2017.
She delivers this work through love and relationship coaching in groups and 1:1 as well as the Delightful Dating.app. Her personal passions are barefoot walking, yoga, singing, dancing, goat whispering and eating raw chocolate.
Joining the OneSpirit Interfaith family has demonstrated her sacred support as a felt experience through the practice of spiritual counselling, ceremony and joint endeavour. Another beautiful lesson for Una on the Interfaith course was the use of creativity as an expression of our spirituality. Una has a fine art degree and has had her paintings in a number of exhibitions, she plays music and writes. Una lives in Spain on an avocado farm. She uses her garden for conducting ceremonies and is learning to grow food and speak Spanish.
Sarah (she/her)
OneSpirit Group Tutor
Sarah was fortunate to encounter T’ai Chi aged just 16 and she’s been practising ever since. T’ai Chi led to Qigong, a related Taoist practice which includes meditation, healing, creativity and spiritual development. She is now a respected teacher of the Hua Gong style. Wishing to find a stronger means of embodying the benefits of her practice in the world, she joined OneSpirit and was ordained in 2014.
Guest Tutors
OneSpirit Guest Tutors
In addition to our core tutors, we’re honoured to welcome a range of guest tutors and ordained ministers into the training space throughout the year. These guests offer valuable perspectives, lived experiences, and unique ways of ministering — all of which enrich the learning journey and deepen our collective understanding of what it means to serve.
She served as a mentor for the class of 2017. The healing practice led her to explore health in all its forms and she holds an MA in Health Education. She has worked extensively in the voluntary sector, supporting people with addictions, mental health issues, homelessness and a history of offending before joining the Bristol Cancer Help Centre in 2003. She is now responsible for developing psycho-spiritual education programmes for people with cancer, and for training and accrediting facilitators to run them.
She has an abiding interest in holistic health and healing, a strong call to sacred activism and an abiding love of the wild. She lives in Bristol with her husband and 3 teenagers.
Guest tutors may lead sessions on specific spiritual traditions, sacred practices, or aspects of ministry that complement the core curriculum. Others may share personal stories of challenge, growth, and how their OneSpirit training continues to shape their life and work.
These visits are often some of the most memorable moments in the training, a chance to hear from those who are actively walking their path, holding space in their communities, and responding to the world’s needs in their own meaningful way.
By weaving in diverse voices, we aim to reflect the richness of the interfaith experience and remind our students that ministry can take many forms: all rooted in presence, compassion, and care.
THE ONESPIRIT TRUSTEE TEAM
The stewards of OneSpirit’s mission, bringing wisdom, governance, and long-term vision to help our work grow and endure.
Joanna (she/her)
OneSpirit Chair of Trustees
Joanna started her career in Fine Art specialising in painting and sculpture. After winning an award from The Henry Moore Foundation, she worked as an independent artist. This developed into teaching art with a focus on social issues, which eventually led to a career change following further training. She has now worked as a social worker for 25 years.
Eleanor Tabi (she/her)
OneSpirit Trustee
Eleanor Tabi is the president and CEO of The Paradigm Forum GmbH (TPF), a global consultancy and think tank operating at the nexus of talent innovation, social justice and workplace redesign. She was the senior vice president of Global Learning Strategies at Catalyst Inc. where she designed cutting-edge initiatives to promote organisational inclusion in diverse cultural contexts.
During that time, she has held management roles in social services across adult physical disabilities, sensory impairment, learning disabilities and autism, community drug and alcohol teams, and older people’s services.
As well as being a manager in a hospice developing bereavement services for adults and children social work dept, and chaplaincy. She became a Schwartz-round facilitator whilst working there. She was Ordained in 2011 and took a career break for 5 years to raise her daughter and care for her mother who had Alzheimer’s disease.
She has conducted children’s and adult funerals, and weddings and has gone on to return to work part-time in social work and write plays based on the reflection of my learning. Joanna has also completed the MM Interfaith course.
She was the first general manager of Catalyst Europe AG, founded in 2006, where she partnered with distinguished corporate and academic members, as well as governments. Before Catalyst, Tabi held the positions of officer at J.P. Morgan; lead partner at HNC Consulting; executive director at The Learning Labs; and founder of the Public Policy Centre in Philadelphia. An early publication she co-authored for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was hailed as “a definitive source for innovative public participation practices tied to environmental planning projects.”
Tabi is a frequent speaker and recognised voice in the international media and has been interviewed for the New York Times, Asahi Shinbun, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Business Today, Reuters, CNN, SRF2 Radio and BBC Radio 4; and was a commentator for “The New World of Work” on FNN. She has been named a European Thought Leader by the IBM Global Innovation Outlook initiative and a Woman Worth Watching by Profiles in Diversity Journal. Ms. Haller-Jorden has been featured in Careerpreneurs (Lessons from Leading Women Entrepreneurs on Building a Career Without Boundaries) by Dorothy Perrin Moore and Capitalizing on the Global Workforce by Michael S. Schell and Charlene Marmer Solomons.
Malaika (she/her)
OneSpirit Trustee
Malaika’s roots are African, her heritage is Caribbean (she is a proud descendant of the Windrush) and her experience is British, as she was born in the North-West of England, where she has resided all of her life. She is actively involved in addressing and mitigating the impact of systemic inequalities and racial discrimination on members of her Afro-Caribbean community.
Marco (he/him)
OneSpirit Trustee
Marco has spent 25 years in the conference industry, building market-leading events across sectors through his expertise in research, sales, and team leadership. For the past 20 years, he has been with Worldwide Business Research and, since 2018, has served as Managing Director of the European business in London while also overseeing operations in Singapore.
She also works to promote and celebrate the importance of inclusivity for people of all faiths and none. For the past 11 years, she has served as an Interfaith Minister. She holds multiple roles including a Patron, Co-chair, Trustee, community member of several charities, Radio presenter, Mindfulness practitioner and workshop facilitator of spiritual & personal development work. She has received national recognition from accolades to multiple awards from different UK leaders for the community work she has embarked upon, for the past 35 years.
In her spare time, she is a mother of two adult boys (31 & 25) who continue to bring adventure and learning to her life. She likes to indulge in all things spiritually enriching and holistic, including reading, walking & praying, writing old-fashioned letters, dinner parties, dancing, travelling, spas, arts & crafts, and learning new. This will be her 3rd time applying for the role of trustee, they say the 3rd time is lucky and so here she is completely overjoyed to be joining the OneSpirit Trustee team. Give thanks and Praise Ashe. I am me, you are you and we.
Marco successfully steered WBR through the Covid period when conferences essentially became illegal and several competitors went out of business and has otherwise delivered record profit levels every year of his tenure as Managing Director.
Having been raised a Catholic and becoming agnostic as an adult, Marco started learning about and engaging with broader spiritual practices at the age of 40 and now relies on a daily spiritual programme to keep him centred, present and grateful for the everyday miracle of being alive.
He is delighted to serve on the Board of Trustees of an organisation with such inspiring values and goals as OneSpirit.
Sonia (she/her)
OneSpirit Trustee
Sonia is passionate about fairness and justice. It is the lens through which she understands the world and it flavours the way that she goes about her work. She has had a highly successful career in academia, having being the author of the UK’s first 3-year undergraduate degree in Community development, which incorporated a professional qualification in Youth Work.
Josh (he/him)
OneSpirit Trustee
Josh is a lawyer specialising in media and copyright, currently working with the BBC group in London. Alongside his legal career, he has a deep and long-standing interest in spirituality, shaped by a non-exclusive affiliation with the Buddhist tradition. He has explored both Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism, and he is now closely connected with the Plum Village community, rooted in Vietnamese Zen.
She has also been a member of the Education and Training Standards body of the National Youth Agency, and an External Examiner on several undergraduate and post graduate programmes.
She has sat on a number of Boards including several housing associations, a Community Voluntary Services infrastructural organisation and a Primary Care Trust. She is currently a Co-Director of two Community Interest Companies. Sonia works freelance as an Organisational Development Consultant, Facilitator and Coach, supporting redesign and practices that bring fairness, peace and compassion to people living and working in organisations.
Her work extends across Europe and Africa. At the moment she is working hard at becoming a creative writer.
He also periodically attends a local Quaker meeting. Josh’s outlook is broadly inter-spiritual. Raised Anglican, he holds a deep respect for the “mystic heart” found within many paths and doubts that any single tradition can hold all the answers. He has travelled extensively and values the opportunity to learn from a wide range of beliefs and practices.
Drawn to OneSpirit’s open, non-dogmatic approach to spirituality, Josh feels aligned with its values and community. While he may one day pursue the interfaith ordination training, he’s pleased to currently contribute in the role of trustee. Josh holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Philosophy, Science, and Religion, an MA in Buddhist Studies, a first degree in History, and various professional legal qualifications. He is currently producing a feature-length documentary exploring reincarnation from diverse perspectives and volunteers in other capacities when time allows. Josh lives by the sea in Ramsgate, Kent, with his partner and their two beloved pussycats, from where, on a clear day, he can see France across the water.
Rev Tricia (she/her)
OneSpirit Trustee
Tricia has a professional background in community development and project management, with a focus on social justice. She has worked both at grassroots level and in senior management, supporting marginalised and disadvantaged communities. With extensive experience in sourcing and securing funding for charities, Tricia brings an inventive and creative mindset, one that has opened doors to sustainability and growth.
Board of Trustees
OneSpirit Board of Trustees
Alongside our core staff and faculty, OneSpirit is guided by a committed and diverse Trustees. These individuals bring a wealth of experience from across professional, spiritual, and community life, offering invaluable insight, governance, and heart to help steward the organisation into its future. Our trustees play a vital role in shaping OneSpirit’s strategic direction, ensuring we remain aligned with our values, vision, and ethical foundations.
She has many years’ experience in charity governance and brings with her both strategic clarity and a discerning pastoral presence. Tricia was ordained as a minister with OneSpirit in 2023. She thoroughly enjoyed her training, which she describes as transformational in many ways.
She loves travelling across Europe and the UK with her partner. Time spent in nature nurtures her soul and feeds her adventurous, inquisitive spirit. Tricia feels blessed to have raised three sons and now delights in the company of her four grandchildren. She is honoured to serve on this trustee board for an organisation that wholeheartedly aligns with her core values.
Some have backgrounds in education, finance, law, ministry, or activism, others bring lived experience, spiritual depth, and a strong commitment to inclusive leadership and service.
By gathering around the table in this way, we reflect the very spirit of interfaith: honouring difference, fostering connection, and co-creating a space where wisdom can emerge. We are always seeking new, dedicated, and inspired trustees to join us. If you feel called to contribute your time, skills, or vision, please do reach out, we’d love to hear from you.