learn ABOUT OUR FACILITATORS

TABITHA NIETO (she/her/ella)

Tabitha Nieto is the Executive Director of the COR Community Foundation. She is a Certified Hypnotherapist of over ten years, a Life Coach, and an experienced Facilitator to women. She is trauma-trained, having spent hundreds of hours of study for Complex and Developmental Trauma, advanced leadership development, and group facilitation courses. 

Tabitha is an experienced workshop facilitator trained to support others through deep emotional explorations. Tabitha has worked alongside hundreds of women and has participated in, facilitated, or produced dozens of in-person and online events through COR Experience, COR Community Foundation, and her own business, Root + Rhythm Experience. At Root + Rhythm Experience, she combines all of her healing modalities to support her clients in expanding on their self-connection to live life more fully. She is also the founder of Circle a VIDA, a community focused on honoring child-free and childless women. 

In previous times, Tabitha held a successful, six-figure “Corporate America” career inside a sprawling, male-dominated Fortune 500 organization. She left this during the pandemic to explore a deeper connection to her life, heart, and body, heal her past, and share her journey with women who want the same.

Tabitha is mixed-race and proudly identifies with her Colombian, Latina roots. She also acknowledges the racism and white supremacy that have shaped our country and is committed to continuing her work and raising her voice. 

Some words from Tabitha: 

“I've learned there is strength in softness. And that opening to softness requires vulnerability and courage. I help create spaces where women can feel safe enough to lower the armor -and the weapons- that we use for protection in order to explore living a life with an open heart, feeling like we belong, and celebrating our lives.  Through workshops like COR Woman of Color and Diverse Cultures, I hope to share this work with hundreds of women. I can’t wait to meet you all!”

Freida Neiman

Freida is a Workshop Facilitator, Wedding Venue Coordinator and Wedding Planner. She lives in the Bay Area and loves dancing, all things Brazil, cats (especially orange tabbies) and really good food. 

She has been involved in healing and personal development work for nearly three decades and believes wholeheartedly in people's ability to overcome adversity and experience bliss in their lives.

She has transformed her own childhood trauma and knows firsthand the possibility to thrive and feel pleasure. And as a woman of Color she is eager to create a space of safety, inclusion, and freedom to be and say whatever is necessary for other women of diverse cultures.

Kelsey Suedmeyer (she / They)

Kelsey is a dreamer who explores how being limitless can show up in daily life through intentional practices of surrendering to the unknown. They are assionate about bringing creative expression to the everyday--keeping the spark connected to one's internal fire always within reach. She is skilled at prioritizing self-care, as her generous spirit is only accessible from a full cup.

Over the past 15 years, Kels has devoted themself to personal growth by seeking mentorship in various transformational organizations. She has discovered that her soul's purpose in this lifetime involves understanding the unseen aspects of our complex human experiences, so that she can effectively be with others and hold space for them. Kels brings emotional intelligence, sensitivity, and grounded communication to conversations, supporting people in exploring points of intersection within their identity.

As a dancer, they are inspired by somatic inquiry and healing through body awareness and movement. Kels feels most alive when she can focus attention on her heart's desires, which currently includes studying Astrology, Tarot, and Zouk!

Kels is of Philippine heritage, born and raised in the SF Bay Area. They are a mama to two young children, an advocate of home birth and midwifery, and continually opening to the nuances of being in an interracial relationship with their life partner. 

SHANDRA LAMOTTE

Shandra is the Director of Programming at the COR Community Foundation (CCF), a certified Lead Facilitator for COR workshops and has been leading workshops since 2015. She is also one of the founding members of the CCF as she was passionate to make the rite of passage work she experienced at COR Experience more accessible to underserved communities. (COR Experience is the licensor of the COR workshops).

Shandra started her career as a middle school special education teacher in Oakland and has always been passionate about making emotional and mental health support accessible to all. She recognizes the many privileges that she has been given as a middle class, white woman and aims to use her privilege, experience, and access to uplift and support others in dismantling the systems that have propped her up while oppressing people of color.

She has been leading COR Woman for over 8 years and her role at this workshop is to support the other facilitators in whatever they need so they can fully serve and hold the participants, and show up in their fullness. She has engaged in her personal anti-racism work since 2009 and she has been trained in a variety of educational, coaching, and therapeutic modalities—including but not limited to complex trauma healing practices, mindfulness, communication best practices, emotional and physiological regulation, self-compassion, and parts work.

Along with facilitating workshops, Shandra is mother of twin toddlers, a family systems coach, COR Experience’s Director of Training, and a facilitator of Stanford's Cultivating a Compassionate Heart course.

Ginny Zeppa (she/they)

Ginny has been a transformational coach and facilitator for over a decade. Her approach is rooted in transpersonal counseling, Gestalt Awareness Practice via Esalen Institute, in-depth studies of modern somatic modalities, and human lifespan + development. Ginny was formally a birth & postpartum doula, holds a Masters in Education, and practices Tantra, Buddhism, Earth-based spirituality, and Non-Violent Communication. Ginny is also currently studying and integrating the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model. 

Ginny's lived experience deeply influences her facilitation and coaching practices. A wild, intense and early kaleidoscopic journey into the realms of death, sexuality, birth, divorce, and radical, countercultural lifestyle have inspired pronounced sincerity where deep listening and curiosity in people, and their most raw emotions and experiences is paramount. 

In all that she does, Ginny brings humility, audacious compassion, and contagious faith.