Cathleen Callahan, MA, MEd., ABD, LPC, CPT is the founder of Voices of the Heart Counseling. She has taught at Lindenwood University, Webster University, and Deaconess Nursing School. While completing her doctoral studies in counseling, Cathleen served as family therapist at Boys and Girls Town of Missouri. She is a certified Journal to the Self Instructor and currently teaches visual and practical arts at the Leiberman Learning Center of University City Schools.
Lisa Conger, MA, has been teaching for Spokane Falls Community College's Extended Learning Senior Program since 2000. She teaches classes in poetry, life-writing, and has co-created a class combining writing and performance called "Migratory Words." She co-facilitates an ongoing poetry writing group at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane for professional care givers. Besides being a poet and teacher, Lisa is an exhibiting papier-mache artist. Lisa strongly believes in the capacity for healing in acts of creativity, and she loves to encourage and inspire others in discovering this anew. She has a master's degree in psychology from Antioch University-Seattle.
Normandi Ellis, MA, CAPF, has been a creative arts facilitator for youth at risk, women in transition, and seniors in community. She has received the Bumbershoot literary prize, and numerous awards and fellowships from such places as the Kentucky Foundation for Women and YMCA Writer's Voice. In addition to her community work, she has taught at Open Center in New York, the Women of Wisdom Foundation in Seattle, at NAPT conferences, and the Association of Expanded Learning Practices.
Dottie Joslyn is a poet, writer and CPT trainee. She has engaged in the profession of bookkeeping for the past thirty years and has worked in this capacity for the National Association for Poetry Therapy Foundation. She has had poems published in various journals and has self-published a poetry chapbook.
Marisis Nelson, MA, is in the application process for receiving her CPT. A poet and writer, she holds an advanced degree in psychology, Mental Health Counseling from Adelphi University and she currently works with drug and alcohol-addicted patients in Baldwin, Long Island. Before coming to New York to study, she was part of the start-up staff for the Richard Hugo House creative writing center where she ran a grant-funded poetry reading series.
Gayle Nosal, MFA, CAPF, is a poet, teacher and administrator of the nonprofit organization "Study Friends." She currently teaches language arts for middle school students in Boulder, Colorado and is adjunct faculty at the University of Denver. She is returning to the Foundation Board this year.
Joy Sawyer, MA, LPC, PTR-M/S is an author, poet, and therapist in private practice in Denver, CO. She has been a Foundation board member since the St. Louis conference in 2005, and before that, served two years on the board of the National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy (NFB/PT). Joy teaches poetry, as well as writing and healing, in the MLS program at the University of Denver (UCOL), and participates in a wide variety of writing community services. She is the recipient of a 2007-08 Rocky Mountain Women's Institute Fellowship for her performance poetry.
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