Melissa Morman is a member of the original founding executive team of BHI/BDX (Builders Digital Experience) and currently serves as the company’s CXO (Chief Experience Officer). BHI/BDX, with employees all over the globe, is a consortium of the nation’s largest homebuilders, and its mission is to help builders and product manufacturers with digital transformation. Melissa spends much of her time speaking at conferences and consulting with executives across the nation. As a woman at the highest levels of an industry that has historically been male dominated, Melissa is very focused on ensuring diversity and equality in the work place.
Melissa felt a deep connection with Vallecitos and its mission from the very first visit almost a decade ago. Witnessing the unique transformational experiences of all who connect with Vallecitos, yet realizing the challenges of its rare and beautiful remote location, Melissa’s role is to help ensure Vallecitos’ long-term sustainability and viability.
Prior to BDX, Melissa worked for ClientLogic, as well as R.R. Donnelley & Sons. Melissa received a BS degree in Organizational Communication and MIS, Cum Laude from Ohio University. Melissa also serves on the board of Texas 4000, a non-profit focused on cancer awareness and research, and fulfills its mission through 80 UT students biking from Austin to Alaska each Summer.
Kathryn sat her first meditation retreat at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in 1997 and is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader training program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a GreenFaith fellow, has a MBA and over 20 years of management experience with nonprofit organizations.
Heidi has lived in Santa Fe since 1978 and was honored to join the board of directors in May 2015. She graduated from Colorado College with a degree in photography and is the vice president of a family-run company that specializes in vacation retreats in Akumal, Mexico. Heidi has been involved as a volunteer at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center since 2009 and has attended retreats yearly as a retreat manager. She sees the center and its beautiful setting in the Tusas Mountains as the ideal place to uniquely experience the wilderness life in a sacred and safe setting. She is committed to help protect, honor and share the legacy of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center, so that people can continue to experience a deeper awareness in this special place for generations to come.
Mary has been a Vipassana practitioner for over twenty years. During that time, she sat intensive retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and done month-long self-retreats, both at home and at a remote cabin in the mountains. More recently she completed the thirty-month Community Dharma Leader training through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. For many years, she has taught the “Introduction to Meditation” class at the Santa Fe Vipassana Sangha, where she chairs the education committee.
Mary has always been interested in practicing in nature. She lived for five years in an off-the-grid cabin near Pecos, where she was first introduced to meditation.
Originally from Upstate New York, Jessica has called Durango home for over thirteen years. Before joining Vallecitos, she was an integral part of a local, veteran-owned small business, Chinook Medical Gear, as its chief operating officer. The company proudly provides life-saving medical supplies to our country’s military, law enforcement and first responders.
Jessica has been a yoga practitioner since 1997 and became a registered yoga instructor in 2010. Her passion for the yoga tradition eventually led her to the Durango Dharma Center where she has been a member and served on the board of directors for over four years, most recently as board president. A lifelong learner, her practice has taken her to places like India, Belize, Costa Rica, Telluride and others. Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center offers a bridge for her to further connect her work and her practice, creating a wonderful experience for herself and others centered around heart and nature.
Jessica is a graduate of West Virginia University School of Business and Economics where she competed as a Division I swimmer. When not at work or practicing asana, Jessica enjoys biking, cooking, reading and leisurely hikes with her partner Ben, daughter Rayna and their dog Bodhi.
Erin Treat lives in Durango, CO and serves as a Guiding Teacher of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. She is a member of the Teacher Council of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and is the Resident Teacher at the Durango Dharma Center. Erin offers talks, leads classes, and teaches meditation retreats in the southwest and nationwide. Her approach to sharing the dharma is influenced by her experience as a student of the Diamond Approach by A.H. Almass and by her deep love of socially engaged practice, embodiment and wild nature.
Erin was born and raised in the prairie of Fargo, ND and was active in the performing arts throughout her early life. After attending college in New York, she moved to Santa Fe, NM in 1995 to attend massage school. She felt an unexpected sense of homecoming – an immediate connection to the cultures of the southwest as well as the magic of the red rocks, high desert, and alpine landscape of the Four Corners area. She settled in Durango in 1997. A bodyworker and healing arts practitioner for more than 20 years, Erin enjoys working with students from around the country and especially at her home in Durango. Erin is happiest dancing, hiking, cooking, and being in the mountains and rivers she calls home.
Originally from the East Coast, Greg fell in love with the Southwest’s mountains, rivers and broad vistas as a young boy. He vowed to return. Greg moved to Albuquerque in 1971 to pursue his graduate degree in architecture. After several years of internship, he established his own Albuquerque-based architectural firm in 1980 and continues to practice. The firm was established to provide architectural services for projects which enhance human endeavor, thus Greg has focused his career on institutional projects such as educational facilities at universities and public and private schools, medical clinics and hospitals, libraries, religious buildings and historic preservation.
Greg also serves on the boards of two educational institutions. He was enticed to become a part of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center by its mission to assist people in deepening the connection between their inner lives of wisdom and compassion with their outer lives of action and service, amid the stunning beauty and uniqueness of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center and its surrounding wilderness. Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center fulfills Greg’s commitment and desire to invest his energy and skills in organizations that advance human endeavor and help bring people to a deeper understanding of themselves and the world in which they live.
Erin Sibley Doerwald, LCSW, CMT-P is a psychotherapist, mindfulness facilitator and program developer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center first called to her as a place of self-care and nourishment during the off-season from serving as the Program Director for The Sky Center of the New Mexico Suicide Intervention Project. Her intention as a board member is to support the land, the values, and the mission of this extraordinary organization.
In addition to her supervisory work at The Sky Center serving youth and families, she also sees clients in her private practice, Hello Wellness Therapy. She is an adjunct professor at the Facundo Valdez School of Social Work at New Mexico Highlands University. Erin is a UCLA Affiliated Mindful Awareness Practices Teacher and a certified mindfulness teacher with the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. Her clinical perspective is founded upon family systems therapy and the field of interpersonal neurobiology. Doerwald offers an experiential and research-informed lens on how well-being is connected to ecological systems and practices that have been shown to support resilience in behavioral health. She is especially interested in the intersections of trauma-sensitivity, contemplative practices, and social justice.
Jane West McGrath is a Pediatrician and Professor of Adolescent Medicine at the University of New Mexico; Vipasana practitioner, weaver, and the mother of two grown sons. She joined the Vallecitos Board in 2020 and looks forward to having a part in the conservation of the land and the development of Vallecitos as a retreat center.
Jane was born in Japan and grew up in Hong Kong and Brazil. Her family regularly explored the outdoors, climbing mountains, camping and sailing. Her first career was as an outdoor guide with the Southwest Outward Bound school. She has spent much of her adult life exploring wild places around the world including India and Nepal. Her medical practice is focused on adolescents and she has helped develop school-based health centers for high schools in communities across New Mexico. She became involved with Vallecitos in part because of her interest in addressing the problem of burn out for primary care providers. She has helped organize and teach retreats at Vallecitos to address this problem.
