Zoë is a mixed media artist and school clinician with a specialization in art therapy. She brings experience in grant writing, development, community event planning, and effective project management across organizations. Zoë has experience in securing philanthropic support through a myriad of revenue streams for nonprofits, including foundation and government grants, individual donors, and corporate sponsorship. Zoë interned at SafeArt and had the honor of  learning from Tracy, Yasmeen, Mitch, and Susan. She is a life-long learner and community volunteer who is excited to contribute to the future of SafeArt. 

Clare has dedicated her career as an education researcher working in partnership with practitioners and policymakers, conducting research with real-world implications and the capacity to impact policy decisions and improve life outcomes for children and families. Her passion for community involvement has led her to participate in multiple nonprofit boards, including her local school board and the board of the local park where she has led grant-writing and fundraising efforts to raise money for the development of an ADA playground. She brings her expertise as an education researcher to her volunteer experiences, and her passion to support children, families, and communities is a common thread that encompasses her professional and personal endeavors. A perpetual work-in-progress, Clare has recently discovered nonviolent communication and begun her own shadow work and looks forward to how her personal journey intersects with the work she will contribute at SafeArt and elsewhere.

Cynthia Allen has had the pleasure of growing up in Vermont and enjoying a close knit family all her life. She enjoys spending time with her husband, children and grandchildren along with her four brothers and their families. After leaving the corporate world for a slower pace she found herself volunteering as a Guardian ad litem, at the Vermont Foodbank, and Everybody Wins. She finally settled at her current job, teaching math at an alternative High School. She has assisted non-profit organizations for most of her adult life and looks forward to continuing that service to a wonderful community asset in Safe Art.

Lowry is a white, Jewish, queer-identified, cisgender woman, who moved to Vermont 7 years ago. She is a trained mental health counselor who lives in Northfield and works at Centerpoint in South Burlington, specializing in trauma-centered Drama Therapy and Somatic Therapy. 

Lowry has been on the SafeArt Board for the last 4 years after being a staff member in previous years. During her beginnings in Drama Therapy training, she was an intern at SafeArt, learning under Tracy and Yasmeen. She is deeply committed to the work that SafeArt provides for our local, rural community and is thrilled to be able to support the direction that SafeArt is currently taking to offering healing, creativity, and justice work for all ages living in rural Vermont.

Lisa has spent her lifetime healing her tough and tender heart through the arts. If there is anything she knows best, it’s how to channel big feelings from her head and heart and gut through her hands. A mentor once advised her to “Make the thing you WANT to do, the thing you HAVE to do.”  So she did. 

She got her BFA in painting and printmaking from New Hampshire Institute of Art. And more recently, her Master’s in clinical mental health counseling and expressive arts therapies at Goddard college where she added movement, dreamwork, and psychodrama to her healing modalities.  Now she runs a clinical expressive arts therapy practice out of The Everything Space in downtown Montpelier. She spends her time helping others grow their creative imaginations, embodied awareness, and resiliency through the arts. In her free time, you can find her practicing playback theater, getting lost in her garden, cruising the country roads of Vermont on her motorcycle, or calling in the wild divine in her riverside art studio.

Kelli has been motivated by love for the last fourteen years to end domestic and sexual violence by building interconnectedness with community and nature.  Nadeem Aslam wrote, “Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.” Kelli believes that love is a core value that connects and attaches us all to one another and to our natural world.  Her personal and professional life are centered around love and interconnectedness– creating more, fostering what exists, and searching for it in places where it seems to have ceased to exist.  Kelli’s purpose is deeply connected to that of the Vermont Network’s which is to create a world free of oppression where actions, beliefs, and systems support all people to thrive.  She holds dear that with love and each other this beautiful transformation can be achieved.