Our Collective
Our collective is made up of staff, advisory board members, volunteers, and community members offering healing spaces through TLC. We are committed to uplifting, designing, and facilitating inclusive and accessible spaces and centering those most marginalized in our community.
Volunteer or Become a Board Member
Board Member Information Packet
​Learn more about how board members support TLC and what board membership entails.
Board Member Application
Please review the Board Member Information Packet before applying. Anyone 16 years and older is encouraged to apply.
Volunteer Application
We always need volunteers. Fill out the volunteer application to get added to our volunteer list. We will let you know when volunteer opportunities come up.
Staff
Site Steward
Aherlow Kasjaka (they/them)
Aherlow Kasjaka is a white, able-bodied, neurodivergent, queer trans nonbinary person. Throughout their life, they recognized the pivotal impacts physical and mental health and lack of access to resources played in theirs and their family's lives. This led them to a career in food justice and public health as a registered dietitian. In their work, Aherlow has fought make health accessible to those most marginalized by systems of oppression through government advocacy work and grassroots activism. As a close witness to homophobia, addiction, domestic abuse, and mental health challenges throughout their life, Aherlow recognized their own embodied generational trauma and understood the importance of creating a world where everyone can feel the healing sense of belonging. They recognized they could use their strength from their unconventional life experience as an opportunity to amplify issues in the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as other social justice issues, through their work and their writing. They are also the published author of the modern fiction novel, Triangle (2020), a story about a queer woman's journey towards self-love and healing. You can learn more about Aherlow and their work at justhealingcommunity.com.
Advisory Board
Advisory Board Member
Alli Jones Ewing
(she/her)
I am a Trauma Center-Trauma Sensitive Yoga facilitator and trainer passionate about empowering people to discover their ability to find healing and connection from within and among community. I was inspired by my background in Special Education, my Peace Corps service as a Health Education Volunteer in Tanzania, and work with youth in foster care to integrate methodologies that promote and empower person-centered healing and address harmful power dynamics. As a white, queer, cisgender woman, I am continually working to address the intersections of privilege and survivorship she navigates embodying my identities. I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training with Matt Eshelman (taught by Paulie Zink) in Taoist Yoga and have completed my 300-hour advanced certification in Trauma Center-Trauma Sensitive Yoga - an evidence based methodology developed specifically for facilitating yoga with individuals who have experienced chronic abuse, neglect, and treatment-resistant PTSD. I am a student of Michelle C. Johnson and completed a second 300hr YTT exploring the vital intersection of yoga and social justice. I have additional experience facilitating yoga with children with special needs, refugees, pre/postnatal/birth trauma, LGBTQ+ youth, and youth in residential treatment and foster care. I also work as the Co-Executive Director at the YWCA, Olympia supporting community engagement with the organization's mission of Eliminating Racism and Empowering women. I have two young children and currently live on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Nisqually and Squaxin Island Tribe, known by the colonized name of Olympia, Washington.
Advisory Board Member
Natalie "WildTiny" Coblentz
(they/them)
I am a Queer Latinx Native artist, published poet, and local leader based in Olympia. With a BA in Fine Arts from Seattle University, I am a passionate advocate for creativity, community, philanthropy and environmental causes. My work embodies their roles as an activist, family member, friend, and dedicated community member. Since joining Capital City Pride in 2019, I have expanded my impact within the organization, beginning as a Stage Manager and eventually stepping into key roles as Event Producer, President and Festival Director. Known for my dedication to training and supporting the Pride Team, I bring vision and heart to every project I undertake. Currently, I channel my artistic vision into immersive lighting design and fabrication. When not working, you’ll likely find me savoring coffee, kale, and the company of kittens.
Advisory Board Member
Meg Rosenberg
(she/they)
I am a community member, public servant, and theatre artist deeply invested in the South Sound and building dialogue that sparks equitable social change. My family moved to southern Washington from New Jersey when I was very young, and I grew up as a queer, non-binary, white, middle-class, half-Jewish person, the youngest of two, who felt both connected to and separate from my community. My passion for storytelling and theatre emerged at a very young age from this desire to find belonging. Throughout middle and high school, I attended Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, a public magnet arts school for interdisciplinary arts-based learning, and focused on theatre arts. I moved to Michigan to attend Kalamazoo College in 2009 and graduated with a BA in Theatre Arts, Anthropology/Sociology, and French, focusing on adaptation/translation for the stage and cultural studies. In 2014, I moved back to Washington to work in higher education at The Evergreen State College, and while working, completed my Master of Public and Nonprofit Administration in 2018. My professional work moved to education policy at the Professional Educator Standards Board until 2021, focusing on organizational development and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the educator workforce. I've practiced Playback Theatre with the Heartsparkle Players since 2016, and act, direct, and teach theatre locally. When the pandemic hit, I became involved in Window Seat, first as a featured narrator for a play I wrote interviewing my grandmother, and then as a facilitator for our story circle series. When I heard we were hiring, I jumped at the chance to collaborate with Elaine. Oral history is such a powerful framework for the community-building work we do. I can bring my whole self to this job, including launching our own theatre company, Brave Practice Playback Theatre Collective, as a community engagement program. As an extrovert, I love creating spaces of active play, conversation, and shared learning. It is a blessing to be building this life, here, and now. Thanks to my beautiful, smart, and supportive life partner, Chaney, and our adorable menagerie of pets. To read more about my professional and educational background, feel free to download my CV.
Collective Members
Collective Member
Hummingbird Studio
Hummingbird Studio is a free, inclusive community art program for individuals of all ages and abilities. We believe that art belongs to everyone and that art and creativity are essential to a healthy and vibrant community.
Collective Member
Window Seat Media
We are a local oral history and community storytelling nonprofit committed to gathering people together to build community and share stories that have been forgotten, silenced, or ignored throughout history. Oral history and personal narrative are at the center of our work. We experiment with many formats. Since 2016, we have worked alongside service providers, activists, organizers, and artists to tell nuanced and inclusive stories — people’s histories — of who we are in this home-place. Through live storytelling, theatre, community conversations, artistic collaborations, podcasts, film screenings, exhibits, and more, we amplify local knowledge, share powerful stories and ideas, and ask what is possible. We serve an intergenerational and diverse community of adults, youth, families, and seniors within and connected to the South Sound region of the Pacific Northwest, on Squaxin Island land, known colonially as Olympia, WA. Thurston County also includes land of the Coast Salish, Chehalis, Nisqually, and Puyallup People. The populations we serve are based within this region and beyond. We believe the future is written with the stories we narrate, and we want to co-create a more inclusive, connected, and just world where we can share and document our own stories. We envision a local community that honors, seeks out, and is shaped by the many histories, identities, and stories that reflect the people we are in this place.
Collective Member
Gender Benders
Gender Benders is an Olympia-based trans-led group supporting trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and intersex people in the region through support groups, social gatherings, and movement organizing. We organize non-hierarchically, elevating multiple voices in our community in the facilitation and design of events and centering intersectional identities in what we do in community.
Sponsors
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Sponsor
YWCA of Olympia
Hummingbird Studio is a free, inclusive community art program for individuals of all ages and abilities. We believe that art belongs to everyone and that art and creativity are essential to a healthy and vibrant community.