Executive Director and Founder:

Joy Ravelli
Joy is a lifelong yogi who has been known to be "in motion" most of her life. She enjoys sharing the passion for play that she believes is inherent in all us by allowing her students and clients the opportunity to discover their deepest desires for health and well-being.

Joy is a certified personal trainer (ACE, AFAA), Pilates teacher (Physical Mind Institute), yoga teacher, (Frogpond Yoga), nutrition specialist (Tufts University), and health educator. Joy has designed and implemented programs for high school curricula, health maintenance organizations, and corporations throughout Massachusetts and California.

Board of Directors:

Adnan Iftekar, Founder
Adnan has been learning, teaching, dancing, and playing with yoga, acrobatics, modern dance, improvisatio,n and sometimes with computers for over 15 years. He has taught and performed at a variety of venues from a blackbox theater in Bennington, VT, to the streets of France and Germany to APE in Northampton, MA, to Deerfield Academy in Historic Deerfield, MA.

Adnan is a Yoga Alliance certified instructor and has taught at yoga studios in Massachusetts, New York, California, as well as Paris, France, and Karachi, Pakistan.

Adnan currently serves as the Director of Technology at the Presidio Hill School, a progressive, independent school whose mission is to encourage students to question, evaluate, and think creatively and independently.

Adnan loves being upside-down.

Mark Brueckman
Mark is the owner of mlb project consulting, llc. Mark has over twenty years of project management, financial management, and process improvement experience. Mark has created and implemented processes, governance, quality management, training, and cultural change at companies such as Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Gap, and Kaiser Permanente. Prior to founding mlb project consulting, llc, Mark was a project manager and development manager at Charles Schwab and, prior to that, the Controller and Treasurer of Summit Savings Bank. His interests are dancing, yoga, biking, motorcycling, reading, public TV/radio, Landmark Education, career coaching, and cheesy monster movies.

Helaine Sheias, Ph.D., Chair
Dr. Helaine Sheias, is an avid eco-feminist, eco-spiritual counselor and Yoga practitioner. She is a pious believer in the “My body is my Temple” philosophy. A certified international group facilitator and a registered yoga teacher (RYT) with the Yoga Alliance, she is now pursuing her RYT-500 certificate. She has created The Tree of LIFE YogaHealing Seminars, which integrate the Eight Limbs of Yoga Philosophy with Pranayama & Meditation, Kabbalah teachings, and Chakra energy work, all combined as an interwoven tapestry of spiritual, ecological, and physical qualities of traditional Yoga teachings. Eco-YogaHealing: is an eco-spiritual approach to Yoga which focuses on bringing balance, harmony, and flow – internally and externally to ourselves and our environment. Eco-YogaHealing helps establish a strong union of mind-body-spirit with the four elements of Mother Earth - fire, earth, air and water, the four directions, and the four seasons. Focusing on each element, direction, and season, Eco-YogaHealing integrates various asanas into our Yoga practice, which help heal the undernourished areas in our bodies that have been affected most by environmental toxins, work-related stress, and anxiety.
Weaving the strands between compassionate listening, non-violent social action, and healing storytelling, Helaine believes that we can bring about a turn in the cultural and ethnic awareness of the inhabitants of the world. This process invites us to cultivate a sense of sacred connectedness to Mother Earth by consistently facilitating wholeness, staying in relation and in participation to the land and the peoples where we reside. This involves the reconnection of individuals to the psychological and spiritual aspects of their own wholeness, through the Eight-Limb Philosophy of Yoga. Calling for a sense of ownership of the shadows of our pasts, this process requests of us to reveal, acknowledge, repent, and finally shed those aspects of ourselves, which can be found to be linked to the oppression and suffering of others. Helaine yearns to sow the seeds of Eco-YogaHealing throughout the continents and to gradually transform them into kernels of hope and peace – becoming genuine exemplars of sacred transformation and growth.
Helaine strongly believes that we are all spiritual beings in a physical body. Our body is the temple of our soul; our soul is a reflection of the Divine. We yearn to achieve freedom from pain and suffering, and craving, as we passionately desire to experience permanent happiness and joy. Genuine truth and happiness are within us and are not found in the external materialistic world. Truth, love, and happiness are inside our souls.

Thu Tran, Secretary
Thu has been working in the financial industry for over 10 years, managing technology, information security, and compliance projects. She has created and implemented programs to improve processes, manage risks, and measure control effectiveness.
Thu received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California - Santa Cruz, Master of Science from San Jose State University, and Master of Business Administration from California Lutheran University. She enjoys learning and is seizing the opportunity to make a difference in the community through the Purusha Seva Project.
In addition to yoga, her interests include Pilates, photography, travel, hiking, and learning how to follow on the dance floor. Little pleasures in life: ice cream, rain, and being the cool auntie.

Holly Virginia Clark
Holly has over 5 years’ professional experience providing executive support and administrative assistance in a variety of settings, including the 92nd Street Y’s May Center for Health and Fitness and Village Gyrotonic. Additionally, she has taught creative writing and English language arts to under-served and at-risk youth in the New York City Public School system. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College with an MFA in poetry, Holly is also the primary instructor and manager of the FreeBird Writing Workshop San Francisco. Holly is delighted to join the team of the Purusha Seva Project and contribute her diverse skill set to the cause of spreading wellness education and the yogic lifestyle.

Consultants and Former Board Members:

Kimberly de Caires
Kimberly de Caires is a San Francisco native, visual artist, musician, and educator. She first began working with children in the summer of 1989. Since then she has taught and created programming for a number of high-quality arts organizations in the Bay Area and around the country, including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Children's Museums of Chicago, Oakland, and Berkeley, the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Julia Morgan Center for the Performing Arts, and others.
She is currently Curricula Director of Ladybug Preschool, an arts-based, Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool in San Francisco. She has a Bachelor's Degree from San Francisco State University and additional course studies in visual art, music, psychology, and early childhood education. She began her yoga practice in 2004 and has been meditating since she was a child. In addition to making art and music, Kimberly enjoys reading, traveling, cooking delicious vegetarian food, hanging out with her animals, cute shoes, good red wine, and dark chocolate with almonds.