Our Team
Our Team
We are a team of experienced and passionate facilitators, leaders, coaches, entrepreneurs, and volunteers dedicated to the practice of authentic relating and the production of authentic relating trainings. We’re committed to bringing about a world of healthy, conscious, connected, revealed, enlivened, and intimate relationships, with both self and others.
We live and breathe this work in our own lives, and have watched ourselves and each other radically transform toward greater and deeper connection with all those with whom we’re in relationship.
From breakthroughs in intimate partnerships to profound connections with absolute strangers (who rapidly become friends and allies), we’ve all seen how hugely impactful and immediately applicable this work and practice has been.
If you’re interested in working with ART in any creative capacity, get in touch with us anytime at [email protected].
sam hardwick
CEO
Sam is a big picture thinker and loves working with others to shape the strategic journey of the organisation. He especially enjoys leading teams, getting stuck into projects and translating big ideas into action. Sam has spent the last 20 years launching and leading businesses, projects and charitable initiatives. His commitment to self-development and personal growth has become deeply interwoven with his entrepreneurship journey. Sam is passionate about understanding human behaviour, consciousness and the practice of conscious leadership. He is based in the south of England close to Brighton and enjoys connection in many forms, adventure sports and exploring on his adventure motorbike.
Dayna Seraye
Director of Facilitation & Curriculum DEVELOPMENT / LEAD FACILITATOR
Dayna Seraye is a teacher and facilitator of personal transformation, guiding individuals and teams to greater awareness, resilience and connection. She is a Senior Course Leader and Director of Leadership and Facilitator Training for ART International where she educates and trains participants in the skills of authentic relating, emergent leadership and group facilitation. She works with individuals and couples in her Relational Coaching practice to uncover and heal blindspots, amplify conscious communication and transform conflict into intimacy and connection. Her passion is to co-create regenerative cultures where humans live in right relationship with self, others and the whole of life.
Christopher Gray
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT & CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT / SENIOR COURSE LEADER
Christopher is a course leader of The ART of Being Human, Levels 1 & 2, as well as the Authentic Leadership Program (ALP). He’s spent 20 years in the software world as a leader in educational technology, most recently at Facebook. During that time, Christopher has also been doing extensive work supporting people struggling with alcoholism, substance abuse, and codependency. Since discovering and immersing himself in the practice of Authentic Relating, he’s transitioned to coaching and working with ART to bring this transformative, humanizing practice to the world. He teaches Bikram yoga, and, most importantly, is from New Jersey.
NATASHA FIGUEROA
CHIEF RELATIONAL OFFICER / Program Manager for Facilitator Training / Course Leader
Natasha is an instrumental part of the European leadership team, co-leading the Level 4 program and being the lead mentor at Level 3 trainings. They have been on a path of Authentic Relating for over 20 years by integrating honesty practices, dance, tantra, shamanism, improvisation, and more. Their main passions are intimacy, communication, vulnerability, gender balancing, and love. As a person of mixed heritage and raised in multiple cultures, Natasha is focused on representation, accessibility and inclusivity in the self-development world. Based in beautiful Copenhagen. Read more here at https://www.jellyfishheart.com
Claire Dennis
director of operations
Claire works behind the scenes, managing the administrative activity to ensure all ART courses and offerings run smoothly. Previous to ART, Claire spent many years developing and managing volunteer programs for homelessness and environmental organizations in London, UK. An active volunteer herself for most of her life, projects have guided her travels across the globe. Claire is captivated by the concept of community and has always been drawn to the diversity of life – learning about others and their unique perspectives. Working for ART is the perfect place to deepen this curiosity and support others to take this powerful practice out into the world. She currently resides in a rural southwest corner of the UK.
Jocelyn Lee
Sales & Marketing Manager
Jocelyn cares deeply about making Authentic Relating visible and accessible to people who, like herself, really value human connection. She believes between every touch point from people, to groups, to organizations, to businesses, and the planet, we’re all trying to make contact with each other. What is meaningful to Jocelyn in this role is ensuring that we keep putting people’s connection needs first and that when we make this the focus, everything else falls into place. In the everyday, Jocelyn can be found in Copenhagen enjoying the ‘hygge’ life while dreaming of Vancouver, Canada where she’s from. While she loves putting her creative, strategic, and analytical mind to work – she considers herself an embodied mystic at heart and has a hard time being concise in describing herself fully.
Debbie Lee
Operations Manager
Debbie supports the smooth running of operations and marketing activities behind the scenes at ART. From her own experience with authentic relating, she is passionate about creating a welcoming community environment where everyone is able to bring their whole self. Debbie is a proud geek with a background in Geophysics that combines her love of numbers and logic with the chaotic workings of the natural world. Following twelve years in the Corporate world, she now incorporates this balance of structure and flow in her role at ART, her work as an Embodied Business Coach and as a mum of two boys. She lives in the Scottish countryside where you can find her exploring the outdoors whenever possible! You can take a look here @debbieleeco
deniz akin
reLational & operational coordinator
Deniz is part of the Operations team to support folks’ experiences with ART. When she first discovered Authentic Relating, she knew she’d stumbled into magic. Like many folks in this world, connection and community are paramount to her—so much so that she lovingly refers to them as the base liquids in the smoothie of life. She studied mechanical engineering and anthropology in school, and has since woven her way down paths of tech, human factors research for behavior change, group facilitation, festival production, and teaching various types of movement. Deniz holds a strong value for following intuition and aliveness as it comes up in life, and is so excited to have followed that aliveness all the way to ART’s team. She lives in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, and outside of ART, can be found dancing, playing music, crafting, learning to ferment foods, and continuing her practice of discovering all types of balance through slacklining.
AUTUMN WOHRLE
Social Media & Marketing Manager
Autumn is the content curator and creative lead behind all of ART’s emails and social media. Prior to joining the ART team, Autumn was a second grade teacher. Her favorite educator book was and is The Power of Our Words by Paula Denton which provided excellent foreshadowing into what her future held. Through personal transformation and discovering Authentic Relating, Autumn is now a yoga teacher, life coach, and an integral part of the ART management team. Autumn found Authentic Relating while on retreat in Bali and immediately knew that she was in it for life. Joining the team at ART International was a natural next step! Autumn also enjoys dancing, the outdoors, and optimizing her human experience through biohacking and mindfulness practices.
Rick Smith
senior COURSE LEADER
Rick has spoken to over 100,000 people on five continents in areas of teaching skills, public speaking, and facilitation. His best-selling book Conscious Classroom Management has now sold over a quarter million copies, and continues to touch the lives of teachers and their students. Throughout these past twenty years, in addition to training teachers, Rick has also been teaching workshops in consciousness, embodiment, personal growth, and meditation. He now brings his experience in teaching and facilitation to ART, offering practical ways for participants to know and love themselves, and remember their own innocence, wholeness, and “enough-ness,” especially in all the tight corners of their inner and outer worlds.
margo Fisher
Senior COURSE LEADER
It brings Margo a lot of joy to connect with awareness and intuition, embodying what she’s learnt about communication and intimacy. She was a teacher and educational researcher for many years and continues to enjoy finding clear ways to share the revelation of authentic relating to those ready for it. Margo also spends time as a medicine guide and researcher into psychedelics for healing. She is a partner, mother to a teen daughter, friend and nature lover, living a slow and alive life near the forest just outside of London.
Sydney McGary
COURSE LEADER
KATE MIDDLETON
COURSE LEADER
Kate Middleton is a Somatic Therapist and Authentic Relating Facilitator on a mission to help humans feel alive and at home in their bodies, relationships and the world. As a former World Champion Freediver she blends Nature-based adventures with deep relational work to create environments where connection and healing can happen.
Kate leads groups and individuals into the depths of their bodies and their truth and helps them walk it into the world. When she is not in session you can find her running, climbing and reading poetry in the Eastern Sierras of California.
Ranjit Krishnamma
COURSE LEADER
Ranjit has 30 years experience of personal development; as a large group facilitator, trainer of facilitators and creator of unique experiential workshops. He is also a rock-climbing instructor, a professional actor, and leader of Circling and Authentic Relating group experiences. “I sometimes get the sense that we are already deeply connected and that this work helps us to rediscover…this.”
Stephanie Dickinson
COURSE LEADER
Stephanie Dickinson is a feminine leadership mentor and connection expert on a mission to massively upgrade the relationship skills of millions worldwide. Her superpower is helping people increase their emotional intelligence, create rewarding relationships and find freedom and fulfilment in connection. When she isn’t shifting the mundane to magic with her work, you can find her dancing Bachata or on a waterfall adventure in Bali. She shares her work worldwide, in coaching programs, authentic relating trainings, festivals, retreats and men’s and women’s circles.
Adriana Candeias, PHD
Course leader
Pauline DREWFS
COURSE LEADER
Sat Prem
Course Leader (French Language)
Sat Prem has been facilitating learning experiences for 30 years. She is a course leader and coach in Relational Intelligence, expert in somatic communication and LABAN-BARTENIEFF human movement analysis.
A true mystic, passionate about human potential, resilience, regeneration and creation, she enjoys supporting emerging leaders and awakened organizations who aspire to develop their skills towards more relational authenticity and conscious leadership in the service of sustainable development.
She is also a teacher of meditation and Kundalini Yoga, and has devoted 4 years to a Non-Duality contemplative retreat.
Ash Witham
Course Leader
Ash Ryzen Witham (WIH-them) is a queer nonbinary Connection and Embodiment Facilitator and Somatic Coach (Ash/she/they), dedicated to generating inclusive spaces for personal and collective transformation.
She is a Level 1 and Embodied Level 1 Course Leader at Authentic Relating Training (ART) International, a certified coach through The Relateful Co, and certifying with Strozzi Institute in Somatic Coaching. Ash co-founded Shadow Academy, ARCI Retreat, and We AR Queer, initiatives that combine Authentic Relating with other modalities like shadow work, holistic intimacy, and LGBTQIA+ community building (respectively).
Whether a one-off workshop or a weeklong retreat, each of her offerings are designed to disrupt social programming, practice courageous vulnerability, expand our capacity to be with, and embody our fullest expression—so that we may play toward our transformation and cultivate authentic and meaningful lives.
More about Ash here: ashwitham.com or @alchemy.with.ash
Naomi Prema Devi
Course Leader
Naomi, a New Zealand native is passionate about sharing transformative, empowering events and experiences that awaken people to their true essence and create deeper fulfillment in love, Intimacy, relationships and life. After discovering the depth and profoundness of authentic relating and its capacity to create deep connection with others, she was hooked. As an International Tantra Teacher, Relationship and Intimacy Coach she loves sharing the authentic relating practices in her work as a way to create greater love, consciousness and connection in the world. Find out more about her here: naomipremadevi.com
VIX ANDERTON
Course Leader
SHERI HAUSER
Course Leader
Sheri believes that the meaning of life is to find our gift, and our purpose is to give it away. After years of eagerly searching for her elusive “purpose”, it took a radical life shift that dismantled her foundation to discover who she is and why she’s here. Incorporating ART’s 5 practices into her life, brought her back home to herself. Sheri stands for radical self-expression and has long identified her values as integrity, camaraderie, creativity, and authenticity. She is a trained Conflict Resolution Mediator and volunteers with Realness Project in Colorado to bring Authentic Relating Leadership practices to inmates in prison. In her spare time, she amplifies the voices of other spiritual leaders and changemakers through her brand, Pink Noise. She recently moved back to Victoria, BC where she grew up, and speaks as a New Thought Minister at Victoria Truth Centre.
