Morning Mindfulness Facilitators
Meet the Morning Mindfulness Facilitators:
Barbery Byfield
Website: www.barberybyfield.com/
With more than 25 years of experience guiding weight management and behavior change programs, Barbery helps others find the same peace and freedom she found in her own struggle with bulimia. Recovery came not through stricter diets or more willpower but quietly—with mindfulness. Learning to slow down, listen inwardly to different hungers and meet herself with compassion she gradually transformed her relationship with food and with her body.
With a Master’s degree in Public Health she is also certified in Mindfulness Facilitation, Mindful Eating, and Intrinsic Wellness Coaching. Her work focuses on SELF: Sleep, Exercise, Life, and Food, helping people find the broader patterns that shape their well-being. Together, she and her clients cultivate a SELF-CARE (Curiosity, Acceptance, Resources, Experimentation) Mindset that flexes with life’s changing landscape.
Barbery writes the Substack Weightless exploring what mindful eating looks like in everyday life, and hosts a free weekly support group where people share their self-care journeys and a guided meditation together.
Through video examples, coaching, and an 18-week Mindfulness Based Eating Awareness Training Program she supports people in building a more compassionate and sustainable relationship with food and themselves.
Karina de Allicon
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.resilientorganizationsinitiative.com
Karina is a Fulbright Scholar from Montevideo, Uruguay, that leverages mindfulness, organizational psychology and business continuity to help employees in Corporate America lower stress while increasing well-being and productivity. She counts with over a decade of experience helping teams in Corporate America (Nike, 20th Century Fox, Edwards Lifesciences) efficiently bounce back from business disruptive events (e.g. COVID-19, Hurricane Maria).
Karina has an MBA with a concentration in organizational psychology from Johnson & Wales University, is a certified mindfulness instructor with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a Duke University-trained health and well-being coach. She has been a featured guest speaker in Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) and at New York University (NYU). She has been published in peer-reviewed journals and performed independent behavioral research on mindfulness for the Hispanic community with the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She has taught mindfulness at a counseling center for neurodiverse children as well as to primary school educators and the local community in Irvine, California.
Julia de’Caneva, CMT-P
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.ifitsthelastthingido.com/
Julia de’Caneva, CMT-P, is a writer, Holistic Health Coach, and professional organizer specializing in end-of-life planning. In her business, If It’s The Last Thing I Do, and Substack of the same name, she explores the intersection of life, death, cancer, and wellness. She has professional certifications from IIN, UCLA Mindful, Gallup, and in a myriad of other wellness modalities.
Erin Doerwald, LCSW, CMT-P, RYT-200
Website: www.hellowellness.center
Instagram: @hellowellnesstherapy @collectivecareclub
Erin Doerwald, LCSW, CMT-P, RYT-200 is a UCLA-affiliated mindfulness teacher and psychotherapist specializing in mindfulness-based interventions. She is the founder and CEO of Hello Wellness, a holistic wellness business based in Santa Fe, New Mexico offering therapy, retreats, classes and coaching. Certified through the IMTA and trained at UCLA’s Semel Institute (2017), she has practiced meditation since 2009 and facilitated mindfulness in clinical, healthcare, and organizational settings since 2012. For 12 years, she trained clinical intern therapists at The Sky Center in mindfulness for therapeutic presence, vicarious trauma prevention, and evidence-based client interventions. Erin has been a mindfulness teacher for medical research studies, including the University of Wisconsin Medical School Multiple Myeloma Sleep Study and UCLA’s Harnessing e-Mindfulness Approaches for Living After Breast Cancer study. She currently facilitates weekly mindfulness sits for the staff at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in addition to her own practice’s Collective Care Club mindfulness collaborative. She is deeply committed to mindfulness as a healing practice grounded in both experience and research.
Serena Hoenig, CMT-P
Email: [email protected]
With over 15 years of health and wellness experience, Serena brings a strong foundation to her work facilitating healthy lifestyles. She is currently embracing the journey of motherhood with her toddler, an experience that continues to inform and deepen her mindfulness practice. Serena holds a Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science and is a UCLA Semel Institute trained mindfulness facilitator who offers secular, evidence-informed teachings that emphasize mind–body awareness and integration. Informed by her lived experience with ADHD, she thoughtfully incorporates accessible accommodation strategies to support diverse learners. She has served as a community leader for the past ten years, supporting the growth of youth and womxn’s rugby.
Maria Nicolacopoulou
Website: www.onhappiness.world
Maria started meditating in 2007 and started teaching in 2023. Apart from her training at UCLA, she has also completed Tara Brach and Jack Cornfield’s Mindfulness Mentorship program, and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center’s Science of Happiness. Maria has spent time at San Francisco’s Zen Center and is currently pursuing an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, focusing on the intersection between neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy, while offering programs and teachings to organizations, groups and individuals who are in search of a sustainably fulfilling existence.
Madelyne Schermer
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.abundancemindfulness.com
Madelyne works as a meditation teacher and Trained Mindfulness Facilitator through the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). She also works as a Certified Sylvotherapist, specializing in forest therapy and nature-based meditation.
Her work includes leading community and parent groups, supporting teens, guiding mindful pregnancy programs, facilitating workplace mindfulness, and offering private sessions—all with a focus on secular mindfulness and Insight Meditation.
She works as a Retreat Manager at The Big Bear Retreat Center in Big Bear, CA, and teaches mindfulness meditation to high school students and staff at New Village Girls Academy in Silver Lake, CA.