Valerie Sher

Valerie Sher, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Center for the Divine Feminine and a psychologist in private practice in Menlo Park. Valerie left an 18-year career in marketing and business development in the computer industry to pursue a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto. Her transformational journey began with a realization of the Feminine as a psychological principle, as a Divine spiritual essence, and as an embodied expression. She has since embarked on a decade long journey of self-exploration, education, awareness, and embodiment of the Divine Feminine.

Her work with women, and the subject of her dissertation, facilitates women on a guided journey through the depths of the Dark Goddess, to unleash the false self and rebirth themselves into a healthy and conscious relationship with the Feminine. Through this process, her clients reclaim the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone, the Warrior, the Virgin, the Lover, the Madonna, and the ability to flow between these and other aspects of the Feminine self.

In her private practice, Valerie helps individuals and groups find and express their passionate fulfillment, work together for a common goal, and make their lives meaningful. Her work with men and women focuses on healthy embodiment, sacred sexuality and full expression of the self. She helps her clients find a flow between, and sacred union of, the Divine Feminine and Masculine within themselves and in relationship to others.

Valerie’s life’s work is guided by an underlying desire to create social and cultural change to reclaim the Feminine, and create a healthy balance of Masculine and Feminine energies in individuals and in the world. An international speaker, she has presented at the Association of Transpersonal Psychology and the European Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS) Conferences.

email: vsher@itp.edu

Christine Brooks

Christine is a core faculty member of ITP's Residential PhD program where she serves as Assistant Professor and is also Chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Ph.D. program. Christine was awarded her Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology at ITP in 2007. She recieved her MA in Psychology at ITP in 2006. She also has a BFA in Acting from the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, awarded in 1992.

She brings more than 15 years of experience in the corporate world to her current work including expertise as a book editor at Bantam Books and project manager of an online personal growth website.  These past work experiences inform Dr. Brooks’ current interest in transformational education and leadership.  

Dr. Brooks’ research is focused in three areas: intentional childlessness as a life path; archetypal expressions of gendered identities; and the reconciliation of long-term discord via social networking websites.  She has presented at major national and international conferences in the social and human sciences on intentional childlessness and her own original qualitative research technique, Embodied Transcription.  Additional areas of scholarly interest include the intersections of transpersonal psychology with feminist and queer theories and psychologies, postmodern and poststructural theories such as social constructionism and advocacy/participatory worldviews, diversity issues in psychology, queer spirituality, qualitative research methods including grounded theory and intuitive inquiry, and adult identity development. 

email: cbrooks@itp.edu

Ana Perez-Chisti

Ana is a core Faculty member of ITP’s Global Ph.D. Program where she serves as Associate Professor. She also is a Professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, teaching in the Distant Learning Program in the Department of Religion and Philosophy. She specializes in subjects such as Comparative World Religions, the Mystical Traditions, Ethics, Eastern and Western Philosophy, Women Saints and Prophets-East and West, Jungian Psychology, Psycho-spiritual Synthesis, Culture and Consciousness and Contemporary and Wisdom Psychologies.

Ana has worked as a counselor in the field of homeless shelter support, hospice care, prison reform and emergency food distribution in areas of the world where extreme conditions of natural disaster, war, and political upheaval have occurred. She is an ordained minister, lineage teacher (Murshida), and National Representative of the Sufi Movement International of the USA, which displays a website at the address of www.sufimovement.net. 

Ana has directed a World Religions program for ministerial ordination for over thirty years preparing hundreds of students in spiritual ethics and counseling procedures that permit them to move into Chaplaincy and Directorial positions around the globe. She is an international lecturer, writer and a phenomenological/hermeneutic researcher with interests in French, Pali, Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese languages. She has maintained a private counseling practice in the East Bay for 15 years and has studied Dance,Yoga, Kendo (Martial Art of the Sword) and holds a black belt in Shorin-Ryu Karate.

Her latest academic interest is to publish her two major texts this year which are: Foundations of the Buddha’s Teachings-Abhidhamma and its Causation, Correlation and Liberation and Sufi Akbar-The First Mogul Interfaith King.

e-mail: aperez-chisti@itp.edu

Genie Palmer

Genie is the Dissertation Director and an Assistant Professor in the Residential Program of the Institute. She is also actively involved in the Institute’s Spiritual Guidance Program, assisting in the facilitation of the Spiritual Guidance Council and serving as a supervisor for spiritual guidance interns. Prior to moving to California in 1992, Genie worked in Texas as a Registered Nurse for thirty years and as a Gerontologist for seven years. As a gerontology counselor and educator, she worked with well, healthy older adults around issues of successful aging, bereavement, spirituality, and lifestyle changes. Her dissertation research, for which she received the Sidney M. Jourard Award for excellence in student research, centered on individuals who have exceptional human experiences.

Her research interests include the study of the meanings and life impacts of non-ordinary and transcendent experiences and other exceptional human experiences, the connection between psychology and spirituality, spiritual development, change, and transformation, and group spiritual guidance, particularly from cross cultural and cross traditional perspectives.

Genie maintains a private practice in spiritual guidance, working with individuals and groups to foster spiritual growth and development and to facilitate assimilation and integration of varieties of exceptional human experiences.

e-mail: gpalmer@itp.edu

Judy Schavrien

Judy is Associate Professor and Chair of the Global Ph.D. Program. Prior to joining the Institute, Judy helped found two programs in Women's Spirituality at California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a feminist activist and a former board member of GAYLESTA. In her capacity as a clinician, she served as an audience consultant to the Oprah Winfrey show; she also appeared in the Winfrey show "Lesbian Couples." She served on the Executive Committee of the Association for Humanistic Psychology Board.

She served as Senior Staff at the Carl Rogers clinic in Chicago. With Eugene Gendlin she taught focusing in international workshops. Judy, who had been treating post-trauma stress in others, contracted it after a mugging in which she was shot in the face. Her healing journey led to residence in India and the Far East, including pursuant years of practice with Sogyal Rinpoche, who is known as the laughing lama.

Judy's research includes two articles for publication in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology: parts I and II of "On being shot awake: A transpersonal self psychology view of PTSD recovery." JTP first published and then anthologized "The rage, healing, and daemonic death of Oedipus: A self-in-relation theory." With New Rivers Press, she translated from Dutch and wrote a cultural history introduction to What Rhymes with Cancer? As a published painter and critic, and an anthologized poet, she received 14 national and international prizes. Most recently she was nominated Oakland Artist of the Year.

e-mail: jschavrien@itp.edu

Kate Wolf-Pizor

Kate is the faculty Chair of the Residential Master's Program, a Senior Clinical Instructor, and is an Associate Professor. She has taught at the Institute since 1997 and began as the chair of the Residential Master's program in January 2001. She has also taught at Santa Clara University and National University.

Kate has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California for thirteen years and has worked with families in California for the past twenty-five years. She is currently the president of the California State Division of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. Kate maintains a private practice in Mountain View and works with individuals, couples, families and groups. She is also a certified hypnotherapist. Kate has a strong interest in ritual and works with the labyrinth as a healing practice. She has a background in Western mystical traditions.

e-mail: kwolfpizor@itp.edu

Paula Yue

Paula is one of the founding members of the Center for the Divine Feminine and is currently a core advisory member.

For ten years, Paula has been the Dean of Student Services at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She has a B.S. in Philosophy and Religion, an M.A. in Philosophy, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology.  She has been a professionally licensed Religious Science Practitioner (with the United Church of Religious Science) for more than 15 years.

email: pyue@itp.edu