Project Leads
Our Project Leads stewards the project through fundraising, programming, administrative tending, creating community connections, prayer, and teaching.
Ale Abreu (they/she/he)
Alé Abreu ( Afro-Lenca Mestize) (They/She/He) Is a Black Indigenous Fat & Disabled Community Herbalist, Birthkeeper, Curanderismo practitioner, Community Educator, Acudetox Specialist, artist based in Coast Salish territory. Ale sees their work as a form of cultural, social, political, medical, & spiritual intervention essential to the Liberation & Sovereignty of all peoples. Ale currently offers workshops, community healing space curation, herbal consults, acudetox treatments, perinatal/ healing ceremonies in the borderlands & throughout Turtle Island.
Amaryah Wolf (he/him)
Amaryah (he/him) is a trans guy of Black and white (Ashkenazi) ancestry who grew up and lives in the Pacific Northwest alongside the seas, lakes, rivers, forests and mountains. Babies have always been his favorite people, and he is RaRa to many littles. He started his birthwork practice and involvement with Lifewerq Project in 2018, and views birthwork as community care, and a window into the shift towards a greater reliance on community and towards liberation as we navigate pandemic(s), ongoing genocides and climate crises. Amaryah loves animals especially his cat Gabriel, hanging out, being outside, reading, writing, drawing, and movies!
Guidance Council
Our Guidance Council supports the project by maintaining our commitment to our values, attending quarterly supportive meetings, and occasional programming, teaching and administrative tending.
Alphonse “Lain” Littlejohn (they/he)
Alphonse “Lain” Littlejohn (they/he) is a Black Midwestern Two Spirit queer Capricorn currently located on Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk land. They were a care companion for L.L Gimeno, the Lifewerq Project Director prior to the current Co-Directors, which brought them closer to end-of-life work and grief support. Lain currently organizes a national network of Black Trans lawyers, law students, and legal advocates. Their time is spent with friends, family, and their dog and turtle, Baxley and Patrick. Laughter, dance, and sleep are their favorite forms of medicine. <3
Rafael/a Luna-Pizano (he/him/siya)
Rafael/a’s bodywork journey began with his own experiences of healing from gender-affirming surgery in 2009. He wanted to make bodywork accessible and safe for his trans and BIPOC communities, so he began to train in both bio-energetic and biomechanical bodywork traditions. He has since offered bodywork in many spaces from clinical to communal settings, constantly evolving his practice to offer a union of ancestral practice and trauma-informed approaches for people seeking his care. With the permission of his elders and mentors, he weaves his sound practice into private and group bodywork sessions where he offers sound therapies to facilitate release, connection and ease. In addition to offering private and group sound sessions, Rafael/a specializes in craniosacral therapy (CST), intraoral massage, and Reiki. For more information regarding these modalities, visit the scheduling link: https://mixtli.as.me/
Ganesha Gold Buffalo (she/her)
Ganesha Gold Buffalo is a Disabled, Black Indigenous cultural healer, ceremonialist, and matriarch of mixed ancestry; educator; national organizer; transdisciplinary performance and audiovisual artist; and community organization contractor. Hailing from rural Tennessee, currently residing in metropolitan Florida, and operating conjunctively out of Seattle, Ganesha centers radical care and hospitality in everything that she does. Ganesha’s drive stems from an ancestral calling to ignite the people with a hunger for reintegration from displacement and ethnocide, abolition of all colonial and neocolonial systems and systemic abuses, sex worker advocacy, food and land sovereignty, environmental justice, reproductive justice, youth protections, cultural reclamation, by-and-for community security and safety initiatives, and equitable resource building and redistribution via ancestral communion.
Riley Hewko
Bio coming soon!