Term Ending October 2023
St. Paul, Minnesota (she/her they/them) angela@homefuneralalliance.org Angela lives in St. Paul, MN, has been a MN-licensed mortician for over 15 years, and taught in the Program of Mortuary Science at UMN for 10 years. She is also a trained end-of-life doula, a certified celebrant, a hospice volunteer, and home funeral guide. Angela works to educate the public about end-of-life choices and is working to make land conservation natural burial a reality in MN. She is the founder of Inspired Journeys LLC, the Midwest’s first woman-owned and family-centered natural deathcare provider. She is excited to contribute her skills to the NHFA to further its mission to increase awareness and access to home funeral options. |
Term Ending Spring 2023
Seattle, Washington (she/her) lashanna@homefuneralalliance.org Lashanna is, at her core, a helper; a doula and massage therapist who merges formal education, ancestral knowledge, life experience, and all 6 senses to guide her care. She serves individuals, families, intentional communities, and small businesses with end of life education and planning, body care education, home wake facilitation and creating legacy pieces. She has a never diminishing desire to grow community care through education and collaboration; to fully support autonomy and choice through abortion, death and dying. "If energy is neither created or destroyed, I'm sure we've met sometime before." |
Term Ending October 2023
Commerce City, Colorado (she/her) tawnya@homefuneralalliance.org Tawnya values community, advocacy, and education. With a professional background rooted in human services, she’s worked with at-risk youth, adults with developmental disabilities, as a family advocate, and as a tobacco cessation counselor specializing in pregnancy and post-partum cessation. She entered the death sphere in 2017 after realizing how truly at home she was with death and dying, as well as having been wholly disappointed in the ways she experienced personal deaths in her life. She sought training as an End-of-Life Doula, Life-Cycle Celebrant specializing in funerals, and most near and dear to her heart, within the realm of community death care/home funerals. She’s big on choice, but as the saying goes, “a choice isn’t a choice if there isn’t more than one option.” In order for folks to make informed decisions, they need all the information. Tawnya strives to bolster the grassroots community death care movement. When educating her community about their rights she hears, “we wish we would have known” all too often. She hopes to hear, more and more going forward, “we’re so glad we knew.” |
Term Ending October 2023
Montpelier, Vermont (she/her) michelle@homefuneralalliance.org Michelle Acciavatti (she/her/they), MS, is a licensed mortician, end of life specialist and natural burial educator and cemeterian. She works with people preparing for the end of life, designing funeral services, caring for their own dead, and exploring natural burial options. Michelle seeks ways to positively integrate community death care and conventional funeral home offerings for people who want to participate in hands-on death care and natural burial. She offers death awareness and disposition education to individuals, communities, organizations, and institutions to facilitate building community resources focused on end of life care and rituals. Michelle has trained as a mortician, advance care planner, end of life doula, home funeral guide, natural burial advocate & educator, writer, neuroscientist, and ethicist. She is a founding member of The Collective for Radical Death Studies. She has practiced death work with people of all ages, including death during pregnancy. Her work has found her in setting as varied as Boston Children’s Hospital, community spaces, people’s own homes, and the funeral home. Michelle runs Ending Well Funeral Home and Vermont Natural Burial, where she strives to provide each person with services that fit their specific mourning needs. |
Term Ending October 2023
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi (she/they) leilani@homefuneralalliance.org Leilani Maxera (she/they) is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She is a daughter of the Hawaiian diaspora raised in Martinez, California, by the Carquinez Strait and in the shadow of Mount Diablo. She grew up in the homeland of the Karkin and Muwekma Ohlone Tribes and was called home to Hawai’i in her early 30s. She currently lives in Mānoa Valley by the Mānoa stream, at the base of Pu’upia of the Koʻolau Range. Leilani is a therapist with her own private practice, Kaipuokaualoku Therapy + Death Work + Consulting (kaipuokaualoku.com). Leilani is a death educator and home funeral advocate, and the founder of Death Café Honolulu. Leilani has a Master of Public Health degree with an emphasis in Aging from the University of California – Berkeley and a Master of Social Work degree from Hawaiʻi Pacific University, where she wrote her thesis on home funerals and their effects on grief. She worked and volunteered in harm reduction for 14 years, including managing a syringe exchange and an overdose prevention program where she conducted training and education with other social service organizations to teach about overdose prevention and response and to reduce stigma around drug use. |
Term Ending April 2024
Denver, Colorado (she/her) Marilynn worked as death investigator in a coroner’s office for more than a decade, and in that role, she created space for the living to witness their experiences while normalizing death. With a background rooted in practical after-death care and a desire to relate with those in her community in a different way, she transitioned and is now an End-of-Life Doula with focus as a Death Educator, Home Funeral Guide, and Grief Recovery Specialist. Marilynn is also a member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (Region VIII) and is Secretary for the Funeral Consumer Society of Colorado. In both her professional and personal relationships, she seeks to empower individuals to be their most authentic self by removing barriers and inspiring opportunities to discover personal truth and expression. |
Term Ending April 2024
Grovetown, Georgia (she/her) Kaleigh entered the deathcare space with an eclectic background, having first served in the Army and earning a master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy before pursuing death work. She is a trained end-of-life doula and previously worked at a green funeral home in Colorado. Kaleigh currently works as a Marriage and Family Therapist full time, and is also a teacher/practitioner of yoga, meditation, and Reiki. She cares deeply about holistic, environmentally-centered care for all beings at every stage of life. |
Michelle Acciavatti +
Kim Adams * Olivia Bareham Lynn Barnett + Char Barrett *+ Mary Barrowman Donna Belk *+(x 2) Anna Benton * Kristine Bentz Lauren Carroll + Susan Coffey Jannika Coons Zalene Corey + Sarah Crews *+(x2) Kate Gorman David Haisman Liz Hamilton Faith Haug Chelsea Hines Sarah Hines Pat Hogan Tim Howell Elizabeth Knox *+ Sarah Jane Lambring * Dani LaVoire * Veronica Banks Lee Alaura Pittman Merilynne Rush *+ Terry Skovronek + Marian Spadone |
Barbara Trites +
Alice Toohey *+ Kateyanne Unulissi + Karen van Vuuren * Lee Webster *+(x2) Lashanna Williams + Sara Williams + Angela Woosley *+ Cassandra Yonder Nora Cedarwind Young Cari Leversee Peg Lorenz *+ Jerrigrace Lyons + Rhythm Maat Marilynn Manzutto * Heather Massey + Leilani Maxera + Shelby McBride Anne Murphy Tawnya Musser + Anne O’Connor Susan Oppie Kelsey Ramage Dave Robles Sherry Rosamond |
NHFA |
Resources |
|