Isa Coffey, RN

WiseBodies Founder & Director

Isa Coffey (she/her) spent the last four decades doing these good things (some, but not all, at the same time): being an out lesbian; helping women have safe abortions; teaching teens, kids, and adults sexual health and wellbeing; founding and running a cervical cap fitting site; leading classes in sexuality in public and private schools; gaining her RN; being a labor and delivery nurse and a homebirth doula; growing medicinal plants and making plant medicine; birthing and raising two sons; caring for honeybees; surviving brain injury.

Thirteen years ago she dreamed into and birthed WiseBodies, a school in which all humans can come together in safety and joy to recognize sexuality as a force for good, a way to connect fully within the natural world, and a magical pathway toward moving into wholeness.

Lily Kafka

Lily Kafka (she/her) is a playful mentor who serves as a guidepost for those remembering the pathway home to themselves. Outside of WiseBodies, she facilitates circle programs for preteens and teens socialized as girls, and helps young folks unlearn the toxic cultural stories that dissociate us from the magical language and landscape of our bodies. Her job is to love mentees whole-heartedly, and she feels lucky for that. She is forever passionate about cyclical living and cycle awareness, jewish ancestral plant magic, shame resilience, and cultivating joy amidst mucky hard seasons of life. She is lit up by kitchen room dance parties, deep conversations with beloved friends, napping in nature, and saying hello to the river near her childhood home.

She is humbled and grateful to be co-teaching a class this upcoming winter with Isa, called Cultivating Delight.

Cynthia Koppe

Cynthia was born in Singapore, grew up in New Guinea and Massachusetts, received a B.A. in Sociology and Dance from Cornell University (2004) and has been based in New York City ever since. Cynthia has worked as a professional dancer for the last 15 years.

In tandem with her dance career, she has been teaching group movement classes and private clients. Cynthia holds a full Pilates Mat and Equipment Certification from the Kane School of Core Integration and two 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training certifications (Melissa McKay and Science of Self Yoga).

Cynthia has also completed Module 1 of CranioSacral Therapy through the Upledger Institute, is a certified Female Ejaculation & G-spot practitioner (Deborah Sundahl), and recently completed Tami Lynn Kent’s workshop: Holistic Pelvic Care TM.

She was fortunate to begin learning from and growing with Isa and WiseBodies in the winter of 2019. She is so excited to move into the WiseBodies multiverse.

Kole Kovacs

Creative Collaborator

Kole (he/they) is an all around creative collaborator at WiseBodies, as well as a class leader. He helps with communications, provides administrative and technical support, and collaborates with WiseBodies in emergent ways. He was also an assistant teacher for the 2019-2020 KNOW and CIRCLE classes and co-led Queer Teens Group.

He sees so much wisdom and energy in WiseBodies and feels honored to share in the mission of helping people learn more about bodies, plants, and sexuality (communication!).

Leila Barnes

Leila Barnes (she/her) is a Vassar College student studying the history of sexuality. She grew up in Los Angeles, and has been passionate about sex education since she was in high school and renovated her school library’s sex-ed section. Outside of class, she runs Squirm Magazine, Vassar’s sex and sexuality publication, and does burlesque. At WiseBodies, Leila works on Community Outreach and social media.

Jeremy Bloom

Jeremy Bloom (he/him) works in community gatherings and art, including collaborating with Isa and WiseBodies on Pom-Pom Prom. He makes movies and more with Evenstar Films, makes plays and parties with Rady&Bloom, and helps to organize events and exhibitions at Athens Cultural Center.

Hobbies include drawing with sharpies and discovering things he never knew he never knew. As a teacher, he continues to learn, and has taught workshops at NYU, Northwestern, Montclair State and various high schools. Jeremy is grateful for and inspired by WiseBodies.

Jan Burgevin

Co-taught Fertile Ground, 2017 - 2018, with Serena Caffrey. A school nurse, massage therapist, and pelvic bowl healer, I've been nourished by WiseBodies for many years, and loved co-leading WiseBodies' Fertile Ground course.

Serena Caffrey

Co-taught Fertile Ground, 2017-2018, with Jan Burgevin, RN. As a former educator at WiseBodies, a whole-body, whole-person, all-ages sexuality school, I see the pursuit of coming into one’s body in loving relationship to its landscape and others as being a vital one, one we can not afford to avoid.

Aidan Collins

In 2015, I assisted a class of 11-14 year-old boys. The class was a highlight of each week. Together we cracked jokes, ate good food, and talked about the ins and outs of sexuality. WiseBodies is a place like no other, and I’m grateful to be a part of it.

William Collins

I have been attending classes at WiseBodies since I was 8. I love that students at WiseBodies are listened to and respected, and class often feels more like a conversation than a class. In addition to being an assistant teacher, I am also a junior counselor at Powell House.

Mae Denner-Kenny

Growing up on an organic vegetable farm, I have always had an understanding of myself in connection with nature and the earth. What magnetized me to WiseBodies was a method of teaching that understands our bodies and our sexuality as naturally occurring elements of who we are and the earth we live in. In an era where positive, accurate, and nurturing sex education is hard to come by, I feel entirely lucky to be part of the work WiseBodies does.

In the 2015-16 school year I taught a class of 11-14 year old WiseBodies students, who amazed me with their ability to learn, ask thoughtful questions, and go about the work of normalizing sexuality with maturity and knowledge.

In WiseBodies, I found a place to ask the questions I really wanted to know, but never felt safe enough to ask. By teaching here I hope to bring that quality of safeness to our expanding communities, so that others can learn about the nature of their bodies and beings in a supportive environment.

Lia Friedman

Director of Youth Programming. Lia Friedman has taught with WiseBodies since the winter of 2016. She graduated Columbia University with a degree in Russian Literature and has put that to work with a career in experiential outdoor education and vegetable farming. One of her greatest joys is sharing the natural world’s many surprises and delights with young people. In her free time, you can find her walking through the woods with her dog Aoife, foraging for wild plants and mushrooms, playing her guitar, and cooking extravagant feasts with friends.

Sima Kamaamia

A graduate of Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, I later attended Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina and spent the remaining half of my undergraduate studies at the University of Nairobi where I received a B.A. in Political Science and Religious Studies. After university, I later became a public administrator by profession, and outside of my work I've dedicated myself to advocating for women and girl's rights. I have specificaly focused on women and girls empowerment, ending female genital mutilation (FGM) in Kenya, and ensuring continued governmental support for anti-FGM legislation. I'm also deeply interested in menstrual hygiene and reproductive health in all genders. Most recently, I interned with Equality Now in their anti-sex trafficking department to ensure that anti-sex trafficking laws are insituted in Kenya.

I fluently speak three different languages: Swahili, English, and Maasai, and I'm a budding sewist!

Shante Melville

Shante Melville is a certified anxious oddball with bad eyesight. She lives in upstate NY where she is in her Junior year at Darrow School. She is an avid lover of the arts and enjoys painting, writing, filmmaking and all aspects of theatre. She is a former student leader of her school's LGBTQ+ club, where she enjoyed the hot gossip, creating friendships, and educating her community. When not listening to Russian Rave music, reading Historical fiction or painting Matthew Gray Gubler on her wall she can be found daydreaming about opening a home and farm community for orphans and likeminded humans.

Erica Oliner

Erica Oliner (she/they) is a capricious fool with far too many passions. She has been involved with queer work since her early years as a teeny baby dyke, volunteering at her local queer community center. Her love of conviviality and nourishing others led her to pursue a career as a chef. She married her passions for food and social justice earning a Bachelor’s in Applied Food Studies from The Culinary Institute of America following with an internship at The Laurie M. Tisch Center For Food, Education, and Policy. Exploring the food system through every avenue, she has experience as a farmer, policy maker, educator, chef, and artisan. She loves the smell of moist earth and discussing theoretical astrophysics.

Jordan Schmidt

Teaches Cycle Awareness. Alongside her work with WiseBodies, Jordan is a nutritional therapist, instructor for the Nutritional Therapy Association, and a movement teacher in the Hudson Valley. Her clinical practice, Remedy Method, focuses mostly on support for people with chronic and complex conditions. Jordan is always exploring how to understand the terrain of our bodies and how to recognize our bodies as incredible adaptive systems inseparable from our context, past and present. Learning and teaching at WiseBodies has been instrumental in increasing her own body awareness and in developing her work with students and clients.

Khristopher (Khris) Snow

After graduating from the University of Texas at Ausin with a B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Women and Gender Studies, Khris (he/him) moved to the Hudson Valley, NY with his soulmate, Kelly.

His philosophy of life flows, “Once we realize that we are all here to help each other remember our infinite spiritual existence the possibilities are endless.” He is excited to help WiseBodies expand their outreach and message of the “inherent goodness of sexuality” and bridge gaps between fear and understanding.

Khris has worked in the healing arts for the last 7 years and prides himself on his ability to help others. His interests outside of his 9-5 and volunteer work are: being an epic father & partner, painting, playing guitar, and playing in the mountains, woods and streams.

Anna Vomacka

Anna Vomacka is a movement artist living in Brooklyn, NY (land originally inhabited by and stolen from the Munsee Lenape and Canarsie people). Driven by her cravings for community, connection, and spaces of shared learning / (un)learning, and with a desire to preserve her continual-curiosities Anna found (and stuck with/got stuck to) dance and movement. Anna’s work (both in and out of the studio) explores: collective & individual realities, shared intimacy, idiosyncratic differences, physical manifestations of self & socially imposed labels, power of identity, emergence of community, and recycling of movements, dancers, ideas, waste. Anna is also a 200-hr Certified Yoga Teacher (Sondra Loring, Sadhana Yoga), dance teacher for kids ages 3-12, photography model, ceramicist, and kinkster.

Anna grew up with Isa’s presence in her life as a young child. Now, as an adult, Anna has found her self back in the loving comfort and encouragement of Isa, and in turn, WiseBodies. She is honored to have the opportunity to meld her body-knowledge with collective sharing’s of sexual-body-knowledge, lived experiences, and WHOLE body healing.

Lailye Weidman

Lailye Weidman is a choreographer and movement educator based in Western Massachusetts. She is a practitioner of dance, improvisation, somatic techniques, and mindfulness. She incorporates all of these into her teaching with a focus on the politics of movement and embodied action.

Lailye is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hampshire College and a 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Choreography. Her performance work has been shown in venues on both coasts, the Midwest, and Europe. She has also worked independently and collectively to produce dance and interdisciplinary events, residencies, and festivals in New England. Lailye worked for many years with youth and teens as a teaching artist in schools and summer arts programs in Boston and the Bay Area.