Staff
Rooted Within facilitators are carefully chosen for their experience, skill, kindness, and authenticity.
They are powerful, caring women who live full and heartfelt lives, and who have the wisdom and capacity to connect, support, and inspire.
Karen Immerso MA
Lead Facilitator
Karen Immerso is a Gunnison, Colorado guide and facilitator who has worked with groups in outdoor and experiential programs throughout her 35-year career.
Trained as a teacher, she brings strength, humor, caring and understanding of women and the power within needed to be renewed or discovered. Her relational skills, listening skills and ability to bring activities into the therapeutic model that we offer as a facilitator team are her talents for working within our retreat-based format.
She has a Masters in Education and has
been in a Director role professionally
during her long career.
She has worked with women Veterans and survivors of violence, all women’s groups and families in healing environments with a dedication to growth and life-long learning.
Heather Menzie May LPC
Facilitator
Heather is a Licensed Professional Counselor whose warmth helps set people at ease. Since 2001, Heather has been leading therapeutic wilderness expeditions. She works with individuals, couples, families and groups who are experiencing grief and loss, trauma, anxiety, and depression. Heather is trained in Wilderness Therapy, EMDR Therapy, and Emotionally Focused Therapy, and has a private practice in Evergreen, CO.
With Rooted Within, Heather’s intention is to support each veteran’s healing process by offering guidance and experiences that help veterans reconnect to themselves and to each other. Through movement, laughter, and shared team building experiences, veterans have an opportunity to rediscover joy. Heather is trained as a Yoga Therapist and has completed the Warriors at Ease Level I training. Heather provides a creative and peaceful environment for healing to occur. She is honored to work with the veterans who attend Rooted Within retreats.
Lizzy Slatt LCSW
Lead Facilitator
Lizzy Slatt is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. She began her work in experiential and nature-based settings in 1997, which led to integrating elements of mindfulness, strength-based approaches, systems theory and social justice frameworks, contemplative, somatic practices and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She has worked extensively to support survivors of sexual abuse and assault, relational abuse and their loved ones. As a Consultant and Certified in EMDR she volunteers organizing a local Trauma Response Network to support those experiencing recent and ongoing stress and trauma. She feels honored to have worked with Veterans and the team of Rooted Within since its beginning. With appreciation for the holistic co-creation that occurs between people, she holds deep respect for the natural ability to strengthen our inner resources and follow the inherent and healing wisdom within our own body and mind.
Tiffany Higgins M.S.
Director, Lead Facilitator
Tiffany has led therapeutic, leadership and educational programs for both groups
and individuals for 20 years.
She is a life coach, experiential facilitator, trainer and mentor who incorporates
body-centered, mindfulness, artistic and nature-based modalities in her work
with people. She has a private practice as an Internal Family Systems Practitioner and supports people in remembering the Truth
of who they are: whole, creative and resourceful in their recovery and growth from challenging life circumstances.
She is a certified yoga teacher and has practiced meditation for the past 30 years.
Haaweatea Holly Bryson MA
Lead Facilitator
Haaweatea is a Psychotherapist who has specialized in trauma, transition, and transformation for the past 12 years. Originally from Australia and New Zealand, she is the Lead Therapist and Trainer at The Suzerain Group in Hawai’i.
Haaweatea brings a body-centred, relational approach, led by each persons’ authenticity, and innate wisdom to navigate the full range of their life and experience.
She is also an Experiential/ Adventure Therapist, Relationship Counselor, Movement and Meditation Instructor, and Rite of Passage Guide. In Hawai'i and Aotearoa (NZ) she works with individuals and families in trauma release and restoration through integrating Māori Healing and Psychotherapy. She has consulted on the development of therapeutic programs with organizations across the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and China. Haaweatea has facilitated retreats for female veterans since our programs inception in 2010.
Karen Drucker PsyD.
Lead Facilitator
Karen is a Licensed Psychologist in Boulder, Colorado where she has been in private practice working with both individuals and groups for over 20 years. Her work has included working with trauma survivors at Columbine High School after the school shooting in 1999 and in Turkey after the earthquakes.
As a Board-Certified Trainer, Practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy, she leads psychodrama training for therapists drawing on her vast experience and expertise in working with trauma. She taught graduate psychology students at Naropa University in the Mindfulness and Transpersonal Graduate Counseling Program for 16 years and continues to offer supervision.
Karen is a warm and engaging facilitator, having facilitated groups of Women Veterans since 2015, she loves the courage and commitment that these women bring to the forefront.
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Katie Asmus, LPC, BMP
Facilitator
Katie is a Licenced Professional Counsellor, Body-Mind Psychotherapy Practitioner, Guide, Consultant and Trainer. Katie is an EMDR Therapy Practitioner and Trainer, and has led therapeutic nature-based and adventure programs for 30 years. She has been a faculty member and professor for MA Psychology programs at Naropa University and Prescott University since 2003, 2004 respectively. She is the founder of The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute (SWTI), a multi-dimensional therapeutic and educationally-based organization that incorporates Wilderness and Body-Centered Psychotherapies in Boulder, Colorado. Her passion is to bring forth the inherent wisdom within every-Body, and to open people’s minds and hearts to greater possibilities and connection. She has been brought to her knees many times by the strength of the human spirit, the power of kindness and love, and the miraculous results that can occur when there is someone holding the possibility of change.
Emily Isaacs, LPC
Facilitator
Emily is a licensed professional counselor, teacher, professional outdoorswoman,
and mother of two children.
She has over 15 years of clinical experience working with people dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship struggles, across hospital, crisis clinic, wilderness treatment, and private practice settings.
She has 17 years of experience as a professional wilderness and climbing guide. Emily works with a trauma-informed,
body-centered, attachment-based approach that helps wire new awareness, habits, and ways of being that ultimately help people live lives of greater meaning and connection.
Judith Vanderryn PhD, CP
Facilitator
Judith Vanderryn is a Clinical Psychologist who has worked in a variety of capacities, most recently as a Team Lead for an interdisciplinary team of providers at the Marcus Institute for Brain Health on the University of Colorado’s medical campus. The MIBH’s mission is to treat veterans suffering from sequelae of mild Traumatic Brain Injury and psychological comorbidities. She has led retreats for women veterans for four years, and loves the combination of the natural environment, trauma-informed group and individual work, and the mindfulness focus of these retreats. Judith is trained as a meditation instructor and has instructed for the Colorado Outward Bound School. She has worked in college counseling centers, developed a private practice, consulted with community organizations involved in violence prevention and with child care centers on child development and parent engagement, and been involved with teams conducting professional training in multicultural awareness.