Our Team
Meet our amazing coaches, facilitators and spiritual directors who are here
to support you in your journey.
Rev. Carson Hawks
Carson’s work in the world is to create and hold welcoming spaces that foster growth, healing, and the opportunity to live into our highest potential especially for those who are trauma survivors. Carson strives to create a space of non-judgment, meeting and honoring people where they are, exactly as they are, in all the work she does.Carson’s growth and healing work takes many forms. In addition to being a facilitator, Carson serves as Excellent Way’s Director of Programs and Community Care.
As a trauma-informed, Interfaith Spiritual Director, she works to provide a space that embraces questions, doubts, personal faith, and spirituality regardless of faith tradition or spiritual journey -- even if past experiences with God and Church have not been kind, supportive, loving, or life-giving.
In addition to her work with Excellent Way and as a Spiritual Director, Rev. Carson is a Covenant Minister of Spiritual Growth & Healing at Magnolia UCC in Seattle. She also creates healing services as well as leads retreats and small groups, teaches, preaches, and facilitates transformative writing groups and workshops.
Carson holds a Master of Divinity degree from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA and a Master of Science in Education from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC). Carson can be reached at carson@drcarijackson.com
Zoraida S. Saldaña
Zoraida S. Saldaña is an interfaith minister, spiritual empath, and gifted counselor who transforms peoples’ lives wherever she goes. Her life mission is going into the core places of people’s pain to help them experience authentic wholeness and healing. For the last 34 years, Zoraida has worked for various human service agencies advocating for the aged, victims of domestic violence, assisting the homeless and the underprivileged, and children and youth who have been abused, neglected and/or that have crossed our borders.
Zoraida embraces the power of interspiritual practice in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Palo. Her interspiritual study and practice enable her to integrate spirituality with counseling expertise to provide holistic healing and transformation for individuals across cultures and religions. Zoraida holds a Bachelor of Professional Studies in Human Services and a Master of Science in Education with a focus on Professional Counseling. She studied at The New Seminary for Interfaith Studies and was ordained by The Interfaith Temple in New York City. She also studied with the Institute of Core Energetics, a holistic program for personal growth and has received her Yoga Teacher Certification from Yoga Pura.
Dr. Tejai Beulah-Howard
I am Tejai Beulah Howard, Ph.D. I work as a spiritual director, historian, teacher, and writer. I own and operate A Soul Vibe, LLC, an interfaith, inter-spiritual companionship practice. In this work, I journey with clients who want to experience more joy, freedom, creativity, and authenticity as human beings and who want to deepen their vibe with the Divine and the Ancestors. I do this work by listening to my clients, asking them reflective questions, engaging in spiritual practices together, and learning more about history with them. I believe that history is a useful tool to inspire and motivate spiritual and social change.
I fully believe that people who commit themselves to a life of contemplative spirituality are the very individuals who can build communities based on love, justice, and fairness. Outside of my work, I am involved with several professional and activist organizations that are dedicated to social justice. My most recent writing is featured in the edited volume, We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign, The Other Journal, and Black Perspectives. I reside in Columbus, Ohio, with my loving spouse, Jenn. I enjoy listening to music, walking, cooking, and hanging out with my godchildren. For more information, I can be reached at tejai@asoulvibellc.com.
Dax Franklin-Hicks
Davin “Dax” Franklin-Hicks is deeply committed to listening fully, cultivating a compassionate heart, and seeking knowledge of who God is through relationship with others. Having a childhood and early adulthood riddled with addiction, trauma response, and confusion, Dax sought healing in body, mind, and spirit. His learning from family of origin was one of survival and resilience, but it did not bring the lessons of grace and self-compassion. Those experiences had to be sought elsewhere and the pain associated with being a trans person on the margins was the catalyst for more intentional work. A commitment to fullness of being, a way that can only be lived with grace and self-compassion at its center, has come as a result of experiencing the capacity of others to accompany him in this same way.
It is his lived experience that the places within that have hurt the most have become the places most vibrant and full of life through a process of honest, loving connection with others. Vulnerability is a powerful anchor in healing, and he honors vulnerability as sacred and courageous in himself and in others. Knowing this and being able to embody it has come slowly, but ever more fully with each moment of willingness. Dax spends his time creating access to healthcare services for those afraid to or unable to access it and educating healthcare providers, faith communities, and individuals about LGBTQIA+ lives. He has an amazing partner in living named Nancy and a beautiful son named Angelo that has looked older than him since he was 15. He spends his time writing, reading, and avoiding arithmetic. Moments of silence appeal to him more as time passes, but something in him comes most fully alive when seeing and hearing his lived experiences in others stories.
Shawn Snavley
Shawn Snavley (they/them) has been deeply involved in community building and advocacy work for over 15 years with a primary focus on education as a tool for advocacy. Shawn graduated with a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Indianapolis and has a Masters in Divinity from Pacific School of Religion.
Shawn currently serves as the Manager of Community Engagement for a Bay Area based non-profit in California. Prior to that Shawn served as the Director of Religious Exploration for a UU congregation. Shawn is originally from the evangelical corn fields of Indiana and spends much of their free time exploring new paths of spirituality or hanging out with their pets.