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Heather Church, Treasurer
Ontario, Canada

Heather Church is the Director of WECAN (Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America). She began this role in July 2023, initially working alongside Susan Howard.  Heather brings years of experience in Waldorf early childhood education. She has been a member of the WECAN Board since 2015 and is actively engaged in committee work, including the Membership, Teacher Education, and February Conference Committees. Her involvement also extends to the Birth to Three Working Group, which supports programs, conferences, online parent evenings, and teacher training initiatives across North America.

Heather has been involved in teacher training and adult education for several years. Her previous work includes pedagogical leadership in schools, teaching in mixed-age kindergarten, creating parent learning opportunities, and serving as a regional representative for WECAN.  In her role, Heather participates in national and international initiatives. She is a member of the Council of Anthroposophical Initiatives (CAO), attends the International Teacher Educators Forum (ITEF) and the IASWECE Teacher Trainers’ Meetings, and recently joined the Pedagogical Section Council of North America (PSC). Heather now resides in Gores Landing, Ontario, Canada.

Keelah Helwig
Long Island, New York

Keelah Helwig is an early childhood educator and section chair at the Waldorf School of Garden City on Long Island, New York. Keelah completed her training at Sunbridge Institute where she is also a board member. Keelah served on the conference planning committee for the 2021 WECAN early childhood educator’s conference and will be a keynote speaker at the 2022 Conference. She is a member of Alma Partners, providing support and resources for DEI work in Waldorf schools and communities. Keelah is also a member of the board of AWSNA.

Susan Howard
Amherst, MA

Susan is a co-founder of WECAN and worked as the WECAN Coordinator from 2002- 2022 and as Co-Director from 2023-2025. She retired in August 2025 as Co-Director and continues to be actively involved on the board. Susan has also worked since 2002 as a member of the three-person Coordinating Group for the International Association for Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education (IASWECE), based in Dornach, Switzerland. She directed the Sunbridge Early Childhood Teacher Education Program for 34 years until 2018 and was a co-founder and later director of the Research Institute for Waldorf Education in the 90’s. Susan lives in Amherst, MA.

Susan has written “The Essentials of Waldorf Early Childhood Education” and edited a number of WECAN Books, including The Developing Child, Love as the Source of Education, and Working with the Angels. She is a member of the WECAN Teacher Education Committee and Publications Committee, and the WECAN DIgital Media Working Group. 

Ruth Ker
Duncan, BC

Ruth Ker, WECAN’s Teacher Education Coordinator and representative on the AWSNA Teacher Education Delegates Circle, is also a retired Program Director for West Coast Institute for Studies in Anthroposophy. She lives in Duncan, BC., Canada, where she was a founding teacher at the Sunrise Waldorf School. As facilitator of the WECAN Older Child in the Kindergarten Group and member of the international IASWECE working group on this theme, Ruth edited “From Kindergarten into the Grades” and “You’re Not the Boss of Me”. She is also the author/editor of “Please Can We Play Games.” Ruth travels for mentoring and is also a member of WECAN’s EC Research Group.

Anjum Mir
Los Angeles, CA

For over 20 years, Anjum Mir has been supporting parents in establishing healthy home rhythms. Her teaching experience has taken her from public and private school to Waldorf Education, which she discovered while looking for an educational system that honored the development and spiritual well-being of her first child.

Currently, Anjum, a mother of four, works in pedagogical administration and teaches parent-child classes at the Westside Waldorf school in Los Angeles, offers prenatal, infant and toddler focused workshops and seminars and holds parenting classes for parents of children through middle school. She is the Board Chairperson of WECAN, co-editor of Gateways, and several other education-focused organizations and is involved in teacher education and training.

Gabriela Nuñez Plata
Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Gabriela studied education at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. She is a founder of the Ak Lu’um Waldorf Community in Playa del Carmen in the Riviera Maya, a coastal region of the Yucatán Peninsula. She has worked as a kindergarten teacher since 1998, and as a Waldorf teacher since 2008, working with mixed-age groups of two- to seven-year-olds and currently with children under three years of age. She is also the founder of the YaxKin Early Childhood Teacher Training in the Riviera Maya. Gabriela has her training in Waldorf Early Childhood education at the Centro De Desarrollo Antroposofico in Cuernavaca, is an anthroposophical art therapist at Arteterapia Antroposofica. This year she is a WECAN regional rep in Mexico. She lives in Playa del Carmen, MX.

Laura Mason
Issaquah, WA

Laura Mason received her Waldorf early childhood teacher training certificate at Rudolf Steiner College in 2006 and worked in early childhood programs for 19 years. She has served as WECAN’s Membership Coordinator since 2016 and represents WECAN on AWSNA’s Leadership Council and the Waldorf Associations Working Group. She is also a member of WECAN’s Teacher Education Committee and Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Committee. She lives on the Indigenous Land of the Coast Salish peoples in Issaquah, WA.

Meggan Gill
Chestnut Ridge, NY

Meggan brings her experience as an early childhood educator in both rural and metropolitan schools, her service as a former school board member, mentor and evaluator for several schools in the Northeast and Midwest United States and her current position as Director of Education and Organizational Culture at Sunbridge Institute. Meggan has also served as a WECAN site visitor for many years and as a keynote and presenter at WECAN conferences. Meggan is a founding member of Alma Partners, a collective of diverse, multiracial, and multigenerational facilitators offering workshops and other services to independent schools and non-profit organizations on the topics of anti-bias education, inclusion, and belonging.