Join Us!

Heather Church, Treasurer
Ontario, Canada

Heather is WECAN’s Birth to Three Co-Coordinator working together with Magdalena Toran in support of birth to three programs, conferences, the Birth to Three Advisory Circle and teacher training in North America. She is on the WECAN Board Committee and Finance Committee. Heather is now active in teacher training and New Adult Learning. In the past she was the Pedagogical Director and EC coordinator at the Halton Waldorf School, a WECAN regional rep and Pedagogical Co-Chair at the Toronto Waldorf School. She now lives in Gores Landing, Ontario, Canada

Louise deForest, Chairperson and Secretary
Mill River, MA

Louise is an experience early childhood educator and teacher trainer and for many years has worked with Waldorf schools and programs around the world. She represents North América on the Council of the International Association for Steiner/ Waldorf Early Childhood Education (IASWECE) and has edited several books for WECAN. She is a member of the Finance Committee, the Board Committee and the Membership Committee. She lives in Western Massachusetts.

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 has worked as the WECAN Coordinator, a half-time position, since 2002. She 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 Europe. 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, Publications Committee, and Envisioning Group.

Ruth Ker
Duncan, BC

Ruth Ker, WECAN’s Teacher Education Coordinator and representative on the AWSNA Teacher Education Delegates Circle, is also a 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.”

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 on the board of WECAN 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.

Magdalena Toran
Conway, MA

Magdalena is an early childhood educator at the Hartsbrook School in MA, where she teaches parent-child and parent-infant classes. She studied at Sunbridge and Sophia’s Hearth and is an active member of the WECAN Birth to Three Task Force. Magdalena has taught workshops and courses at conferences and training centers on birth to three. She is a member of the WECAN Diversity Group.

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.