Our Team
CEO and President
Michal Berg
She leads SFK with her compassionate way of including, empowering, and cheerleading her team and volunteers worldwide.
Michal has been on “the spiritual path” since she was 16 and has never stopped learning, unlearning, and exploring new ways to empower children and parents to live rooted in the soul.
Financial Controller
Norie Lachica
Norie holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and is a licensed CPA in the Philippines. She is a dedicated mother of three and a loving wife.
Our Board
Alen Cohen
Alan is a seasoned educator and speaker having filled many roles: teacher and administrator for the New York City Department of Education, Network Leader providing support and supervision for principals in 32 New York City schools. Co-Chaired Harvard Principals’ Center Advisory Board, Emeritus and was a Founding Board Member of Clarion School Dubai Alan has led national and international projects on educational leadership, creativity and joyful learning, progressive education and parent and community engagement. Additionally, Allan is a Cahn Fellow at Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the Time Warner Principals of Excellence Award and the Outstanding Educator of the Year Award from Education Update. Cohen received his Bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and holds a Master’s of Science, and Special Education from New York University.
Christina Malleos
Coby Phillips
Dr. Heath Grant
Dr. Grant is the Deputy Chair of the Law and Police Science Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He previously served as Associate Director and Senior Consultant for NSIC where he conducted needs assessment and developed courses and course materials for schools, media, police, public servants, and faith-based institutions. He is an expert in crime prevention and youth resiliency, and has developed and evaluated school-based programs that continue to reach over 1,000,000 children annually. He is he currently testing SEL programs with incarcerated populations. Dr. Grant holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Queen’s University and a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York.
Our Advisory Board
Esperanza R.de Noriega
Esperanza R.de Noriega studied philosophy at Fordham University in New York. She began her career as a kindergarten and elementary school teacher in 1973, later becoming involved in teacher training, giving seminars on adaptation of first language books to ESL programs.
At the middle school levels, she has worked with literature, writing, and world history programs and has prepared students for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language).
From 1973 to 1990 she was director of the English Department and curriculum coordinator at Centro Escolar Patria A.C. in the State of Mexico. During 1985 she served as general director at the same institution.
Since 1988, Mrs Noriega has been a guest speaker at regional and national conferences such as Mextesol and ADEMI giving workshops dealing with the teaching of literature and writing in the second language context.
Her experience in the publishing field began in 1988 when she started working as educational consultant for Scott Foresman Company (later Harper Collins), where she gave inservices and presentations for ESL, as well as, first language programs from kindergarten to secondary levels throughout Mexico. While at Harper Collins, Mrs Noriega co-organized and participated as instructor in the teacher training course “Teaching English to Young Children”, given in conjunction with the Universidad Iberoamericana.
In 1991 she began working as educational consultant and later sales representative for Houghton Mifflin Company. As such, she has given presentations and seminars throughout Mexico, United States and Puerto Rico specializing in topics dealing with the modernization of education and the evolution of ELT. In 2001 she was promoted to Sales Manager for K to 12 products in Mexico, and in 2003 her territory was extended to include Central and South America, with the added responsibility of managing the Houghton Mifflin College and Trade products in Latin America.
Mrs. Noriega is the founder and General Director of New Edulight, which specializes in bringing to Mexico and Latin America new programs, and professional development. In this capacity, she oversees, publishers’ relationships, products sales, marketing and professional development.
Patricia Handly -Johnson
In this capacity she holds high consciousness for the entire community, but especially for the children in the Youth Center where she writes and teaches lessons to help children know the goodness that they are.
Recently retired as a professional educator, Pat spent her career working to improve the lives of children. She did this as both a national and international classroom teacher, school psychologist, elementary school principal and a trainer for international school teachers and leaders. She worked with children of varying economic status and learned quickly that all children can learn in a safe and loving environment. Her areas of focus included creating school-based programs for professional learning, supervision and evaluation of the professional teaching faculty, early literacy, reading and writing and most recently, promoting the idea that academic and social-emotional programs in school must carry equal weight.
Pat is equally enthusiastic working with adults as she is with children. She is well-versed in how adults learn and how children learn.
Volunteering is a passion for Pat. She has offered her time and talents at the Children’s Home Society of Ft. Lauderdale, The Children of Haiti Program where she served on the Board, and in multiple capacities at the Center for Spiritual Living in Ft. Lauderdale. Along with serving on the advisory board for Spirituality for Kids, she has recently joined the Board for a new nonprofit entitled Empower Youth Fund Corp.
When she is not volunteering, Pat enjoys walking her labrador retriever named Kairo, cooking with her husband and reading as many books as possible! She is working on her first book entitled Index Card Wisdom inspired by her father who often wrote motivational messages on index cards for his children.
Genevieve Lowry
Genevieve Lowry has been a Certified Child Life Specialist since 1990. She received her undergraduate degree from Wheelock College and her Masters’s from Fordham University. Currently, she is faculty at Bank Street College of Education in the Child Life Program. She writes, presents, and she provides consulting to a wide array of organizations, schools, and nonprofits, providing workshops, educational training, and online materials that support resilience.
She co-edited the book The Role of Child Life in Community Settings and contributed a chapter on working with families affected by incarceration. Additionally, she is trained as a Reiki Teacher and in guided imagery and is a certified educator of infant massage, family trauma, and an end-of-life doula.
She is the recipient of the Leadership Award from Wheelock College (1990), was recognized for her dedication to the mission of Wheelock College (2013), and Bank Street College Thomas’s Award for excellence in instruction and teaching (2023).
Our Collaborators
Spanish Language
Facilitator Trainer
Almen Rojas
Almen is a former school teacher passionate about helping children live happier lives. That is what led her to become an SFK facilitator, teach the SFK programs to the children in her community, and later become a Facilitator Trainer.
She guides and supports SFK Spanish Speaking Facilitators all over Latin America.
In recent years she continued her education and earned all these great certifications:
- Human development.
- A trainer and evaluator to implement social-emotional skills and methodology to develop them.
- Emotional management and well-being.
- Yoga and mindfulness for children.
- University Diploma as a Teacher training in Neuroscience.
- University Diploma in Social-emotional learning and constructive conflict resolution at school.
- Master in Emotional Competencies and Soft Skills.
Almen continues to enrich her wisdom so she can give more to the world’s children.
Coordinator/Arabic Language Facilitator Trainer
Halah Sbetan
She implemented the SFK programs successfully in more than 25 schools and trained over 100 schoolteachers, reaching thousands of children.
The feedback from teachers and principals was excellent. They reported that the program helped their students be less stressed and reactive, face life difficulties with more resiliency, accept others despite their differences and improve school grades due to hard work and self-reliance.
Ambassador to Africa/French
Facilitator Trainer
Pascale Sossah
Ambassador to Latin America, Facilitator
Cecilia Rivero
Cecilia has helped improve the lives of many by taking the SFK programs to Guatemala, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and by supporting the continuous enrichment of our SFK Facilitator community across Latin America. Cecilia believes in connecting and nurturing the inner child as a means of self-improvement and has guided many children and women in this journey with the SFK programs.
Living the programs have allowed the Facilitators to internalize the SFK concepts before they passed them on, so teachings become a comprehensive experience they shared. The best part is that they are now living a life where they connect with their potential to make a difference in their World and people around them.
Coordinator/Hebrew Language Facilitator Trainer
Sara Asher
Sara started as a volunteer at SFK 16 years ago and fell in love with the program. Today she leads the program in the Hebrew sector in Israel in schools and afternoon programs.
Sara’s biggest passion is her family classes and she is devoted to bring these tools to more and more families across Israel.
Ambassador to Europe, Facilitator
Serena Carloni
Serena is an SFK ambassador, SFK Certified Facilitator and a train coach with Parenting The Soul.
Collaborator/El Cambio Comienza Conmigo, Venezuela
Milagros Casas
“My work in helping children is rooted in my conviction that children are the world’s most valuable natural resource. We have to create a world with healthy children and the best place to start is caring about their social-emotional education. For sure, they will be more effective adults, and we will make the world a better place.”
Collaborator/Naomi for Kids, Peru
Monica Ghersi
Monica began as SFK volunteer in the United States and decided to take the programs to Peru, where she is originally from, through her organization Naomi for Kids. They currently have several SFK facilitators working in public schools, and the testimonies from the teachers and principals indicate that there has been a considerable decrease in the number of fights and disturbances during the day.
“Our commitment to SFK stems from the need for children in Peru to have tools to strengthen their self-esteem, develop skills for positive leadership and acquire values that contribute to their spiritual development. Children go to school to study but are not taught how to manage their emotions.”
Collaborator/Zera Bolivia
Sharoll Fernandez
“SFK has given me a profound understanding of how to play the “Game of Life” through joy, transformation, self-love and love of others. Most importantly, through the SFK Certification Program, I have been given tools and knowledge of how to share this understanding with little children.”
