Our Team

Dara Saville is the founder of Albuquerque Herbalism and the Executive Director of the Yerba Mansa Project, a nonprofit organization. Her work involves teaching herbalists, organizing the community to undertake native medicinal plant restoration on public lands, writing, and fostering a renewed land connection through public events and field trips.

Dara is the author of her first book through the University of New Mexico Press, The Ecology of Herbal Medicine: A Guide to Plants and Living Landscapes of the American Southwest and a contributing author to several herbal compendium books. She is a long-time columnist for Plant Healer Quarterly where she writes on a variety of botanical topics including environmental issues concerning medicinal plants and is also an instructor in UNM’s Holistic Health Program. Dara has an MS in Geography and Environmental Studies from UNM and is also a graduate of Tieraona Low Dog’s Foundations of Herbal Medicine program.

Donna has had a love of plants and nature since her youth, foraging briar leaves, admiring club mosses and orchids of the New England woods. She is ever grateful to her nature science teacher as a child. Violets and lemon balm in her grandmother’s garden and foraging wild mushrooms with her Aunt in Ireland are formative experiences. She has learned from a number of herbal teachers, programs, practitioners and a walkabout apprenticeship in the Sandia Mountains. She also studied at Albuquerque Herbalism in the Advanced Program.

Other pursuits have combined herbal activism and education through a weekly herbal radio program featuring folkways and herb talk along with many guest speakers.

She has gained great knowledge through the varied and often under radar experiences of working in herbal retail settings for the past number of years. She currently lives in the Chihuhuan desert in Las Cruces, New Mexico where she helps run the Wellness Department at a local Co-op. Her favorite strategy, while perusing the herb and supplement aisles, is to inspire people by educating about simple, accessible lifestyle supports. Offering ideas for tea blends and recipes. You will find her there doing what she loves and sharing that enthusiasm in her community herbal classes that she is offering at the Mountain View Market Co-op.

She can be contacted for classes and offerings at maytreeherbals@gmail.com

Atava Garcia Swiecicki, MA, RH (AHG) is guided by her dreams and her Mexican, Polish, Hungarian and Diné ancestors. She studied Feminist Studies at Stanford University and received her master’s degree in the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University Oakland. Atava has studied healing arts extensively for over thirty years and has been mentored by herbalists, curanderas and traditional knowledge keepers. She works as a clinical herbalist and teacher and is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors and supporting others to reconnect with their ancestral medicine. She also loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers. Atava is the founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine on Ohlone territory in Oakland, CA. She’s currently living in Tewa Pueblo territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she finished writing her first book called The Curanderx Toolkit: Reclaiming Ancestral Latinx Plant Medicine and Rituals for Healing.

Her websites are: www.ancestralapothecary.com and www.ancestralapothecaryschool.com.

Rachel is a native New Mexican who has worked in the medical profession for over 25 years. She has a passion for holistic medicine, understanding that each human has the capacity for resilience and living their best life possible. She holds a Registered Nurse license within the state of New Mexico with a background in orthopedics, pediatric intensive care, pediatric oncology, cannabis nursing, quality improvement, and home hospice.

Rachel has studied the science of medical cannabis for several years. She has taught many classes as well as presented at multiple cannabis conferences. Rachel feels that it is imperative to teach the community about the benefits and uses of this very diverse plant. She hopes to help abolish the stigma and fear hiding behind it.

Rachel is currently working towards her board certification as a Nurse Life Coach where she plans to start her own private practice, guiding others towards a fulfilled life. Rachel believes that each human has the innate power to persevere through hard times, finding the light that shines over everyday obstacles.