Teachers and Staff

CoreyPine Shane (He/Him)

CoreyPine Shane, RH (AHG), Holistic Clinical Herbalist, is the Director of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, which he founded in 1999. He is the primary teacher and coordinates the curriculum. He has been helping clients since the early 1990’s by artfully blending Chinese and Western herbal traditions with a focus on local plants. As a seasoned wildcrafter, he has extensive knowledge of local plant identification and medicine making. He is an expert on herbal first aid and an experienced Street Medic and Wilderness First Responder.

He is the author of “Southeast Medicinal Plants” (Timber Press) and has taught at schools and conferences across the country and in Europe. He has written extensively on herbal medicine and is a Registered Herbalist member of the American Herbalists Guild.

He is a strong believer in the healing power of nature including our own bodies and believes that herbs and herbal philosophy have a special place in modern health care.

JJ Bloomfield (She/Her)

JJ is the Director of Operations at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine and has been with the school since 2015. She manages operations behind the scenes to provide a container for students to learn and for teachers to feel supported.

JJ is passionate about learning how to live in conjunction with the natural cycles and seasons, living close to the land, and taking her cues from the plants and animals who surround her. In her spare time (ha!), she’s in Grad School for Clinical Counseling and enjoys time in the woods with her toddler, step-daughter, and partner.

For questions about our programs, please email JJ.BRSHM@gmail.com.

Steph Dasai (she/her/ella)

Steph Dasai is the Cultural Equity Consultant/Advocate at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine. Having Peruvian and Guyanese roots strengthens her understanding and devotion to the liberation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Facilitating and participating in workshops like Building Bridges and The Racial Equity Institute has greatly increased her knowledge and philosophy around racial and social justice. This work, combined with her bachelor’s degree in Psychology, has led to a passion of creating environments where challenging and curious conversations can occur while maintaining safety for those who are systemically oppressed.

Steph is a queer community herbalist, who attended the Essentials of Herbalism Program at BRSHM and Sacred Vibes Herbalism Apprenticeship with Karen Rose. On days where she is not dismantling the evils of white supremacy, she enjoys discovering the songs of plants and spending time with her honey and fur babies.

For those interested in more information, you can reach her at stephaniedasai2593@gmail.com

Erica Monson (She/Her)

Erica Monson is the Marketing and Social Media Specialist at BRSHM. She is a Nature lover who recently left Southern California to wander in the mysteries of the Appalachians. As a 2023 graduate of the Holistic Herbalism Program, Erica enjoys bringing her herbal knowledge to her family. She is studious by nature and is constantly trying to learn and expand.

Erica’s purpose is to be a trusted servant to humanity. She is trained in several areas of personal alchemy, somatic experience, and spends much of her spare time working with those struggling with addiction. Erica is close to launching her personal psycho-spiritual healing venture which will become available in 2024.

For those interested in more information, you can follow her on IG @holisticearthling

Rebecca Vann (She/Her)

Rebecca has been an herbalist for 20+ years having gained a wealth of knowledge in medicinal herbs and practices. Her work in herbal education as both a teacher and administrator, natural products labs, and various versions of cultivation has taken her along a path of herbal medicine that focused on Nutrition, Biodynamic Agriculture, Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Postpartum Care, Clinical Herbalism, Flower Essences Therapy, Bionetics, community building, program development, mentorship, and most recently distilling.

These days you can find Rebecca wildcrafting and cultivating the plants used in her potions and distillations over at her apothecary, aurum apotheca and teaching for Blue Ridge School.

Marc Williams (He/Him)

Marc Williams is an ethnobiologist. He has studied the people, plant, mushroom, microbe connection intensively while learning to employ botanicals and other life forms for food, medicine, and beauty. His training includes a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies concentrating in Sustainable Agriculture with a minor in Business from Warren Wilson College and a Master’s degree in Appalachian Studies concentrating in Sustainable Development with a minor in Geography and Planning from Appalachian State University. He has spent close to two decades working at a multitude of restaurants and various farms. He has travelled throughout 29 countries in Central/North/South America and Europe and all 50 of the United States.

Marc has visited over 200 botanical gardens and research institutions during this process while taking tens of thousands of pictures of representative plants. He is also Executive Director of Plants and Healers International www.plantsandhealers.org Appalachian Institute for Mountain Studies. He has taught hundreds of classes about the marvelous world of people and their interface with other organisms while working with over 70 organizations in the last few years and online at the website www.botanyeveryday.com. Marc’s greatest hope is that this effort may help improve our current challenging global ecological situation.

Learn more about Marc’s Botany Everyday group at www.botanyeveryday.com.

Brandon Ruiz (He/Him)

Brandon Ruiz is a community herbalist, urban farmer, writer, chef, and ethnobotanist based in New York City (Lenape Lands) and Charlotte, North Carolina (Catawba Lands). He is the owner and director of Yucayeke Farms, a project that works to connect folks to their culturally relevant food and herbalism practices. He spends most of his time making medicine, cooking Caribbean food, and teaching in person and online about Caribbean plant medicines. Brandon works mainly with plants of the tropics, specifically from the Caribbean and in Boriken (Puerto Rico), his ancestral homeland. His work and educational opportunities can be found at @yucayekefarms on Instagram.

Anna Claire Lotti (She/Her)

Anna Claire is a holistic clinical herbalist and medicine maker living in the mountains of Western North Carolina, by way of the beaches of South Carolina. From an early age, Anna Claire was inspired by and in awe of the natural world. She attended the University of South Carolina, earning a BS in Marine Science, with an emphasis on biology and marine mammals. Her studies next led her to explore graduate coursework in human nutrition, and finally, to the path of the plants.

Anna Claire is a graduate of the Holistic Herbalism and Advanced Clinical Herbalism programs at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, and she also completed a 450-hour herbal apprenticeship with CoreyPine Shane, RH (AHG).

Katie Vie (She/Her)

Katie teaches the aromatherapy classes at BRSHM. She has enjoyed teaching aromatherapy, self care and massage therapy techniques in and around Asheville for many years. Katie is a seasoned massage therapist, and the creator and master blender of River Island Apothecary, a small batch all-botanical line of body care that includes her signature Archetype Anointing Oils.

Katie blends & teaches from her apothecary studio, and is an educational resource for people wishing to learn Aromatherapy through an artistic lens. She lives in a pristine forest where she takes long walks with her dog, and sits by bold creeks that sing to her. www.katievie.com

Beryl Fulford (She/Her)

Beryl teaches the our Gender Dynamics classes at BRSHM. She is a graduate student in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Western Carolina University. As a child she always asked “why” and she continues to do so today. She loves good food, her arthritic pit bull, and cozy places. She has a passion for self-growth and fostering growth in others through questioning, finding understanding, and holding empathy.