Annie is the founder and director of Circle Yoga Cooperative (including Budding Yogis Kid’s Yoga) bringing mindfulness yoga to people of all ages. She is the founder of DC Yoga Week and Yoga on the National Mall, and on the board of the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center, and active in much of the grass roots community yoga and mindfulness activities in the Washington DC Area. Annie holds masters degrees in both Computer Science (University of Michigan) and Religious Studies (Howard University). She is also a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT).
She studies, practices, and teaches yoga in a mixed Anusara-mindfulness style, and teaches mindfulness in the tradition of her primary teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Other teacher and influences include Philip Moffit, Alan Watts, Jack Kornfield, Kate Miller, her four children, and the monks and nuns of Plum Village. In October 2009, Annie was ordained into the Buddhist Order of Interbeing.
Annie is an ERYT-200, having completed an Anusara 400-hour training in 2004, and is also one of the first certified Children’s Yoga teachers in the country, holding a C-RYT. She also studies and practices non-violent communication (NVC) with Marshall Rosenberg and Robert Gonzales and Focusing. Annie has a strong interest in using mindfulness, yoga, NVC, and touch to help support reduce suffering in herself and others. She also pioneers community-based business and programs that foster shared decision making, rather than typical hierarchical structures. Toward that goal, in 2012 she gifted the equity in Circle Yoga to the workers, making it the first Cooperative Yoga Studio in the area, and one of the very first in the country.
Winner of the 
