Amy Rogg weighing granola

Amy Rogg grew up in Silicon Valley, and after finishing her schooling she moved to L.A. to work in the entertainment industry. She pursued a career in both acting and producing, but the more she learned about the politics and behind-the-scenes realities of the business, the more disenchanted she became.  It certainly wasn’t “chicken soup for the soul.”  Nevertheless, she found herself working two nearly full-time jobs simultaneously, with many 16-hour days.  During this time, Amy began to struggle with severe anxiety and panic, a new and alarming experience.  She lost a lot of weight, and began to seriously worry for her health.  She started investigating different methods of eating and healing.

Amy began to study yoga, and fell in love with it.  It improved her anxiety symptoms, as well as every other aspect of her life. She studied the yogic diet and although it leaned towards vegetarianism and that didn’t resonate with her, the whole idea of a holistic approach to food, diet, and life really did.  She completed the training to be a certified yoga instructor and got a job at a yoga clothing store called lululemon athletica, where at least felt she was surrounded by people with similar interests and values.

Amy finally realized that L.A. was not the place for her, and relocated back to the Bay Area, transferring to another store in San Francisco.  Since moving up here she has worked as a personal trainer and yoga instructor, and has become increasingly interested in food.  She began shopping at farmer’s markets, and a friend told her about Three Stone Hearth.  She contacted us about how to get involved, and has been a day student ever since-joining us one day a week and learning about our model and our approach to health.

Amy isn’t sure what the future holds, but her dream is to find a way to help people “wholistify”-a term she uses to describe a process of examining your life, letting go of patterns that don’t serve anymore, embracing uncertainty, and moving towards healing on all levels. 

Denise Goitia at her laptop

Denise Goitia has worked at Three Stone Hearth in a variety of different capacities since 2008 -in the kitchen, packing orders for delivery, distributing pick-up orders, and assisting with the newsletter and our education programs.  We are very excited that Denise is now with us full-time as CCTP Administrator and HR Assistant.

Denise was trained as a Nutrition Educator at Bauman College.  She also studied herbalism at the California School of Herbal Studies where she completed their two-year Foundations program. Her interest in wild foraged foods has led her to gather sea vegetables on the Mendocino coast, bay nuts in the East Bay Hills, and medicinal mushrooms in Point Reyes. For many years she worked for Riverdog Farm, one of Northern California’s most biodiverse organic family farms.  During the past year Denise taught classes and led community-organizing efforts for a hospital-based education program called Heartbeets.

In her new capacity with us Denise will be overseeing many aspects of the Cooking and Culinary Traditions program including applications and scheduling, liaising with faculty and students, teaching, and participating in curriculum planning, design, and implementation.

For the past few years, Denise has been focused on developing organizational and management skills that facilitate community-building.  In addition to living in community she has been studying the principles of the Four-Fold Way developed by Angeles Arrien.  In taking on this new position at Three Stone Hearth, Denise is excited to get to practice all she is learning, and to use her skill set to bring added efficiency and ease to the work we do on a daily basis here at the kitchen.

Above all, Denise really loves teaching and is excited not only to keep teaching classes but to learn how to administer an education program.  She envisions a future where she will be doing more and more professional teaching, and hopes to start and run her own education program someday.  After so many years at Three Stone Hearth, it feels poetic to Denise to come back now that we’ve initiated this new phase of our business.  She looks forward to participating in the visioning process and helping build the structures for Three Stone Hearth to grow.