Teachers and Staff
Teachers
CoreyPine Shane (He/Him)
Founder and Director, Primary Teacher
CoreyPine Shane, RH (AHG), has devoted more than three decades to helping people reconnect with plants, health, and themselves. As the founder and director of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine (est. 1999), he coordinates the curriculum and serves as the school’s primary teacher. His approach blends Chinese and Western herbal traditions with a focus on local, place-based plants – making clinical herbalism both accessible and deeply rooted in the Appalachian landscape.
A seasoned wildcrafter with extensive knowledge of plant identification and medicine-making, CoreyPine is also an expert in herbal first aid and has served as both a Street Medic and a Wilderness First Responder. He is the author of Southeast Medicinal Plants (Timber Press) and a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild. His teaching and speaking have taken him to conferences and schools across the U.S. and Europe, and his writings on herbalism continue to influence students and practitioners nationwide.
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.
“I am so passionate about teaching people herbal medicine. And it’s so much bigger than just, like, take this herb for this disease, right? It’s place-based, it’s ancestral.”
Rebecca Vann (She/Her)
Lead Instructor, Herbalist, Apothecary Founder (Aurum Apotheca)
With more than two decades of experience, Rebecca has tended plants and people through every stage – from cultivation and wildcrafting to medicine-making and community care – and she brings that lived knowledge into the classroom. Her background spans clinical herbalism, nutrition, Biodynamic Agriculture, Ayurveda (including postpartum care), flower-essence therapy, bionetics, community building, program development, mentorship, and, most recently, distilling. She’s taught and worked across labs, classrooms, and gardens – but her favorite role may be the simplest: introducing students to her friends, the plants.
Rebecca teaches by weaving modalities: You’ll hear Ayurveda alongside biodynamics, science alongside story, and always an invitation to cultivate your own relationship with the plants. She listens to the plants first, intuition second, and then consults science to verify. In the classroom, she uses modern and ancient science (alchemy) as a pillar and weaves in her experiential and intuitive side through story.
Beyond BRSHM, you’ll find her wildcrafting and tending her apothecary, Aurum Apotheca. She also invites first-year students to volunteer at the Veterans Healing Farm, gaining hands-on experience in growing, harvesting, and medicine-making for the veteran community. Graduates can join her mentorship for deeper projects – formulation, record-keeping, field trips, and one-on-one support to build confidence in their craft.
What she hopes students carry forward: herbalism is a lifelong path. You won’t learn it all in a year, or three, and that’s the beauty of it.
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “It smells like summer and herbal tea, it sounds like a tame conversation along with that summer breeze and it feels like reciprocity…between the land and the learners.”
Marc Williams (He/Him)
Lead Instructor, Ethnobiologist, Executive Director of Plants and Healers International
Marc Williams is an ethnobiologist with a lifelong passion for exploring the intricate connections between people, plants, mushrooms, and microbes. His journey has been shaped as much by Tolkien novels, meditation retreats, and various gatherings as by academic study and professional practice. Early mentors like 7Song, Juliet Blankespoor, and the late Frank Cook further inspired his dedication to the living web of relationships that sustain us.
Marc holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies (Sustainable Agriculture) with a minor in Business from Warren Wilson College and a M.A. in Appalachian Studies (Sustainable Development) with a minor in Planning/Geography from Appalachian State University. Over the past 25+ years, he has worked across restaurants, farms, gardens, and classrooms; traveled through 30 countries across the Americas and Europe; and visited more than 200 botanical gardens and research institutions. He has also taught hundreds of classes to thousands of students – sharing knowledge that ranges from fermentation and foraging to ethnobotany and permaculture.
As Executive Director of Plants and Healers International and the founder of Botany Everyday, Marc brings a global perspective to local challenges. He documents traditional ecological knowledge, highlights sustainable practices from diverse cultures, and invites students to see how ethnobiology can help address today’s ecological crises. His teaching style blends humor, music, folk sayings, and mnemonics to make complex science accessible, while always circling back to what matters most: how we live and care for the earth in daily practice.
Marc’s greatest hope is that every student walks away with at least one insight, or many, that will sustain them in the times ahead.
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “Appealing aromas of flowers, sounds of birds, and a feeling of communion.”
More atwww.botanyeveryday.com andwww.plantsandhealers.org.
Brandon Ruiz (He/Him)
Guest Teacher, Community Herbalist, Writer, Owner of Yucayeke Farms
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.
Katie Vie (She/Her)
Guest Teacher, Aromatherapy Instructor, Creator of River Island Apothecary
Katie teaches aromatherapy the way the forest teaches – through senses, story, and steady presence. A seasoned massage therapist and longtime Asheville educator, she blends art and science to help students trust their own sensory wisdom while understanding how scent works in the brain. In class, you’ll find scent strips and reflection prompts alongside conversations about neural pathways, seasonality, and personal ritual.
She founded River Island Apothecary – home of her small-batch, all-botanical Archetype Anointing Oils – because she wanted beautiful, nature-based tools for honoring archetypal wisdom. What began as a personal practice became a beloved product line and teaching framework: What we blend for ourselves often ends up benefitting others.
Katie’s classes are alive with humor and humanity (ask her about the year students ate the “olfactory reset” coffee beans). Mostly, she invites learners to notice: What does the wind carry today? What season is your body in? How might scent align your intentions with your nervous system?
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “The creek babbles down the hill, tracing glades of moss and slick stones with shaded fingertips; filling the air with a cool green. Sweet breezes blow, rustling through the leaves, alive and awake. The plants relax, sharing their wisdom with the visitors like a matron from a rocking chair on her porch.”
Stephanie “Steph” Dasai (she/her/ella)
Guest Teacher, Cultural Equity Consultant and Advocate, Community Herbalist
Steph is a queer community herbalist, an alumni of BRSHM’s Essentials of Herbalism program and the Sacred Vibes Herbalism Apprenticeship with Karen Rose. Steph’s work centers on justice, curiosity, and care. With Peruvian and Guyanese roots and a background in psychology, she brings a nuanced lens to cultural equity – supporting students and staff to recognize implicit bias, name what’s happening in real time, and cultivate practices that make learning spaces safer and more alive for People of the Global Majority (PoGM). Her facilitation experience includes Building Bridges of Asheville and work influenced by the Racial Equity Institute, and she often collaborates with classrooms to co-create aftercare plans, refine facilitation confidence, and transform discomfort into learning.
She believes access to medicinal knowledge is a birthright – not something to gatekeep. As an advocate for PoGM students at BRSHM, Steph offers understanding, support, and practical tools for navigating predominantly white spaces, while nurturing staff capacity to meet moments of tension with clarity and compassion. Her favorite classroom memories are when curiosity dissolves defensiveness and strangers exchange perspectives to find common ground.
On days she’s not dismantling white supremacy, she’s listening for plant songs and spending time with her honey and fur babies.
For those interested in more information, you can reach her at stephaniedasai2593@gmail.com.
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “The perfect day working with plants at Blue Ridge would smell like the sweetness of tulsi, it would sound like storytelling and laughter, and it would feel like collective liberation.”
Dr Sarah Nuñez (she/her/ella)
Guest Teacher, Herbs of Latin America and Mutual Aid, Co-founder of Aflorar Herb Collective
Dr. Sarah Nuñez was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and raised in North Carolina. She is a cultural worker, weaving storytelling and testimonios, art, herbs, and movement-building throughout her work, teaching, and organizing. She is one of three founders of Aflorar Herb Collective which grows herbs and distributes herbal community care kits, plants, and seeds to organizers, activists, and nurturers across the country. Sarah loves building positive people power in the South. Her current projects include growing herbs and flowers, teaching, writing, consulting, and bringing healing practices, art, and organizing modalities as tools for transformation to groups across the country.
Staff
JJ Bloomfield (She/Her)
Director of Operations
JJ is the compassionate, supportive mama bear behind our seamless student experience. Since 2015, she’s kept BRSHM’s many moving parts functioning smoothly – processing applications, coordinating with teachers, managing payment plans, creating the homework syllabus, maintaining Podia, writing newsletters, and holding space when life (inevitably) happens. She manages all the micro details of the programs and classes so that students can show up and feel held.
Her values – honesty, integrity, mutual respect – shape how she builds containers where people feel safe, supported, and respected. JJ integrates feedback, creates new systems in response to issues, and handles the delicate human moments that can arise with steady compassion. She also helped spearhead BRSHM’s social-justice focus (including much of the consent language in applications) and has taught mental-health support skills for herbalists, emphasizing effective listening and space-holding.
Over the years, JJ’s role evolved from admin assistant to administrator to Director of Operations. Today, she focuses on what she does best: amplifying what makes CoreyPine and the school shine – and tending the details no one else needs to think about.
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “Feeling held by the ancient cove and smelling the rich, forest soil with the sound of the stream and birdsong in the background.”
For questions about programs: JJ.BRSHM@gmail.com
Erica Monson (She/Her)
Marketing and Social Media Specialist
Erica brings the spirit of the woods to the screen. A graduate of BRSHM’s Holistic Herbalism program, she creates content that feels like a walk along the creek – curiosity-stirring, down-to-earth, and rooted in real experience. Whether she’s sharing a behind-the-scenes moment from class or translating a complex concept through story, Erica helps prospective students feel the invitation of this work: reconnection with nature, community, and the intelligence of their own bodies.
Her approach starts with observation – of the land, the nervous system, and what life is asking for right now. Some days that means nervine tea between tasks; other days, adaptogens in a smoothie or a plant ally for emotional processing days. She’s especially gifted at making herbalism less intimidating for beginners by weaving lessons into approachable narratives through storytelling.
A nature-lover who traded Southern California for the mysteries of Appalachia, Erica is also the voice behind Earth School Navigation (@earthschoolnavigation) on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, where she shares stories, habits, and everyday “nature hacks” to help us navigate this plane of existence that she likes to call Earth School. Playful posts about plant allies – and the occasional CoreyPine cameo – are her secret sauce for sparking genuine engagement and interest in BRSHM.
What does a perfect day at BRSHM feel like? “The sound would be quiet but not silent. I would hear bees working nearby along with birds singing. Leaves rustling just enough to feel noticed. Maybe one of my classmates was laughing or asking a question. The feeling would be regulating and create a sense of belonging.”
Lyndsey Shafiei (she/her/they)
Administrative Assistant, Production Assistant for Pine’s Herbals
Lyndsey Shafiei is a North Carolina-born herbalist and class of 2022 BRSHM graduate. Their herbalism practice draws from her Persian-Irish roots, and training as a chemist, doula, and public health scientist. Lyndsey’s passions beyond herbalism expand to architecture, landscape design, community care models, reading for joy, and dance. She considers herself a lifelong student of many things!