Meet Our Team

Julie Campilio
Julie CampilioFounder, Educator
Julie (she/her) is dedicated to helping all children develop healthy relationships with the full spectrum of their emotions. Growing up with undiagnosed ADD and anxiety, her work is deeply influenced and informed by her own journey learning how to self-soothe as a young child and experimenting with coping strategies to live in the world more comfortably. Gradually, Julie was introduced to yoga and mindfulness and found in them a power to be with her emotions rather than run from them. Over time, she learned to tap into her breath and lean into discomfort, learning life-long tools to navigate big emotions.

For the past 15 years, she’s pursued opportunities to use these tools in private & public education, substance use centers, with youth with multiple obstacles to success, and with children with special needs. She has partnered with social workers, therapists, researchers, and educators to create content that supports children’s social and emotional wellness. Julie also teaches with Sea Change Yoga to provide yoga to historically excluded and oppressed populations. In all environments, she cultivates a judgment-free space that is grounded in her own journey of self-love and acceptance. She has been published in The New York Times, Elephant Journal, Insight Timer Meditation, and Gaiam Meditation apps.

Samantha Myers
Samantha MyersDirector, Educator
Empowering children through yoga and mindfulness, Samantha’s (she/her) goal has been to create an atmosphere where youth are able to live authentic and healthy lives. She spent three years on a special cohort in collaboration with Denver Public Schools and Denver After School Alliance to help create quality, engaging curriculum, and beneficial after-school programming for local Denver youth.
She actively leads in the Junior League of Denver and serves on the Board of Directors of Kids 24/7 whose mission is to empower children to lead healthy lives. Samantha is deeply committed to helping the next generation thrive and her entrepreneurial drive and passion for children’s well-being shine into all aspects of her life and career.
Jennifer Werner
Jennifer WernerTrainer, Educator
Jenny’s (she/her) teaching experience includes 21 years of teaching in the public school system. She has spent her time teaching visual arts, yoga, and mindfulness to children, teens, and adults. Her journey with yoga began 11 years ago and from that point forward her intention was to share the practice. Knowing that yoga/mindfulness transformed her own life she has worked to bring the teaching to her faculty and into her classroom. For the past 7 years she has been teaching and leading trainings for Radiant Beginnings. It fuels her inner fire to serve children and adults, helping them to connect to their creativity, bodies, minds, and breath. She believes yoga is a gift that you give yourself every day.
Ally Pachelli
Ally Pachelli Educator
Ally (she/her) is a certified yoga instructor, children’s yoga instructor, and has completed additional trainings in MBSR and teaching meditation. Ally is on a journey to bring mindfulness and yoga practices into our present-day world in a relevant, thoughtful, and fun way. Teaching children has always been a passion of Ally’s whether that is teaching swim lessons, being a ski instructor, coaching youth sports, or teaching yoga. Ally believes in sharing the gifts and teachings of mindfulness and yoga with children so they may learn the lessons and tools she found much later in life. Through empowering our children we will help create a world of more peace, love, and joy.
JaMese Stepanek
JaMese StepanekTrainer, Educator
JaMese (she/her) the urban healer. She has been a certified teacher for the last 13 years in the Denver metro area. Her experience includes the public and private school system with children ages 6 weeks to 18 years. She teaches elementary school, yoga, mindfulness, energy, and reiki to children, teens, and adults. JaMese journey to healing began 13 years ago, opening the doors to the practice of life. She blends her background in psychology and education with alternative healing and modern medicine. For the past 2 years, she has been developing curriculum for science and education reform, writing a book on the Energy of Education, and completing her doctorate degree in education and neuroscience. JaMese credits Maya Angelou, Carl Sagan, and Ms. Frizzle for her passion for writing, education, and science.
Brittan DiGirolamo
Brittan DiGirolamoEducator
Brittan DiGirolamo (she/her) is a certified Yoga Instructor, Holistic Health Practitioner, Children’s Yoga Instructor, and aspiring artist. She uses her knowledge to create fun and engaging yoga lessons safe for children. Brittan believes that if children are taught healthy coping skills early on in life, it will positively impact their future. She looks forward to helping your child on their journey!
Anna Marchio
Anna MarchioTrainer, Educator
Born and raised in Minnesota, Anna (she/her) moved to Denver in 2015 after completing her Elementary Education degree at the University of Minnesota. She currently teaches second grade in Denver Public Schools. Anna loves the outdoors, cooking, going to local workout classes and art. She feels that teaching with Radiant Beginnings has been one of the best parts when moving to Colorado, especially working with youth of all ages to help them feel power in their body and minds through yoga.
Kimberly Merriman
Kimberly MerrimanTrainer, Educator
Kim was initially drawn to yoga during her earlier years as a ballet dancer as a way to cross-train and recover from injuries, but it wasn’t until several years later that she soon discovered there was so much more to yoga than just a good workout and laying in savasana at the end of class. She found yoga as a healthy outlet to reduce stress and anxiety and really started to discover what it meant to “go inward” and discover the quiet of the inner self. Yoga has allowed her to embrace letting go of things that do not serve oneself and to have an open mind and work towards manifesting the path and life you want. Having experienced such a dramatic shift during her yoga practice, Kim wanted to share this experience with others and completed her 500-hour yoga teacher training with Brett Larkin and is a registered RYT 500 with Yoga Alliance.
Her kid’s classes are upbeat with a focus on trying to quiet the inner “monkey mind” that we all experience on a daily basis. She wants to be able to have her students experience the calm sense they feel at the end of yoga class all throughout their day and to be able to have the skills to tap into this on their own when needed.
Linda Chase
Linda ChaseTrainer, Educator
Linda Chase (she/her) is a sixth-grade social studies and science teacher as well as a children’s yoga instructor. She’s been a public school teacher for many years, working with children with special needs and teaching students in most grades, from kindergarten through middle school. She trained for 200 hours each at Samadhi and NamasteWorks + Wellness (therapeutic yoga). Her children’s certification is through Radiant Beginnings. It is her background in education that greatly informs her work with teaching children yoga. Trauma-informed and therapeutic yoga for children are areas of great interest as she believes we all need to address our emotional well-being. She draws on yoga, animals, nature, and great children’s literature to find peace, stillness, and beauty in the world and wants to empower her students to do the same.
Sheri Willan
Sheri WillanTrainer, Educator
Sheri (she/her) has a deep affinity for yoga and has been living and studying alternative health for over three decades. At 16, she took her first yoga class, opening the door to her inner world, and today she loves helping teens to discover their own. Instead of tapping on their screens for inspiration she helps them tap into their passions, build confidence, relieve stress, gain coping skills and a healthy self esteem. She integrates yoga principles of alignment, meditation, breath work, and humor to create a fun, restful, and safe place for teens to fully be themselves.

She is registered with Yoga Alliance as a RYT200, a RYT100 in Teen Yoga and finishing her certification to be a Meditation Coach in Winter 2022. For fun she paints in her studio and volunteers at the Clyfford Still Museum. But her ultimate kick is traveling with her husband of 22 years and their two teenage kids.

Teri Kawalski
Teri KawalskiTrainer, Educator
Teri (she/her) is passionate about helping children to live a vibrant and healthy life. She first discovered yoga while in college when searching for a way to mange the stress of finals. She quickly realized the benefits of yoga and mindfulness are far greater than stress relief alone. Ten years of downward dogs and warrior poses later she completed a 200-hour teacher training program in Chicago at Yogaview in 2016. With the goal of bringing the benefits of yoga to children, Teri completed the Radiant Beginnings’ Kid’s Yoga Instructor program in 2017. As a kid’s yoga instructor she strives to help children discover the powerful tools of yoga and mindfulness, skills she hopes that they can utilize their entire lives. Yoga helps us to regulate our emotions, appreciate our bodies, focus, be kind to ourselves and others. Her goal in all of her classes is to always have fun. When off the mat Teri loves to climb, hike, snowboard, travel, and read.
Hannah Anderson
Hannah AndersonTrainer, Educator
Hannah (she/her) has been teaching yoga since 2014. As a professional dancer Hannah found yoga as form of a physical cross-training but quickly fell in love with its deeper layers. She learned skilled emotional regulation and found more mental clarity which sparked her studies and desires to teach. Hannah is passionate that yoga is for all bodies and walks of life, and strives to make mindfulness and yoga practice accessible to her community, be it in a studio, park, gym, or school. As a forever student herself, Hannah particularly enjoys working with children, learning from their inquisitiveness and power of play, as she shares the tools and insights she found life-changing much later in life. She believes life gives most to those who make the most of what life gives, and is grateful for yoga as a tool to connect to the present moment and accept what is, so that we may find peace and happiness.
She is registered with Yoga Alliance as a RYT200, a RYT100 in Teen Yoga and finishing her certification to be a Meditation Coach in Winter 2022. For fun she paints in her studio and volunteers at the Clyfford Still Museum. But her ultimate kick is traveling with her husband of 22 years and their two teenage kids.

Testimonials

Thank you again for coming to Greenwood for Yoga!! We were so happy you were able to see all three of our Kindergarten Enrichment groups at Greenwood. We are now using Yoga in our everyday classroom for classroom management and calming kindies coming in from recess and before work starts!. Yoga has given us a new “tool” in our bag for brain breaks and classroom discipline!
Margie Costello, Kindergarten teacher at Greenwood Elementary School

Julie is a phenomenal teacher. She taught a session of weekly yoga classes to my busy first grade class, and the kids absolutely loved it. The flow of her class kept their attention and they learned mindfulness strategies they could use throughout their day. Julie’s trauma-informed teaching background is evident, as is her love of children and yoga.

Emily, Reiche Elementary Portland ME

I have to admit that I wasn’t excited about our training–my past experiences with yoga were not calming. After your training, I am very excited to bring yoga to our students at the library.

Librarian, AnyThink
The classes for our special education students has been marvelous. The students have enjoyed the class tremendously, all of the students feel like the yoga class has helped them relax and become more focused during the day. They also expressed feeling like the class has helped them become stronger. Some favorite moments in the class have been the relaxation phase. From the perspective of the teachers it has been a great way for us to bond with our students and also has helped us to focus and become more relax when we just need a break from teaching to do something fun!
Mrs. Keel, Special Education teacher at Hamilton Middle School

Yoga is a savior for classroom management! I started implementing yoga strategies into my classroom a year ago and noticed a difference in how children respond to conflict. I took Radiant Beginnings training and have been implementing strategies I learned from this class into my classroom daily.

Nina, 4th grade teacher at Chavez Elementary

I had several ‘aha’ moments. I’ve been teaching ECE for 20 years and it’s so nice to learn new things to do with my kiddos! Thank You!

Teacher, at The Village Child Development Center