Hi! I’m Jenifer Trivelli, an author/writer, keynote speaker, parent, and the founder of everything you’ll find here.
My professional journey started when I was invited to start a school counselor program in rural Central Oregon two decades ago. Simultaneously earning a Master’s in Counseling (alongside the birth of my first child) centered my studies with one critical question:
What is the most effective way to support the emotional well-being of our young people?
Meet the WiseMind Team
We’re a group of dedicated professionals with diverse backgrounds, expertise, and experience in various fields related to childhood education, mindfulness and movement practices, and emotional health and well-being. We believe that emotional health is an essential part of well-being, and our team is committed to providing compassionate and evidence-based services that support young people (and the adults who care for them) in the effective management of stressful and sometimes overwhelming emotional states.
Learn more about each member of our team below; including their qualifications, experience, and areas of expertise.
Shea Bodine
Originally from Arizona, Shea completed her undergraduate studies in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Latin American Studies and a minor in Biology. She traveled, farmed and taught in Central and South America and returned to the states to obtain a K-12 teaching credential. In 2014, she moved to Oregon and began her journey working with elementary-aged students as a bilingual classroom teacher. She currently serves as a mentor for beginning teachers in Salem-Keizer school district, and is now the mama of two young boys. She has become deeply interested in guiding both kids and adults towards cultivating a sense of self-compassion and self-understanding through mindfulness and movement.
Experiencing the benefits of mindfulness and movement in her own life, she began weaving her knowledge of the brain, the nervous system and mindfulness into her work with students and educators. She has offered the tools of mindfulness and movement in her own classroom, for kids in her community, as well as mindful educator workshops for teachers.
She is a graduate of Trauma Center's Trauma Sensitive Yoga 20 hour workshop, graduate of Yoga Calm's Youth Instructor Program, and has completed Mindful Schools Mindfulness Fundamentals and Mindfulness for Educators Course. Through her company, Rooted Resilience, she is an independent contractor with WiseMind Educational Services.
All WiseMind Educators hold HeartMath Certifications
Melissa Johnson
Melissa’s love of teaching began in 2005 as an English Language Development Teacher for elementary students in Salem-Keizer schools. She then completed a Master of Science degree in Education with a focus on reading in 2011. During her 16 years of teaching, she immersed herself in learning about trauma and its effects on the growing brain, and how this impacts students’ ability to connect, self-regulate, and learn.
Valuing kids’ need for more than just academics, Melissa’s teaching approach infused music, dancing, yoga, and mindfulness practices within the school day. This approach gifted her students with tools to ground, self-reflect, and bring balance to their nervous systems. In 2019, she shifted her professional focus to adults as an Instructional Mentor for beginning teachers. It was at this point she realized how important it was to children’s lives to encourage and empower the adults in their lives with tools to help their young learners thrive.
Melissa is a mama to two young, spirited girls. Both girls have been diagnosed with microcephaly, a condition where their brains are much smaller than average. This makes learning and self-regulation quite challenging but has given Melissa lots of practice with navigating and giving space to the BIG feelings that all children might feel.
Melissa holds a certification as a Trauma-Sensitive Heart Math Practitioner and is the owner of Silver Falls Wellness. Fun fact - she’s also pursuing certification in a form of martial arts called Lui He Ba Fan (called water boxing in America).
Emilee Kerper
Emilee’s passion for supporting others in their healing has been curated through a lifetime of personal growth and curiosity about human resilience. From an early age, she studied brain science and self-help strategies, seeking to understand the human experience. Emilee worked in many social service settings between 2009 and 2015, including group home management, mental health agency and child welfare work, offering support and seeing the need for holistic approaches to wellness.
In 2016, learning, practicing, and completing a teacher training in yoga expanded Emilee’s perspective about the connections between mind, body and spirit. Facilitating practices in drug and alcohol treatment programs magnified the benefits as Emilee witnessed profound stress relief and expanded personal insights in participants.
Graduating from formal education in Psychology (2019) and Social Work (2022) equipped Emilee to provide support in other settings and utilize expanded thinking and tools. Somatic practices, such as yoga and mindfulness, combined with elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family Systems and Nutritional Health allow Emilee to invite fragmented pieces of her clients to reintegrate into a more full expression of themselves. Fueled by research in neuroscience and neuroplasticity, she offers education and coaching to individuals seeking profound transformation in their lives.
A parent of 14 and 7 year old boys, Emilee has thoughtfully refined parenting skills to a collaborative and identity-honoring approach to developing youth. Working with kids and the adults who care for them is an honor she accepts with great care. Offering skill-building to generate trust and communication between caregiver and child is central to Emilee’s multi-perspective approach, which includes movement, art, verbal processing, time with nature, visualization practice and spiritual exploration from each client’s unique place in the world. Emilee believes that through acceptance of the fullness of ourselves, we heal and grow.
Emilee is a certified Trauma Sensitive HeartMath Practitioner and owner of Ellipsis Community.
Casey Elderedge
Casey’s love of person-centered wellness and education has been central to her professional contributions on the West Coast. A California native, Casey graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Recreation Administration (therapeutic emphasis). Working in a variety of rehab centers to promote healing with patients who suffered spinal cord and/or neurological injuries (such as stroke), as well as minor psychiatric patients offered her a first-hand view of the value of understanding and caring for one’s nervous system.
Working alongside children and teens lit a special joy in her heart, and Casey’s first post-graduate position was as a Recreation Therapist in a locked psychiatric hospital with 123 beds in Encinitas. She found recreation and nature a helpful medium to teach mindfulness and relaxation techniques for coping with mental and emotional barriers to wellness.
After her husband received his degree in education, Casey and her family moved to a rural town in Northern California. There were no rehabilitation or psychiatric centers in their area, so she decided to stay home for a few years and raise her two sons, now almost 30 and 32 years of age.
Steeped in a family and network of friends who were all educators, Casey went on to earn an Education degree through Dominican University. She loved teaching literature and reading and pursued a Master’s in Reading and Language Arts, as well as a Reading Specialist Credential. She taught for about 10 years, until a mysterious illness changed the course of her life. Within a year, she had developed stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma and battled for her life. Not to worry, though, she’s still here, some 14 years later, and with much hard-won wisdom.
Fueled by her own healing journey, Casey studied functional medicine for a decade and then earned certification in Integrative Medicine Health Coaching through The Academy of Integrative Medicine. She learned how devastating early childhood trauma is to our mind, body and soul, and through the Ayurvedic medicine emphasis, discovered important skills for deeply nurturing the self in more personal ways.
From this holistic healing platform, Casey explored many different Ayurvedic breathing techniques, yoga, stretching and meditation to help in her own healing journeys. One of these was a biofeedback modality her hypnotherapist had used to support her with her fear of getting sick again, post-cancer. Casey felt the pull for a new course of study and completed HeartMath’s Clinical Certification for Stress, Anxiety and Self-Regulation.
After 5 years of smoke, fire, drought, roving blackouts and excessive heat, Casey and her husband moved to Keizer, Oregon, to be safer and closer to her sons. She misses the sunshine of California, but has fallen in love with Oregon and its people. She can be found most days outside with her flowers and doggies, Shadow and Bella, or finding joy in laughter with friends and family.