Board Members
Grove T. Burnett, Santa Fe, NM, Co-Founder and Guiding Teacher
Grove is co-founder and guiding teacher of the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch. He has practiced meditation for over 25 years and is authorized to teach in the Buddhist tradition. He trained with internationally renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in an intensive 4-year teacher-mentoring program. In addition to teaching at Vallecitos, Grove also teaches at the Insight Meditation Society and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He has taught mindfulness trainings for the Yale Law School, the Contemplative Mind in Society, lawyers and judges, and many nonprofit organizations.
Grove has had a distinguished career as an environmental lawyer and is co-founder of the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit environmental law firm with five offices in the western U.S. He has been named six times to The Best Lawyers in America, which lists the top 1% of the nation’s lawyers, and has received national recognition and many awards for his path breaking work in environmental law. Grove is now doing consulting work, nationally and internationally, focusing on global warming and the climate crisis.
Nancy Ana Garner Albuquerque, NM, Secretary
Ana (“Nancy”) Garner is a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney, practicing since 1981 in Albuquerque. Ana is the mother of three wonderful young men, ages 13, 15, and 18. Her hobbies and interests reflect the path of self-enlightenment and consciousness which she has traveled for over two decades. Along the way, Ana Garner has studied many spiritual practices, including meditation, yoga, Buddhism, Silva mind method, and mind-body healing. In 1996, Ana became a certified hypotherapist for the sheer joy of learning another method of healing, and later received Level I Reiki training. Ana has a great love for the outdoors and the environment, taking almost daily hikes in the mountains close to her home, and doing backpacking trips into wilderness each year. Ana fell in love with Vallecitos when she first attended the Balanced Lawyer retreat in September, 2006. She is excited and honored to have become a Board member in August, 2007 for Vallecitos. She brings years of community service and Board membership with other nonprofit organizations to this service with Vallecitos.
Bonnie Durán, Seattle, WA
Bonnie Durán has been involved with Buddhist practice since 1982. She has taken teachings from many western teachers including Joseph Goldstein and Marcia Rose, as well as Tibetan teachers, Venerable Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She is one of founders of The People of Color Sangha in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is engaged in the Community Dharma Leader training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Bonnie also is involved in Native American spiritual practices and traditions. She is a contributor to Hilda Guitierrez Baldoquin’s book, Dharma, Color and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism (Parallax). Dr. Durán is an associate professor in the Health Services Department at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Melissa Morman, Austin, TX, President
Melissa has been part of Builder Homesite, Inc./NHT since its formation. She has held several roles within BHI/NHT, starting as VP of CRM/BHI, and then as Chief Operating Officer/BHI, and now splits her time between running the NHT subsidiary, managing the Pro business unit within BHI, as well as continuing to manage and facilitate both consortiums (Builders & Manufacturers).
Prior to BHI, Ms. Morman was at ClientLogic, a leading provider of integrated infrastructure and customer relationship management solutions. She held several executive positions, including VP of Sales, General Manager, Client Management Officer, where she worked with the sales field to assess the viability of new startup ventures as potential clients, and then finally as Integration Officer, where she led the integration of newly acquired companies into the parent company. Prior to ClientLogic, Ms. Morman spent 10 years at R.R. Donnelley & Sons in a variety of positions—sales, global account management, as well as front line supervision.
Ms. Morman serves on the Board of Vallecitos Mountain Ranch, a wilderness retreat center specializing in transformational experiences, and is also a member of Impact Austin, a leading Austin non-profit who awards multiple $100k annual grants to worthy non-profits who have the potential to impact Austin positively via Culture, Education, Environment, Family, and Health & Wellness.
Ms. Morman received a Bachelor of Science degree, Cum Laude, from Ohio University in November, 1982.
Don Usner, Santa Fe, NM
Born in 1957 in Embudo, New Mexico, Don earned his undergraduate degree in Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and went on to manage an ecological reserve in Big Sur, California, where he co-authored and took landscape photographs for his first book, The Natural History of Big Sur, published by the University of California Press. It was also at Santa Cruz that Don was introduced to meditation practice.
Don returned to New Mexico in 1988 to complete an M.A. in Geography at the University of New Mexico, then produced his second book of writing and photography, Sabino’s Map: Life in Chimayó’s Old Plaza, published in 1995 by the Museum of New Mexico Press. He has since written and photographed for several more books, including Route 66 On Tour: Legendary Architecture from Glenrio To Gallup; Benigna’s Chimayó: Cuentos from the Old Plaza; Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve, by Don and co-author William deBuys; and, most recently, a chapter in The Plazas of New Mexico, edited by Chris Wilson and due out from Trinity University Press in the Fall of 2010. He continues to cultivate his lifelong interest in cultural and natural history as he works as a writer and photographer in Santa Fe. His photographs appear in all of his books and many other publications.
Throughout his development as a writer and photographer, Don has maintained an interest in and involvement with meditation practice and Buddhist inquiry. He first participated in a meditation retreat at Vallecitos in the fall of 2006, when he experienced the transformative effect of combining meditation practice with the beauty and solitude of the Vallecitos landscape.
Staff Members
Leigh Lauck, Executive Director
Leigh was born and raised in Maine and pursued undergraduate studies at New York University, the University of New Hampshire and University College London. Leigh graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico with a Bachelor of University Studies degree in Mythological Studies. Leigh has worked in the nonprofit sector for the past thirteen years, as an organizer with the Maryland Public Interest Research Group, as Development Director of the Western Environmental Law Center New Mexico Office, and has worked with Vallecitos Mountain Ranch since 1998. She has lived and worked in Europe, and has traveled in Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and the United States. Leigh was formally introduced to contemplative practice in 1998, following her first retreat experience at Vallecitos, and continues to explore the spiritual practices and beliefs of diverse traditions. She has a deep interest in language, history, and the intersection of culture, spirituality, global consciousness and environmental and social activism. Leigh resides in Taos, New Mexico with her husband, Matthew.
Carl Roberts, Ranch Foreman
Carl has spent over three quarters of the summers of his life in the mountains surrounding the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch in northern New Mexico. He went to school in Los Alamos, NM and southern Colorado, followed by four years of army service where he had the opportunity to see other parts of the world. Following the military, he returned home to the mountains and worked construction until he was hired at the Vallecitos Ranch as caretaker from 1989 to 1992. During those three years, he met and married his lovely wife, Sheila. They spent their first year of marriage at the Vallecitos Ranch as a working honeymoon. He was hired as the ranch foreman in 1999. Carl is performing the same job at Vallecitos that his grandfather did in the 1920s and 1930s; Carl’s grandfather also helped build the main lodge. He’s proud to continue taking care of the land as his grandfather did, and feels fortunate to have the opportunity to work at and share the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch and live with his wife and two sons, Wade and Brian, at Spring Creek Ranch, which is located about four miles southeast of the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch.
Co-Founder
Linda M. Velarde, Co-Founder
Linda is a native of Velarde, NM, a 450 year old traditional Chicano village located along the northern Rio Grande River. She grew up working on her family’s fruit farm and is deeply committed to preserving the unique culture and way of life of northern New Mexico. Linda has been very active in the environmental movement for 25 years and is an experienced community organizer. She serves on local and national non-profit boards, including the Seva Foundation, is fluent in Spanish and has traveled and worked in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador on public interest projects. Linda works with the Council of Elders in Guatemala helping raise funds to repurchase sacred sites. She has practiced meditation in the Vipassana tradition for many years, including training with Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, George Mumford and Thich Nhat Hanh. She has studied with the Huichol Indians in Mexico, and has co-taught Curanderismo (traditional Mexican folk healing) workshops at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. In 1998, Linda received the Martin de la Cruz award from the International Congress of Traditional and Indigenous Medicine for her work in maintaining Curanderismo. Linda belongs to a traditional, pre-Colombian Aztec ceremonial dance group, Danza Azteca de Anahuac, where she is the Malinche (fire carrier and keeper). Linda is also co-founder, along with Grove Burnett, of the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch, a wilderness ranch and contemplative center for the nonprofit and activist community, located 45 miles west of Taos.