Director of Services, Amity Foundation
Juana Ochoa is a Mexican woman who was raised in a marginalized, drug-infested, and gang-protected community, fighting persistent poverty. The Pico-Gardens housing project east of the Los Angeles River was one of the most unstable communities in the '90s. She witnessed her community lose great men and women to gang violence, incarceration, drug addiction, and criminality. Most importantly, she witnessed the most vulnerable members of her community, the children and future generations, become displaced and looped into the same cycle of crime, drug addiction, and violence.
Today, Juana is a Ph.D. candidate pursuing a degree in Depth Psychology with a strong emphasis on Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecopsychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute–her focus and curiosity have been around the development of spaces and how those spaces support the transformation of individuals moving through the criminal justice system, individuals pushed to the backstairs of society. For the last twelve years, Juana has worked with the Amity Foundation, a non-profit organization. Amity's work extends to county and state levels, providing whole-person care services to men, women, youth, and children impacted by the criminal justice system, homelessness, drug addiction, or those suffering from mental health issues.
At Amity, her role in the community is to fine-tune the syncopation of the environment and the emotional climate. She supports the development of spaces that incorporate many practices directly (including circle practice, art, music, and gardening) and indirectly (such as plants, scents, textures, colors, and the sounds of water). As the Regional Director of Services, her job is to ensure that the fidelity of the teaching and therapeutic model is intact, providing platforms that move individuals from an unconscious to a conscious place of understanding and evolution.