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IAC FOUNDER, program leader

Shanti Pollacek

Shanti is Inner Adventure’s founder, administrator, program designer, and all-around facilitator. She is passionate about creating new ways to initiate youth into the great adventure of life so that they can step into adulthood with self-knowledge, maturity, kindness, passion, and skills. She integrates a wide range of educational experiences, spiritual backgrounds, and professional training to bring the best of the best into each program.

Shanti works as Inner Adventure’s program leader and as a teacher for Living Wisdom High School of Palo Alto where she teaches psychology, Spanish, world religions and cultures, life skills, and personal development. She is a trained spiritual counselor, yoga and meditation teacher, and has her BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis on youth empowerment and coming of age and her MA in East West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Shanti is a lifelong learner and has a deep love for youth empowerment, women’s empowerment, and coming-of-age mentorship.

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iac founder, program leader

Tristan Matlock

Tristan is Inner Adventure’s cofounder and program leader. He’s also the former director of the Living Wisdom School in Nevada City, CA and a former Dean of Culture and Executive Director at Summit Denali Public Charter School in Sunnyvale, CA. His mission is centered on training young people to be holistic leaders, community builders, spiritual activists, and true human beings through project based and experiential learning models. He’s currently working on an MA/PhD in depth psychology at Pacifica University and teaches at Tessellations school for gifted children in Cupertino, CA.

Some other interests Tristan likes to weave into IAC programs include: socratic empowerment, transpersonal practices (mindfulness, breathwork, meditation, etc.), somatic and wellness therapies, integral leadership, eco/indigenous psychologies, sociocultural responsibility, conscious communication, mythopoetry and inspirational storytelling, conflict and crises resolution, DEIJ skillbuilding, transformative mentorship, nature immersion, and breathwork and conscious movement.

For eight years Tristan also lived and worked in a yoga and meditation based monastery in California, grounding and deepening the humanistic, perennial, non-violent practices which continue to guide his work today.