Perhaps influenced by my Italian American family, navigating social conflicts and finding my place in a multigenerational household offered early training in perspective-taking. Those roots—and more than two decades in education—shaped how I came to mindfulness: not as an escape from life, but as a way to meet it more honestly.

I trained in Vipassana mindfulness meditation and completed a two-year certification through the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, with mentorship from Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and training through the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

My work integrates mindfulness, social-emotional learning, and reflective practice to help individuals cultivate presence and agency in their daily lives. I currently serve as a mindfulness coach at a public high school, where I integrate contemplative practices and social-emotional learning into daily routines.

Mindfulness Mentoring — an invitation

Through one-on-one mentoring, I support individuals in exploring how they think, feel, and show up in the world. Sessions create a quiet, practical space to reflect, notice patterns, and develop steadier attention—skills that carry into classrooms, teams, work, and everyday life.

Photography often becomes one doorway into this practice. A still image invites us to slow down and look more closely. Sometimes mindfulness is simply learning to pause—giving ourselves permission to find stillness even as life continues moving around us, and noticing what becomes visible when we do.

This approach grew out of my years as a teacher, when I became deeply interested in how people engage in learning: how they collaborate, play, and express themselves through creative work and relationships. These moments of attention and curiosity are often where meaningful learning—for the self and within community—begins.

This work is for educators, creatives, athletes, professionals, or anyone navigating complexity—meeting people where they are and growing through curiosity, care, and presence.

Teaching and Photography

Following in my father and grandfather’s footsteps, I became a teacher, drawn to education as a space for both individual and social transformation. Teaching taught me deep listening, perspective-taking, and intellectual humility—learning to pay attention to what others need, value, and notice.

My approach was shaped by traditions of experiential and inquiry-based learning, where students engage ideas through reflection, experimentation, and shared discovery.

Alongside teaching, photography became a practice of mindfulness: the stillness of the image, deep looking, patience, and slow observation while staying curious. Over time, I brought this way of seeing into classrooms and communities, inviting students—and now clients—to engage the world with attention, curiosity, and care.

Learning to decenter myself and follow the perspectives of others continues to shape how I mentor and guide reflective practice today.

“Andrea is calming and makes everything in my mind feel peaceful.” ~Maddox, age 10

If you feel drawn to explore mindfulness, photography, or reflective practice, I’d love to connect.