Hiking Facilitators

Marisol Jiménez

Marisol Jiménez brings more than twenty years of community engagement, policy advocacy, and training and facilitation experience to Smokies Hikes for Healing as the founder and lead consultant for Tepeyac Consulting, a national consulting practice that catalyzes strategic equity efforts in collaboration with grassroots leaders, nonprofit organizations, and foundations. She believes in the power of connecting communities that are most often marginalized from decision-making tables with opportunities to amplify their voices and meaningfully lead social justice efforts.

Marisol began working in racial equity capacity building as the racial equity training director for the OpenSource Leadership Strategies national consulting firm, where she codeveloped a framework for a structural analysis of inequities and tools for equity action planning that are now used with hundreds of nonprofit organizations and foundations nationally.

She also draws on her rich advocacy experience as the director and chief lobbyist for El Pueblo, a North Carolina-based public policy organization. She is a former steering committee member for the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform National Strategy Council (2007) and the recipient of a 2007 ACLU Award for Advocacy for her leadership and organizing work around immigrant justice issues in North Carolina.

For the past 10 years, Marisol has worked in multiple capacities to advance equity through facilitation and training, participatory research, transformational community engagement, and frontline activism. Her consulting incorporates popular education, language justice, inclusive logistics, and accessible content as standards of practice. She has an established record of guiding meaningful dialogue across lines of difference, moving groups from analysis to action, and holding space for courageous conversations and deep self-reflection.

Stephanie Kyriazis

Stephanie Kyriazis is an educator, leader, and facilitator who has specialized in communication, youth engagement, and equity work throughout her fifteen-year career with the National Park Service. 

Her early career at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Death Valley National Park focused on coordinating programs connecting diverse youth with their public lands. At Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, Stephanie helped launch a youth advisory council supporting young People of Color as they stepped into their power to shape their local national park and communities. She also served as a key coordinator and collaborator for a number of special events and initiatives commemorating the 60th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled school segregation illegal and the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott.

As the visitor services manager at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park and Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, Stephanie shifted public programming to include the stories of women, immigrants, and People of Color who contributed significantly to the arts and the environment. While there, she cultivated a relationship with local Abenaki representatives, inviting Indigenous voices to share traditional and ongoing land use and stewardship practices at park events.

In recent years, Stephanie has focused on honing her facilitation skills with the National Park Service Stewardship Institute. As a career NPS employee, she believes in the power of places to reveal and to heal—to serve as a touchstone for difficult conversations and opportunities for connection. She is committed to lifelong learning and applying her skillsets—in education, storytelling, community-building, and facilitation—to create a more equitable world.

David Lamfrom

David Lamfrom is honored to support Superintendent Cash and Great Smoky Mountains National Park by serving as a facilitator for the Smokies Hikes for Healing program. David knows firsthand about the healing and reflection a deep connection with nature can offer. He also has the lived experience of a person of color working in the environmental movement, including facing the biases and barriers found therein.

David has worked for the National Parks Conservation Association for 13 years, where he is the Southeast regional director and also acting as the organizational lead on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Prior to returning to the Southeast, David was in the California desert working for NPCA on campaigns to build community, raise civic voices, partner with tribes and communities of color, protect national parks from inappropriate development threats, and create, with communities, new national monuments and a new national park unit.

David currently serves as the co-chair of the board of the Center for Diversity and the Environment and the board vice president for Training and Resources for the Environmental Community. David is a published author and photographer who loves to camp, hike, travel, and explore. His dog, “Little,” is currently being a good boy, but who is he kidding.