About Healing Tide
Healing Tide is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to restoring reciprocal relationships between humans and the ocean.
We believe that caring for the sea and caring for ourselves are inseparable. Through regenerative coastal education, ethical seaweed harvest practices, and immersive intertidal experiences, we cultivate ecological awareness, food sovereignty, and embodied connection.
Our Mission
Healing Tide exists to restore reciprocal relationships between people and coastal ecosystems through education, stewardship, and regenerative practice.
Our Work
We guide hands-on seaweed foraging experiences, seasonal camps, and community gatherings that reconnect participants with the living shoreline.
Our programs integrate:
• Intertidal ecology
• Sustainable harvest techniques
• Ancestral foodways
• Seaweed as climate ally
• Community reciprocity
We view education as activism — not protest, but participation.
By teaching ethical harvest and stewardship, we contribute to the long-term vitality of kelp forests and coastal ecosystems.
Kelp Forest Restoration & Stewardship
Part of our work includes habitat restoration efforts, including purple sea urchin removal from foot-accessible shorelines to support bull kelp regeneration.
We have already witnessed kelp forests returning.
This work is slow, relational, and rooted in care.
Land Acknowledgment & Reciprocity
Healing Tide operates on the ancestral territories of the Huchiun, Lisjan Ohlone, Carquin, Ramaytush, and Awaswas peoples.
We are committed to land rematriation, tribal collaboration, and reciprocal partnership. A portion of proceeds supports Indigenous land trusts and community partnerships.
Our Long-Term Vision
Healing Tide is growing toward a Regenerative Farm & Education Retreat Center — a place where land and sea weave.
A living classroom.
A restoration hub.
A sanctuary for learning, food sovereignty, coast and land stewardship.
We envision a future where healthy food, herbal medicine, education, nature, activism, farming, and ocean restoration are woven together in one place.
Join Us
Whether you are called to harvest, restore, learn, or simply listen — we welcome you into the tide.
About Staff
Director and Instructor: Tanya Stiller
Tanya Stiller has been teaching for over 25 years as a clinical herbalist, nutrition consultant, gardener, permaculturalist, and ethnobotanist. She received her Botanical Medicine certificate in 1994 from The Oregon School of Herbal Medicine, ran a tincture and lotion-making company called Pixie Plants and has since been teaching herbal and foraging classes in Oregon and the Bay Area.
Tanya attended the University of Oregon and received her Bachelors of Science in Environmental Studies, where her thesis was focused on “The Ethnobotany and Ethnomedicine of the Oregon Native American.”
Tanya is a multi-generational Oregonian, growing up in northeastern Oregon on a small family farm, raising rabbits and sheep, and helping her family with the cherry orchard and farm.
You can finding her teaching classes on botany, seaweed harvesting, foraging, and homesteading at Ancestral Apothecary, and many Bay Area Herbal Schools. She currently runs her Functional Medicine Herbal Nutrition and Health Coaching Private Practice; Healing Tide - and previously Tanya worked as a Garden Teacher at the Edible Schoolyard on the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School campus, and other Bay Area schools for the last 18 years. She lives at an Intentional Community house called Brigid Collective in West Berkeley.
Board Member: Ayako Nagano
Aya is an attorney in private practice licensed in NY and CA at Midori Law Group, P.C. based in Berkeley, California. She serves as Board Chair for Transition U.S., to help weave a locally focused network of initiatives to co-create a more equitable, regenerative, self-reliant future across the United States – we envision a strong, diverse local economy with a greatly reduced dependence on fossil fuels, and a resilient, cooperative, rewarding community life. Aya also serves as Secretary of the Board for three 501(c)(3) non-profits: Common Vision, which installs school gardens all across California; Transition Berkeley, a local Transition Town initiative to bring neighbors together to build a more equitable, sustainable, resilient future for Berkeley; and Nippon Kobo, which produces cross-cultural programs by luminaries in the Japanese American community. Aya also serves on the boards of Clean Water Fund, to develop strong grassroots environmental leadership and to bring together diverse constituencies to work cooperatively for changes that improve their lives, focused on health, consumer, environmental and community problems; In November 2019, Aya was appointed as a council member to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), a federal advisory committee reporting to the Office of Environmental Justice.
Board Member: Alexis Mastromichalis
Alexis Mastromichalis serves as Treasurer of Healing Tide, bringing over a decade of experience in nonprofit finance, strategic communications, and community-based environmental work. As Principal Owner of Gold Finch Designs, she specializes in project management, brand development, and strategic planning, helping mission-driven organizations clarify their message and strengthen their impact. Her background includes leadership roles with The Edible Schoolyard Project and SEEDS, where she managed budgets, donor campaigns, marketing strategy, and corporate partnerships. Alexis holds a Master’s degree in Sustainable Agriculture and Ecology, grounding her financial stewardship in deep ecological knowledge and regenerative systems thinking. At Healing Tide, she ensures fiscal integrity while guiding marketing strategy that reflects the organization’s commitment to environmental stewardship and community resilience.