Our Team

Ally Guida Smith

Founder

Licensed Marriage and Family therapist in California, Founder, Executive Director and Chairman of the Board at HAPPI. She specializes in Somatic Psychotherapy and Expressive Arts Therapy. Working internationally with children and adults in individual, family and group format for the past 20 years, she is a mama to two multicultural children in the San Francisco Bay Area. She maintains a private practice there working primarily with trauma and eating disorders, using somatic and expressive arts oriented therapies (in Spanish and English). She is a musician, poet, photographer and humanitarian-at-heart. She has been privileged to have lived or traveled to over 50 countries.

Nicholas Smith

Treasurer of the Board

Nicholas is a Director of Cloud development at Oracle, and U.S. Naval Reserves Officer. In his spare time in addition to being a father to two young children, he coaches other professionals in their career paths and enjoys competing in triathlons and flying airplanes in the Bay Area, California.

Karen Rodriguez

Board Member

Karen is an educator, healer, and multi-media artist, originally from Nicaragua, now based in the Bay Area, California. Her social justice activism has been focused on uplifting youth and women’s voices as well as LGBTQI community via the expressive arts.

Bryan Altaker

Board Member

Bryan is a marriage and family therapist based in the Bay Area. He has worked many years as a psychotherapist in the military community worldwide and is now in private practice with children and adults specializing in mood issues, gender issues, anger management, assertiveness training, life transitions, and spirituality.

Thao Bui

Board Member

Thao Bui is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She has been providing mental health services since 2007. She started her career in Southern California working with youth with their families and natural supports in multiple environmental settings for non-profit organizations. Thao then moved her practice to the Bay Area to provide services to non-profit organizations in school-based programs and in the community. She has training in providing trauma informed care, expressive art therapy, body movement, and mindfulness to people of all ages experiencing PTSD or other trauma-related stressors, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and psychotic symptoms. She has trained and travelled to support internationally in trauma-informed care and participated in HAPPI projects in Tijuana, Greece, Thailand and Vietnam.

Katrina Long

Board Member

Katrina Long (she) is a Holistic Healing Arts Therapist and founder of Manifesting M.E. Wellness, a holistic mental health organization in Los Angeles. She is a native of Inglewood, California who has always had a passion for helping others to see the light in their struggles and the strengths in their differences. She is passionate about bringing holistic healing arts to communities of color. When she is not working with others on actualizing their healing she can be found manifesting her own healing on her yoga mat, on the dance floor, running by the beach, trying new restaurants with friends, laughing with family or plane hopping.

Lani Hollander

Board Member

A Californian by birth and Floridian by adoption, Lani has been passionately involved with nonprofits for over a decade. She has been a bicycle advocate in Boston, researched electric vehicles in Gainesville, served as Program Director and Associate Director in Thailand, consulted remotely from Taiwan, and is currently developing as a nonprofit fundraising professional. Through this, she has had the opportunity to work with nonprofit leaders at the forefront of improving livlihoods for migrants and refugees, raising environmental awareness, elevating girls empowerment through music, and championing anti-trafficking for men and women