Our Team
“It is precious to see sparks of curiosity when people experience tea. It is wonderful to see how we can use our senses to understand the world like mankind before us. It is humbling to look at the world through the lens of tea. Significantly, tea is something that all cultures can relate to in some way and it is worth all the effort to share and create more opportunities for people to connect.”
Wenting Zhang
Founder, Director
“My first thought of calm and restoration is a cup of tea. My go-to tea is oolong from Taiwan, where I spent my childhood. Tea has magical powers for nourishing me by providing a time and space to deeply connect with others and inspiring reflection, creativity, beauty, whatever strikes the mood. I bring my background in social work, non-profit management, and coaching to support Tea Arts & Culture's efforts to develop compassionate programming for individuals and communities to thrive in peace, joy, and harmony.”
Rena Tucker
Assistant Director
Enmy, Bronx born to Dominican parents, is a community gardener at Maggie’s Magic garden located in East Harlem. Her home garden has allowed her to explore community organizing, and teaching in outdoor spaces and has enhanced her knowledge about Healthy living within different practices. Her method has evolved, but her study of health has led her to become a yoga Instructor, avid backpacker, and outdoor educator; all growing her connection to her hometown Green Spaces. Like most New Yorkers coffee was her drink of choice, as her community expanded so did her palate and she came to discover tea. Whilst she was not someone who enjoyed tea, she immersed herself in her work with Tea Arts Culture and realized that she had a flat view of tea. Tea is not ONLY about the taste but about the feeling you get when consuming it, as well as the energy exchanged when sharing it with others.
Enmy Uribe
Community Outreach Specialist
It is light and dark
It is tending your garden
My tea is my home
Darcie Soltis
Financial Consultant
“A beverage enthusiast, tea was naturally appealing, but with each new tea person I’ve met, I’ve found much more to appreciate in tea besides taste: the people, the community, expansive green hills, and centuries of cultural practices and artifacts.”
Eduard Boguslavsky
Treasurer
Tea is always around me when I am growing up, but I am a social tea drinker. What is tea without good company?
With my design background, I add and support the team’s creative approach and production development.
Eleanor Lee
Special Projects Development Officer
“Building cultural bridges has been my mission throughout my life and career to foster better understanding and empower the human spirit.
Tea has been my guiding and anchoring vessel to pause, to share and to celebrate the here and now
With a long and deep passion for tea, its cultures, practices and traditions, I travel the world in search of the leaf and listen to its stories, past and present. Each tea is a journey, a celebration of life, beauty, pleasure, together as a community and in reflection.”
Joyce Maio
Strategic Consultant
Erika first encountered Tea as a ceremony when a professor served gongfu tea in one of her undergraduate film classes. The life lessons of Tea continued to sprout in her life until taking root as an intentional practice in 2015. Since then she has studied tea in New York and Taiwan and cultivated Tea community in NYC. She values Tea’s ability to connect us to ourselves, to each other, and to Nature.
Erika Houle
Co-founder/Zen & Tea Director
Vanessa Teo
Marketing Associate
Jackie is new to the tea world but is eager to join this space where she finds space and time temporarily slow down. She sees tea as an opportunity to explore unique beverages, a collective sense of reflection and unity, and also an opportunity to practice new traditions. Ultimately, she hopes to give others the inspiration she finds in both the lessons and the people she meets around this timeless activity.
Jackie McDougall
Marketing Associate
“As a poet and educator who has been teaching literature and promoting poetry at schools and museums in New York and New Mexico, as well as in Mexico and Spain, I have always been on the lookout for ways to give poets a voice and, moreover, believe that everyone is a poet. Tea, though, has always been part of my life. Ever since I was a very young child I have felt that tea and poetry were somehow connected. Not having playmates I would invite my dolls to tea and read poetry to them from my books. My dolls wrote some very good poems as I recall and were excellent company. Even now I write poetry with a cup of tea beside me. “
Robin Lampman
Poetry & Tea Director
In my home country Haiti, everyone must drink tea in the morning. It’s a routine to connect with nature and prevent diseases.
Now I will have a cup of tea at the end of the day when I finish working on financial data. It feels relaxing.
Sophia Baptiste
Bookkeeper
“In my family, it was often we would make tea, and sit together, as my grandmother would tell us stories from her time. When I eventually moved to the U.S. I continued to follow that ritual every day, my afternoon tea. As a writer, I realize that it is tea that gathers us through stories being told by those around us. When I hold my cup of tea, I feel its warmth in my heart, and I see all of nature reflected in its colors. Tea is a combination of art, nature, culture throughout centuries, and communities. There will always be stories that resonate in your mind when you smell its aroma. Pour more of love, joy, and beauty from all over the world into my cup ~ tea.”
Fifa Atef
Event and Program Specialist