Danae Laura

Danae Laura (200hr) is a scholar, activist and teacher. She enjoys teaching beginners to build their practice, and advanced students to attune their sense of subtlety. Danae has been practicing yoga for over twenty years, and teaching for over ten. Since 2015, she has been teaching for a hospital in Cambridge, MA and appreciates practicing alongside employees and patients. Danae prides herself in retaining long-term students and developing bonds between students through a communal sense of purpose and practice.

Although an athlete, she teaches yoga from the perspective of all the benefits we gain from moving slowly and connecting deeply.

As our Executive Director at Copper Beech Institute, her work has always been about nourishment: nourishing bodies, minds, and society. Before being named ED, Danae held leadership roles as a social entrepreneur in the natural food and wellness industries and the education field. Prior to joining CBI, she was CEO of Compassionate Commerce, Director of Selfmade, and President of The Abby Fund, among others. For Compassionate Commerce, she developed marketing campaigns for mission-based brands with fair labor practices, and for Selfmade, she marketed wellness practices to people with bodies that are often marginalized and denied access to wellness.

Danae received her B.A. in Individualized Study with a concentration in Social Justice and Education from New York University where she was a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar. She continued her education at Lesley University where she earned an M.A. in Mindfulness Studies, studying mindful leadership, neuroscience, social change and communication. Her thesis is titled Healing Racial Injustice with Mindfulness Research, Training, & Practice.

Most recently, Danae completed the Core Certificate Leadership Program hosted by the Institute for Nonprofit Practice at Tufts University where she was trained in building community and belonging, adaptive and high-performance leadership, strength-based management and organizational strategy. Meanwhile, a great deal of her leadership training occurred while program manager at the global Indigenous rights nonprofit Cultural Survival where she learned firsthand how to scale vision and incorporate Indigenous values of relationship and land. She has served as a yoga teacher at Cambridge Health Alliance since 2015, and continues to teach.

​To get in touch with Danae, please email us at director@copperbeechinstitute.org.