Team
The I AM Foundation Team
Sylva Dvorak, PhD, Chief Inspiration Officer & Executive Director
Sylva is a Doctor of Psychoneurology and Integrative Healing and avid supporter of social entreprise. Sylva received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her PhD from Beurin University in Los Angeles, California. She has consulted from Fortune 100 companies to non-profits and as an author has published numerous articles, contributed to several books and is the co-author of the NY Times bestseller, Your Hidden Riches - Unleashing the Power of Ritual to Create a Life of Meaning and Purpose (Random House, Nov. 2014).Sylva had worked with top corporate executives, spoken at international corporate events, and spoken to audiences from health care professionals to the general public and has shared the stage with Don Miguel Ruiz, Marci Schimoff, Janet Bray Attwood, Phil Town, Mary Morrissey, and numerous others.
In 2015 Sylva took over the I AM Foundation as its new Co-Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer. Sylva's commitment to help others find their personal freedom goes back to her experiences as a young child. During the Soviet Union occupation, Sylva's family escaped from what was then Czechosolvakia and she spent time in refugee camps. When her family arrived in the United States they did not speak English or have one American dollar. However, through courage, sheer determination, and the kindness of others, they were able to create a new life for themselves. It is the impact of this experience, her education and a life-time dedicated to social cause work that has inspired her passion to support others in doing-well-by-doing-good through spreading the mission and vision of the I AM Foundation globally.
Cristina Hernandez, Director of Training
Cristina, an international development
professional whose career focuses on developing small and medium artisan
enterprises and is currently developing social entrepreneurship training
and curriculum for children and youth in orphanages with the I AM Foundation. Her expertise ranges from product design, development and marketing to business and skills training in cross cultural environments around the world. During the past 12 years, Cristina has focused on providing training and technical assistance in conflict and marginalized areas. She was based in Afghanistan for five years and has worked extensively in Vietnam, Haiti, Honduras, Bolivia and India. Among other consulting engagements, Cristina works with One World Projects, where she is the design and product development director working with artisans in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In her previous position, Cristina served as Livelihoods Technical Advisor for War Child UK, managing livelihoods programs at four centers in three of the poorest districts of Herat, Afghanistan. She has served as a product designer and business advisor with Aid to Artisans, Turquoise Mountain Foundation, GIZ (Deutsche Ges Deutsche Gessellschaft fur Technishe Zusammenarbeit), and Whole Planet Foundation, among others.