Nurturing a culture of well-being for all of the community

Public educators do hard work under challenging conditions. The workload is heavy and the people who do this work give a great deal of themselves every day. Their health, their wellness, their ability to last in this profession - are our entire focus.

We believe wellness is more than the absence of burnout. It’s the conditions, relationships, and resources that let someone show up fully — at work, at home, and across a long career.

Treating wellness as an individual responsibility, separate from the systems educators operate within, doesn’t work. We aim to do better than that.

Our History

The Initiative began as a health insurance trust established by the Oregon Education Association (OEA) in the early 1980s. When OEA helped pass the law creating the Oregon Educators Benefit Board (OEBB) in 2008, OEBB took over providing insurance benefits for most school districts. The insurance reserves that were built prior to OEBB fund our work today.

We updated our name in 2026 to reflect our clear focus on the health and wellness of public educators and our relationship with OEA. The Initiative is governed by a Board of Trustees that includes the OEA President.  While our missions are aligned, we operate independently: OEA advocates for the profession; the Initiative invests in the people who do the work.

Our work is organized around five health and wellness pillars where the Initiative can make the biggest difference for Oregon educators.

Mental and Emotional Health

Expand access to resources that strengthen resilience, reduce stress, and support educator well-being, while reducing the barriers that keep educators from using them.

Physical Health

Promote preventive care, nutrition, sleep, movement, and the daily basics that get crowded out of an educator’s busy schedule.

Career and Financial Well-Being

Help educators handle the financial realities of their profession on their life— budgets, debt, childcare, retirement— and support the kind of professional growth that keeps them motivated and thriving throughout their career.

Connection and Community Building

Cohorts, retreats, affinity spaces and regional gatherings that foster meaningful relationships, easing isolation and build belonging across roles and regions.

Equity-Centered Culture Shift

Champion systems and practices that address inequities, center marginalized voices, and make every educator’s wellness visible and valued.

Meet our Board of Trustees

Laura Latham

chair

(she/her)

  • Laura chairs the Initiative's Board of Trustees. She is in her ninth year of teaching, currently middle school social studies in Phoenix-Talent after earlier years in Title One schools in Springfield. Educator mental health became her focus after the 2020 Almeda Fire tore through Phoenix-Talent — she watched what the trauma did to her students, to families, and to the adults trying to hold the school community together in the months and years after. Laura serves as President of the Phoenix-Talent Education Association and represents Southern Oregon on the OEA Board.

Enrique Farrera

OEA President

(he/him)

  • Enrique serves on the Board as President of the 42,000-member Oregon Education Association. Prior to his service with OEA, Enrique was a proud Academic Advisor and Career Coach at Clackamas Community College, where he helped students enroll, navigate the system, and get through to graduation or transfer — work he grounded in his own experience as a first-generation immigrant who grew up in Mexico, then San Diego, and eventually Oregon, and who credits the educators along the way for making his path possible. Enrique is also Chair of the Oregon Educators Benefit Board (OEBB), working hard to keep the impact of health inflation off the backs of public educators. Before the OEA presidency Enrique was OEA Vice President, a building representative, grievance chair, bargaining team member, Higher Education Coordinating Commission Commissioner, and served on the NEA Board of Directors.

Jeston Black

(he/him)

  • Jeston is Deputy Chief Operating Officer for Multnomah County, where he sits on the executive leadership team and oversees the departments of Health, Community Justice, and Community Services. Earlier, as a Public Affairs Consultant for OEA, he was the lead on the legislation that capped OEBB hospital reimbursements at 200% of Medicare — generating $107.5 million in savings while preserving educators' access to care. Jeston has previously served as a member of the Oregon Dental Foundation and was labor liaison for Kaiser. Jeston lives in Southwest Portland with his wife Sarah, a teacher at Beavercreek Elementary and OEA member, and their two sons at Ida B. Wells High School.

Gianna Simon

Secretary

(she/her)

  • Gianna is a twenty-year veteran of Oregon public education who came up through the roles most people don't see — instructional assistant in a behavior classroom, then substitute teacher, then Speech-Language Pathologist. She serves on the OEA Board of Directors and previously served as her local's Secretary. She also brings the perspective of a small business owner and HR practitioner to Board conversations.

Monica Weathersby

(she/her)

  • Monica is OEA's Equity Director and has been an elementary teacher in the Centennial School District for ten years. Before the classroom she spent two decades in healthcare, first as a caregiver and social worker at OHSU Doernbecher, supporting families across housing, mental health, illness education, and home care. She is currently pursuing her second Master's, in Counseling and Mental Health. Monica is Cherokee, African, and Caucasian, and the daughter of a Union-Pacific steelworker, a heritage she brings into every Board conversation about who Oregon's educators are and what they carry.

Meet our Staff

BethAnne Darby

Plan Administrator

(she/her)

bethanne@oeawellness.org

  • BethAnne is leading the Initiative through this period of transition, working with the Trustees and the OEA Board of Directors to shape the strategic direction that will guide the organization’s next chapter.

    She spent fifteen years at the Oregon Education Association leading the public affairs team that included OEA’s six-year campaign to find a solution to the rising cost of health care culminating in the Oregon Educators Benefit Board.

    After OEA, BethAnne served as Chief of Staff to the Director of the Oregon Health Authority and then in senior leadership at Moda Health, giving her firsthand experience on the education, public-policy, and health-system sides of the work the Initiative does. She is an attorney and a co-founder of 2BAligned Strategies, the public affairs firm through which she is leading this interim engagement.

    BethAnne lives in SW Portland with her two doodles, Merlin and Nimue, and is an aspiring gardener.

Rachel Drushella

Director of Partnerships & Operations

rachel@oeawellness.org
(503) 349-6741

(she/her)

  • Rachel leads the Initiative’s benefit programs — the grants, events, resources, and contracted services that reach Oregon’s education employees statewide. She started her career as a Head Start teacher with Portland Public Schools and came to the Initiative by way of OHSU’s Division of Health Promotion & Sports Medicine, and that classroom-first, public-health-second path shapes how she builds programs with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, rural, and classified educators.

    Born and raised in Portland, Rachel spends as much of the year outside as Oregon will allow — camping in summer, skiing in winter, with her partner, son, and lab-mix in tow.

Stephanie Roberson

Director of Learning & Innovation

(she/her)

stephanier@oeawellness.org
(971) 380-3315

  • Stephanie leads the Initiative’s statewide engagement work. She gathers stories from educators across Oregon, builds strategic partnerships, and strives to ensure what we do stays grounded in what educators tell us they need.

    She came to this work through a path that started in a Clayton, Missouri classroom (Spanish, then middle school ESOL), moved through nine years of teaching into a Master’s in Social Work, and then through mental health practice with unaccompanied immigrant youth at the Office of Refugee Resettlement and co-founding The UPRISE Collective.

    Stephanie is a parent, an avid reader, an adjunct instructor at PSU’s School of Social Work, and a neuro-spicy woman of color for whom well-being is a constant conversation and a radical practice.

Arien Bates

Grantee & Design Coordinator

arien@oeawellness.org
(971) 380-5927

(she/her)

  • Arien supports grantees in their quest to build a sustainable culture of well-being at their workplace. She came to this work from elementary classrooms in the Lebanon and Sweet Home School Districts, where she felt educator burnout up close, and has spent the last nine years at the Initiative across nearly every part of the operation — communications, social media, website, data, and now grants — which is why grantees keep getting tailored support instead of one-size-fits-all programming.

    Arien is queer, disabled, Korean-American, and a first-generation college graduate; she’s a cat mom, an artist, and an aspiring (her word) horticulturist of house plants.

Asta Garmon

senior manager, Grants & impact

asta@oeawellness.org
(971) 380-5551

(she/her)

  • Asta manages the Initiative’s grants program, guiding Oregon education employees through the application process and then supporting a portfolio of grantees on their health and wellness goals.

    She came to the Initiative after a decade in public education, most recently managing federally-funded child nutrition programs across 25 Portland Public Schools, and earlier as a Farm-to-School Coordinator working alongside classified nutrition services staff — work that shaped her conviction that what’s on a student’s tray and how an educator is supported are part of the same question.

    Portland is home for Asta; she serves on the PTA board at her kids’ public school, makes art when she can, and has yet to meet a stretch of Oregon outdoors she didn’t want to be in.

Siri Ngai

engagement & operations coordinator

siri@oeawellness.org
(971) 358-0144

(she/her)

  • Siri runs the Initiative’s community engagement work. This includes partnering with regional and statewide education and health organizations, and building events that fosters a culture of systemic educator well-being.

    She came to the Initiative after nine years teaching middle and high school English in the Gladstone School District, where she taught Advanced Sophomore English, Creative Writing, and Journalism, led the District Equity Committee, and served as her local union’s Communications Director — and where she first encountered the Initiative through her work building equity and well-being curriculum for her colleagues.

    A lifelong Oregonian, Siri fishes, camps, and forages with her partner and their son, and gets outside every chance she gets.

Cat Willett

learning & facilitation coordinator

cat@oeawellness.org
(971) 380-5964

(she/her)

  • Cat leads ongoing workshop series on building and sustaining well-being programs, providing one-on-one technical assistance, and creating the toolkits grantees use to do the work.

    She came to the Initiative from the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, where she managed social-emotional health content for a Kaiser Permanente–funded project on educator well-being in the Pacific Northwest, and she carries into that work years as a trauma-informed facilitator and Mental Health First Aid instructor in classrooms, juvenile detention facilities, and on the street.

    A third-generation Oregonian, Cat goes on adventures with her wife and family and is usually found with a book or knitting needles in her hand.