Poderosas: Conversations With Extraordinary, Ordinary Women: 1

Dr. Lisette Garcia is an experimental psychologist, human rights activist, Buddhist scholar, and Latina percussionist. Her first book, "Poderosas: Conversations with Extraordinary Women," is a series of stories that take place between Dr. Garcia, her husband Barrett Martin, and 12 extraordinary women. Each woman is highly accomplished in her field, none have sought fame, yet all have made an indelible mark on their respective communities.

These conversations take place in unusual and sometimes exotic locations, as these women describe their work and life experiences: A Latina pediatrician at a Texas barbeque, a Cherokee healer during a sweat lodge ceremony, two Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, an anthropologist in a noisy New York restaurant, a Tlingit professor in her cozy Alaskan home, a Zen master in her Los Angeles Zendo, two mothers in their homes near the Mexico border and the Pacific Northwest, an African American dancer in a New York studio, and an artist in her pick up truck, speeding across the New Mexico desert.

Each of these stories show how powerful a woman can when she embraces her circumstances, envisions her life, and then transforms herself into a "Poderosa" - a powerful woman, who affects real change in her corner of the world.

Dr. Lisette Garcia holds a PhD in experimental psychology from Tufts University. She has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University, and later became a professor at John Jay College Of Criminal Justice. As a native of El Paso, Texas and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, her experience as a Mexican-American women and human rights advocate has taken her to many different places around the world: As a civil rights activist who worked directly with Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King, as an advocate for child soldiers in Liberia, as a prisoner's advocate in the India prison system, and as a Buddhist scholar with over 20 years of practice and 4 years of silent meditation retreat. She is also a percussionist and voting member of the Latin Recording Academy, and has worked on numerous albums in Peru, Brazil, and the United States.

Barrett Martin is a Grammy-winning producer, composer, and award-winning writer and editor. He holds a masters degree in ethnology and linguistics from the University of New Mexico, he has guest-lectured at universities around the United States, and later became a professor at Antioch University in Seattle. His first two books, The Singing Earth (2017), and The Way Of The Zen Cowboy (2019), are about his musical work with Indigenous tribes and musicians in West Africa, Cuba, Brazil, the Peruvian Amazon, the Palestinian West Bank, Australia, New Zealand, the Mississippi Delta, and the Alaskan Arctic. As a producer, composer, and musicologist, he has worked on over 100 albums and film soundtracks worldwide. He is also a Zen Buddhist and martial artist with over 25 years of practice and study.