About Us

Annick Safken, M.A., Ph.D.

 Until 1991, Dr. Safken was a licensed psychologist, and lecturer the University of Montreal.

She then moved to the United States, received her MA and Ph. D. in Transpersonal Psychology, taught Transpersonal theories, Creative problem solving, and Spiritual perspectives in California and in Tucson until 2012

During this time, she intensively studied with three Sufi teachers, co-directed the Tacheria Interfaith School of Spiritual Directors,  gave lectures at Hesychia School for Spiritual Direction, and the Interfaith Theological Seminary.

She also studied with teachers of each main spiritual tradition and taught Asian Religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in several universities and colleges.  She taught her students the historical context and core teachings, and gave them some experiential knowledge of the practices.

She was ordained as an AIWP interfaith minister and founded the Ecospirit Center of AIWP in 2007, formerly the Southwest Center of Human Inquiry.

Gabrielle C. Dubé, M.A., Ph. D.

Dr. Dubé is newly retired. For more than 25 years, she has been a lecturer in teacher training and in management at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, in the province of Québec in Canada.

For forty years, she has been involved in education, first as a secondary school sciences teacher in Québec and in Africa, and as an adjunct in Colleges, Universities, and Adult Education in Québec.

She has a Master’s degree in Education, another Master’s in Transpersonal Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California and a doctorate in education where she revisited her own travel in education in a autoethnographic way. Gabrielle has always been a searcher of truth.

Steve Safken, B.A.

Steve Safken grew up in New Mexico where he studied geography, and ecology at the University of New Mexico. He worked for the National Park Service, while he worked on a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies.

He moved to California and worked in Laser Electro-optic Technology. He studied and practiced Sufism and community building.

In 1997 he moved to New Mexico, then to Arizona. He studied alternative building design and materials.  He designed and built the largest adobe dome in North America.

From 2003 to 2007 he served on the Board of Directors of Watershed Management Group in Tucson, studied keyline theory and became active in the Adobe Association of the Southwest. Since 2009, when he retired, he has been studying post Columbian environmental changes as a result of European Immigration to North America