Our Team
As educators, we have spent decades cultivating environments where people feel seen, challenged, and supported. We understand how to create thoughtful structure. We know how to facilitate conversations that move beneath the surface. We believe that growth happens best in community , when curiosity is paired with compassion, and reflection is shared rather than solitary.
We cultivate sanctuaries where women can rest, restore, and rise together — drawing on our shared experience as educators, writers, and as women who have walked through change and emerged with deeper clarity, steadier wisdom, and a renewed commitment to collective care.
Laura Schneider, Founder of StarlingsRise
Welcome to StarlingsRise, a wish come true for me.
In 2019, I was facing profound changes in my life. My marriage was ending and my father was dying. In my early 50s, I faced my own mortality and the fickle and profound whims of my own body navigating through menopause.
I sought solace, connection, and an image of who I could become at the end of it all. And I sought learning, reflection — any way to make sense of and grow through the chaos. I leaned, hard, on other wise and strong women who cared for me.
I wished that I could go somewhere, take a timeout to make sense of myself, to rest, and to plan for what would come next. While I had my share of spa days, the experience that came closest for me was a women’s writing retreat I attended just weeks before my father passed. It was not truly intended to meet the needs I faced at that moment, but being in community with other women and having the time and space to write, reflect, and get grounded gave me much-needed strength.
As a writer and educator, I have led many workshops grounded in writing and reflection. I know, deeply, the power of writing and of women in community. I created StarlingsRise as that space I needed—a space for women to gather, rest, and find their way.
I invite you to join us.
Sabrina Kovacs, COO of Good Vibes
My name is Sabrina. I am 53 and feel as if I have lived several lives. One thing that has remained constant in each of my lives is that I’ve been able to move through life very much in the present, without dwelling too much in the past or worrying about the future. I don’t overanalyze things and feel content with my own productivity.
There is something about aging that brings honesty and clarity about one’s own identity and choices. Through divorce, an exploration of my own sexuality, starting over, perimenopause, and a general discontent with my career, I started writing. It is through writing that I have healed some, grown, and made plans to thrive in ways I did not know I needed or wanted. Through writing I have learned that being productive and staying so firmly in the present without reflection leads to an incomplete knowledge of my self.
It is the writing I have done with others that has been the most satisfying. A poetry workshop. Responding to prompts with friends. Working with others to refine and reflect on moments of our lives or language that moves us. It’s the collaboration + writing that has helped me continue becoming.
I am thrilled to be a part of Starlings Rise so that I can continue my own learning and help others who are finding themselves at similar crossings.