Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti and this is episode 257 of Yoga Land.

Today my guest is Catherine De Shaw. Catherine is a consultant public speaker and teacher

in philanthropy and nonprofit management. She is an incredibly impressive person with an

incredible resume. Most recently she served as deputy director for advancement and external

relations for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. There she successfully completed a 388

million dollar capital campaign shared by Bob Eiger of the Walt Disney Company,

Annette Benning and Tom Hanks. She's consulted for a diverse array of clients around the world,

including the Anderson Stewart Family Foundation, the Orange County Museum of Art,

Project Angel Food and Street Poets. And perhaps most importantly for this podcast, she's a yogi.

So rest assured that all of those important achievements that I just rattled off about Catherine

are very important to the telling of her story today. Catherine is based in Los Angeles

and is an avid yoga student, has been for 20 years. So three times a week without fail,

you would find her taking class at the Center for Yoga in Larchmont. This is a really famous center.

It was founded in the 60s, originally by Gongo White and then it was later purchased by Yoga Works

and has just been a thriving center on a small block in Los Angeles that has a lot of

local businesses and a lot of flavor. When lockdown started in 2020, the Center for Yoga

took their classes online and then eventually Yoga Works decided to close the studio.

This is when Catherine felt and I will let her tell the story in the interview,

but she felt a call to do something. So she gathered a team of people together

and renegotiated the lease, found a team of investors and reopened the Center for Yoga,

which is now majority female owned. So this story is just beautiful and inspiring. I think it's

something that we all need right now, which is to hear that we can come back, we will come back

...