Carmen is an ordained pastor in the ELCA and a community health education specialist (MDiv from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health). She started and nurtured an outdoor church, New Life Lutheran of Dripping Springs, Texas, and she is a member of the Wild Church Network. She believes that worshiping in and with nature changes our orientation toward the world. In public health, she has specialized in health literacy, violence prevention, and migration health, and comes from a community organizing approach.
She is the pastor of El Pueblito United Methodist Church in El Prado, New Mexico (outside Taos), and director of the Shared Table food distribution ministry.
Carmen loves rivers and her family is used to stopping to touch them in all of their many travels. She and her family are continuously and happily working on their small off-grid earthship home in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico.