Donna Fellman is the founder of the Tea Education Alliance (TEA), an organization dedicated to promoting tea and the tea lifestyle through education and experience. She has studied Japanese Tea Ceremony with the Urasenke school since 1997. Transforming her interest into her profession, Donna worked with a tea merchant in Denver for 4 years before becoming manager and tea buyer for teahouses in Seattle and Boulder. She has traveled to India's tea plantations in Darjeeling and Nilgiri, and she is a member of the Specialty Tea Institute, a professional organization. Donna teaches classes on many aspects of tea in Denver, Boulder, and Seattle. For her master's degree in holistic nutrition, Donna researched the health benefits of tea from the perspectives of traditional Oriental medicine and modern Western science. Her goal as a nutritionist is to increase the public's awareness of tea's extraordinary range of health benefits. Under her direction, the Tea Education Alliance publishes monographs and sponsors workshops and lectures on different aspects of tea. The Bodhidharma Tea and Meditation Society, a part of TEA whose goal is to create community around tea and meditation, incorporates her more than twenty years' experience with meditation, emphasizing mindfulness and concentration, with her tea expertise. Anne makes fine teas and teaware available to others through the Bodhidharma Tea Company.
