About Us
Learn about Liz, Amney, and Teysha
Our Approach
Somewhere Over the Moon Trainings is dedicated to improving the equity, diversity, and inclusivity of businesses, school systems, and nonprofit organizations. We focus on educating about the LGBTQ+ community and teach best practices for making your space truly inclusive of LGBTQ+ employees, students, and clients. We also address larger questions of diversity and inclusion. Our purpose is to create an open learning environment where all questions are respected and a community of learners is built.
Liz Cannon, Ph.D.
Pronouns: Ey, Em, Eirs
Hello! My name is Liz Cannon, and my pronouns are ey/em/eirs. If you haven’t heard of my pronouns, I am happy to teach you more about them. They are called the Spivak pronouns, named after Michael Spivak who used them in his books on mathematics, and they are similar to they/them/theirs, just without the “th”. I am a recently retired, white, able-bodied educator. I identify as queer, bisexual, and genderqueer. I identified for 15 years as a lesbian before coming out as bisexual because I didn’t have the label bisexual available to me until much later in life. While I have always disrupted gender binaries throughout my life, I didn’t come out as genderqueer until my students taught me about the concept of nonbinary genders. As an older queer person, I have seen our communities change much over the years in terms of language and the way we understand our identities. I have been teaching about and doing trainings on the LGBTQ+ community and culture for over 25 years, and I have always approached the world with a social justice and intersectional lens. As I retired, I knew my work wasn’t done, so Amney and I created our business “Somewhere Over the Moon Trainings” to continue the types of trainings we had done when we were collogues. As my dissertation analyzed 20th century women writers, both heterosexual and lesbian, white, black, and indigenous, within the first two years of my professional career, I was creating and teaching courses on LGBTQ literature and African American literature and was soon teaching an Introduction to African American Studies course. With this background and my experience helping to develop and then directing and teaching for a Social Justice Program as well as developing DEI trainings on race and white privilege, I am excited to assist Teysha in our other DEI trainings.
Professionally, I hold a Ph.D. in English Literature with a specialty in Women’s Writing and Feminist Theory from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and I am currently an Emeritus LGBTQ+ Resource Center Director at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I founded and served as the director of this center for 14 years and as a senior lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies for 25 years. Prior to directing the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, I founded and directed the Women’s Center on the UWO campus as well. I also developed, coordinated, and taught for the LGBTQ Studies certificate program. Over my career, I have created and taught courses such as Two Spirit Lives, Queer Theory, Queer Lives Through Memoir, Introduction to LGBTQ Studies, Multicultural Literature, African American Literature, Native American Literature, Introduction to African American Studies, Introduction to Social Justice, Women and Madness, and Introduction to Women’s Studies. Again, I have been developing curriculum for SAFE Ally trainings and other LGBTQ and diversity trainings for 25 years.
Amney Jo Harper Castaneda, Ph.D., N.C.C.
Pronouns: She, Her, Hers or They, Them, Theirs
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Hi! My name is Amney Jo Harper Castaneda, and my pronouns are she/her/hers or they/them/theirs. Let me tell you a little bit about myself, and how I am situated in the world to start. I am queer, bisexual, and I am still working on my gender label, but I tend to say I am Cis-ish, and that I don’t always fit into the traditional gender box I was assigned. I have a few different identities associated with my racial/ethnic background, though I am white presenting, and this explains my experience in the world best. I also have Jewish and Indigenous (Shawnee) ancestry, and I practice traditional indigenous spirituality. I experience chronic pain, and have since my early 20s, and that impacts my lived experiences as well. I grew up in a working class family, and that also informs my worldview quite a bit. I am a Counselor Educator (as my primary career role), and I find training future counselors is highly meaningful and so necessary in today’s world. I am particularly passionate about infusing the role of social justice advocate into the counselor role and emphasizing developing multicultural competence. This is the heart of my work, and why I became a trainer in the community, and why Liz and I established our business, “Somewhere Over The Moon Trainings”. I largely conduct LGBTQ+ trainings, but I also work with Teysha when needed in other DEI trainings. Professionally I hold a Ph.D. in Counselor Education from Auburn University. I am a Full Professor, Graduate Program Coordinator, and Chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where I have worked since 2008. I also teach for the LGBTQ Certificate in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department. I created and teach our Trans and Nonbinary lives course, our Bipanpoly Lives Course, and will soon be teaching our Two Spirit Lives course. I am a Past President of SAIGE (formerly ALGBTIC), the LGBTQ+ division of the American Counseling Association. I engage in a variety of service and scholarly work related to Social Justice and Multicultural Considerations both on my campus, in my local community, and nationally. I am an author of two sets of competencies for working with LGBTQ+ people in the counseling field (through SAIGE, the LGBTQ+ Division of the American Counseling Association). I am also currently a member of a taskforce that is updating the LGBQQIA competencies.. I am a SAFE trainer and a Trans Safe Trainer, and I am active and involved in a variety of committees related to LGBTQ+ and DEI work. I started as a SAFE trainer over 17 years ago. I have presented and published widely on LGBTQ+, Multicultural, and Social Justice topics, including creating and publishing a model for identity development for bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual people, that I am currently adapting for other identities in the LGBTQ+ umbrella. |
Teysha Bowser, Ph.D.
Pronouns: She, Her, Hers
Hello. My name is Teysha Bowser, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. Identities I hold are Black, Cis-woman, Queer, Omnisexual, and able-bodied. The intersections of these identities inform my worldview as I am often aware of how my position in different spaces shifts in relation to others and ultimately how that impacts how we navigate those spaces together. I also have Indigenous ancestry (Choctaw) and follow traditional indigenous spirituality. I am a Counselor Educator with a background in both School Counseling and Clinical Mental Health Counseling. In this role and others, equity, social justice, anti-oppression has been central as I believe the humanity of all individuals at each rung of the circle of life cannot truly be honored without the evaluation of current structures and their impact, as well as engagement in the work to create affirming systems. Within “Somewhere Over The Moon Trainings,” I coordinate the DEI trainings on race and ethnicity, and I also work with Amney and Liz on LGBTQ+ trainings.
Professionally I hold a Ph.D. in Education: Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Nevada, Reno. I am an Assistant Professor, and the School Counseling Program Coordinator in the Department of Counseling and Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I am a member of the Diversity Committee of Sandplay Therapists of America. I served as the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Interest Network of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) from 2020-2022 and have served as a member of the Social Justice and Human Rights Committee of ACES. I have presented and published on topics such as Racial Battle Fatigue, Gendered Racial Microaggressions, Intergenerational and Historical Trauma, and LGBTQ2S+ advocacy.