Our Team

Paula Grunthaner

Paula Grunthaner is the Interim TLA Network Coordinator, responsible for the engine under the hood of TLAN including operations, marketing and outreach, and support of the board. She has experience with non-profit organizations including a previous interim coordinator role for the Transformative Language Arts Network. She received a BS and PhD in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. With a strong interest in community building and social transformation, she is pleased to provide interim support to TLAN once again.

After finishing her PhD in Chemistry at Caltech, Paula was employed for the next 38 years by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, an arm of NASA with the mission to explore space in pursuit of scientific discoveries that benefit humanity. In addition to her own research projects, she managed the micro device research laboratory for the development of new science capabilities for future missions, managed feasibility studies for NASA’s future missions, and experienced the excitement of building and delivering an instrument to study Martian soil chemistry that launched in 2008. “It makes me smile to think that something I helped build is now sitting on Mars covered by red dust.”

Now retired, she fills her time traveling with her husband, continually improving her barista skills in search of that perfect expresso, spoiling grandkids, hiking with two beautiful dogs in the Toiyabe National Forest, and snow shoeing along Chickadee Ridge to look over Lake Tahoe and hand-feed the Chickadees. 

Joanna Tebbs Young oversees the TLA Network certificate program. A longtime writer, historian, and TLA facilitator, Joanna is author of the award-winning biography of Vermont historian, Lilian Baker Carlisle. Starting in 2011 as a columnist and feature writer for a small "weekly," she now writes the "Remember When" column for two Vermont newspapers. Joanna's essays have been published in various outlets and she has both a memoir and personal essay collection in the works. 

Joanna holds a BA in History from Castleton University, and an MA in Transformative Language Arts and MFA in Creative Nonfiction, both from Goddard College. 

A writing coach since 2009 and trained through the Center for Journal Therapy, Joanna is also a facilitator for Vermont Humanities Council and teaches online for the Transformative Language Arts Network. Additionally, she is pursuing a certificate in genealogical research, while working (very) part-time at her local library.