Meet Team Bonnie 
The Core Team
Founder & Visionary

The Big Cheese. ;)

Bonnie Christine

Ever since Flourish was born in 2012 it's been my favorite way to connect with this community. Its inspiring and sustainable nature has my heart. I love connecting with members, dreaming up monthly themes and directing the focus of each and every week. 

Integrator

Our Systems and Processes Wizard

Lisa Jacobs

As Integrator for Team Bonnie, Lisa Jacobs oversees business operations and helps lead the team. Renowned for providing crystal-clear solutions to clients while growing profitability, promoting business sustainability and enterprise-level growth, Lisa prides herself on delivering exceptional quality and innovation that drive our company initiatives forward!

Sales & Retention Manager

director of delight and customer smiles

Tessie Snow

Tessie Fay Snow is a surface pattern designer and home decorator living in Spicer, Minnesota. She’s served in multiple roles for Team Bonnie over the years and is thrilled to be back! As the Sales and Retention Manager, Tessie has a deep understanding of customer needs across our various communities and platforms. Outside of work, you can find her renovating her 100-year-old lake house and learning to embrace the joys of midlife. She’s all about loving deeply, giving yourself grace, and
soaking up every second of family time.

Program Manager

and Content librarian

Nikkita Cohoon

As Program Manager for Team Bonnie, Nikkita Cohoon thrives at the intersection of connection, collaboration, and community. As you make your way through Flourish, you can bet Nikkita is behind the scenes with her mug of tea and a smile on her face as she strives to make your experience the best it can be alongside Bonnie and the team. A 2020 Immersion alum, Nikkita also runs Ritual Morning Studio creating expressive and personable brands for fellow creatives and taking the routine to ritual in her own creative practice as an artist and surface designer. 

Virtual Assistant

and Queen of Details

Ephia Covington

Ephia was a stay-at-home mom for the last 19 years. As a mom of 4 kids and an adorable labradoodle, she's great at organizing and keeping track of all the details. Ephia currently works as a Virtual Assistant on Team Bonnie Christine and manages many of the everyday administrative tasks behind the scenes. She makes sure everyone gets paid on time, sends gifts to our guest speakers, handles shipping, and generally keeps everything running smoothly. Ephia loves being part of the process that empowers artists to create beauty in the world!

Lead Designer

and Peaceful Vibe Creator

Rebecca Barreda

Rebecca Barreda is a multi-faceted creative and lead designer at Team Bonnie. Using her curiosity and love of clean design, she works to create beautiful course materials to help students dig into becoming the creative business owners of their dreams. When she’s not creating and designing, Rebecca is most likely to be found outside digging in her garden or exploring nearby outdoors locations around Utah with her husband and dog.

Head of Customer Support

and Keyboard Whiz

Kiley Bennett

Kiley Bennett is an artist, online educator, and Head of Customer Support for Team Bonnie. As a fellow creative, Kiley delights in connecting with members of the community and has an affinity for problem-solving and creating a welcoming environment for each unique member. Kiley is an alumni of Immersion 2020, served as an Expert in 2022, and launched her first fabric collection in 2022 as well! She is based in Lexington, Kentucky where you can find her making a second cup of coffee, in the middle of a good book, and planning the next home reno project with her husband. 

Customer Success Champion

and Memory Keeper

Ashley Rodgers

Ashley Rodgers is a lifelong artist, crafter, and memory keeper living in Virginia. With a passion for helping others, she delights in her role as Customer Success Champion for Team Bonnie. A 2021 Immersion alum, she established Paper Hum to nurture others’ creativity and help them find peace in the process. Her work is inspired by her everyday life and offers a sense of peace and calm in an often busy world. When she’s not creating you can find her doing yoga stretches, solving Sudoku puzzles, and counting airplanes in the sky.

Events Director

and Experience Creator

Erin Godbey

Erin Godbey has a unique gift for wrangling creatives, and thrives in helping others achieve their goals. Drawing on years of experience in event planning, she orchestrates all the events for Bonnie Christine, including Immersion Live and mastermind retreats. Her passion lies in creating beautiful experiences with rich content. With a focus on details and organization, Erin also serves as Bonnie’s girl Friday, managing executive tasks and assisting our visionary founder. She is the director of The Makers Collective, a non-profit arts organization that empowers creative entrepreneurs. Erin lives in South Carolina with her husband, 3 children, and a pack of stray cats. She can’t resist old photos, impromptu picnics, and chocolate chip cookies.

Marketing Director
Jodi Rykse

Jodi Rykse, a Florida native, is a digital marketing whiz who’s a nerd when it comes to numbers. Married to her high school sweetheart, she’s a proud mom of two girls and a paddle boarding enthusiast. As the Marketing Director for Bonnie Christine, Jodi brings her creativity and expertise to the forefront, bringing strategy and intention to the core values of the brand. When she’s not glued to her computer, you’ll find Jodi capturing life’s moments through her camera lens—her other love besides family and Florida’s sunshine.

The Expert Team
Ali Baecker

Ali Baecker is a self-taught printmaker & surface designer. An engineer by education, she uses the medium of block printing to explore pattern and surface designs and run the block printing studio 3 Dotted Penguins. She regularly teaches online workshops on block printing and pattern design to participants around the world. You can find Ali’s work as original block prints, screen-printed textiles, and stationery goods.

Ali lives in Zurich, Switzerland with her husband and small daughter–becoming a mother kickstarted Ali’s journey and is a large part of her why. When she’s not block printing or playing with patterns you can find her daydreaming about the far-away sea and traveling to near and far-away places.

Larimie "Xhico" Garcia

Larimie, known as Xhico to many, is a surface pattern designer creating from his studio in sunny California. With 30+ years of experience as an artist, designer, and photographer under his belt, he's now focused on the world of surface pattern design. In addition to operating a multidisciplinary design studio, he educates creative entrepreneurs and small business owners on how to level up their design skills and build better brands.

His curious and adventurous spirit and ability to work remotely allow him to work from his favorite places like Guatemala and Mexico. This year he will share his love for culture, art, and design education through a Design Retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico, curated for surface designers.

Zhay Smith

Our 2019 Immersion alum, Zhay Smith, is a New York-based personal stylist turned surface pattern designer. With an eye for beauty, she often uses photography as a jumping-off point for her work and incorporates bold elegant typography to make a statement. She is an avid learner with a playful spirit, who infuses her background in fashion, interior design, and fine art into her design work. Some of her work can be found on Minted.com.

Ashley Paggi

Ash Cascade is an artist whose bohemian/retro style evokes a polished yet gritty sense of place. Ash draws infinitely upon the adventures she takes with her husband and their two fierce little girls in the Pacific Northwest.

She took Immersion in 2020 and has since licensed her designs on fabric with Cotton + Steel, on children's clothing, outdoor gear, kitchen towels and cloth diapers. She has a huge passion for brand photography and plans to move into teaching that as well.

Lissie Teehee

Lissie is a mother, fine artist and designer and teacher in Oklahoma. She creates surface patterns, products, textiles, and other lovely works of art. Her aim is to celebrate the home and the nature surrounding our lives through all of the artwork that she creates. Every day, she collects little joys like laughter, the feeling of the light coming through the window, or a walk near the water on a hot, summer day. It is Lissie’s hope that her artwork can be a representation of the things that we love and cherish.

Emmi Kerkham

Emmi Kerkham is an illustrator and surface pattern designer from Melbourne, Australia. She loves to create bright and playful designs that bring a ray of sunshine to your day. Emmi’s work is all about celebrating and sharing the simple things in life that make her smile. If she’s not in the studio, you can find her getting lost in excellent stories, trying out a new recipe in the kitchen or hanging out with her super cute fluffy dog, Winston!

Colleen Underwood

Colleen is a watercolorist, mama of four, and a heart-felt coach for creatives. She is passionate about igniting hope in others through what is good and beautiful in her surface design work. If she's not painting or coaching, you can find Colleen putting down roots between the Smoky Mountains and salty ocean coasts of North Carolina with her sweet friends and family.

Jennie Whitaker

Jennie Whitaker is an artist and surface designer in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Her work is inspired both by grand adventures and by the extraordinary moments of everyday life. She designs, draws, paints and writes in her studio, Toboggan Avenue to create patterns that bring joy–a kind of shareable joy that is meant to be passed along to others.

Karen Mastriacovo

Karen is an artist creating under the name Hawk Moon Studio. After working many years as a childrenswear designer, she is now focused on creating patterns and art for interiors. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley, NY.

Erin Silliman

Erin is an artist and surface pattern designer living in the Portland, Oregon area of the beautiful pacific northwest. She loves creating heartfelt design as a visual treat for creative women. Her floral, holiday, and everyday patterns are featured on fabric, gift wrap, handmade goods and more.

Cassandra Zaniboni

Cassandra is a Mama + Surface Designer specializing in whimsical, nature-based fabrics, wallpapers and prints in Bend, Oregon. Drawing inspiration from the Pacific Northwest and her forest home, her artwork is infused with natural beauty and the everyday enchantment that comes from the magic of Motherhood. Endlessly following her curiosity and thirst for learning where every it leads.

 

Jillian Nichole

Jillian is a licensed artist, illustrator and surface pattern designer based in Rhode Island of the USA. She has a profound connection to nature, divine femininity, and life's diverse experiences. Infused with a childlike sense of wonder, Jillian believes in the magic that lies just beyond our ordinary sight. From intricate artwork to captivating pattern collections, her creations exude a magical essence, blending detailed artistry with a whimsical and ethereal flair.

Cris Pliego

Cris Pliego is a Mexican artist and surface pattern designer based in New Zealand, working full-time as an illustrator for the country's largest souvenir company. Her vibrant and joyful surface patterns are inspired by her Mexican roots, global travels, and love for nature. She has successfully licensed her unique designs across various industries, always seeking to infuse joy and color into everyday life. When she's not creating, she enjoys going to art exhibitions, life sketching, hiking, meditating, journaling and visiting local markets & antique shops, always gathering new ideas and dreaming up new projects!

Melissa Lee

Melissa Lee is an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in the hilly forests of Northern California. Alongside doing freelance and art licensing work (she's a proud Riley Blake Designs fabric designer!), she spends much of her time cultivating her love of sharing what she knows and encouraging others to nourish their creative side through teaching online art courses on Skillshare (where she is a Top Teacher!). Melissa loves making patterns, character art, and watercolor paintings. She is endlessly inspired by animals and nature (whether living today or extinct), science fiction and fantasy, space, witchy things, and bees.

 

Always bees.