Tom Altgelt , Co-Host for the Anthroposophical Café, discovered anthroposophy and the Christian Community in Stuttgart, Germany over four decades ago, while working as a landscape architect. Tom and his wife Dorothea moved to Camphill Lehenhof in 1981, where he designed and oversaw the construction of the overall landscape of this Camphill Village. When his work was completed, they moved to Temple, New Hampshire, where they became active members of the Lukas Foundation and the local Anthroposophical Branch. Tom eventually built up a renowned New England landscape architectural office and also became active in the work with flow forms. After eight years he was asked to work on the Garden of Nations in Stuttgart Germany.
Twenty seven years ago Tom and Dorothea moved to Boulder Colorado, where they became active members of the local Isis Sophia Branch and Tom eventually became the contact person for the local Boulder anthroposophical work. He took on the organization of the Holy Nights and taught basic courses in anthroposophy using books such as “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “Theosophy.” Tom has published a number of articles in “Lilipoh” and “Being Human” magazines on the analogy between the life cycle of a plant and our path of inner development, He is currently on the advisory committee for the Biodynamic Agriculture conference and has been a first class member for several decades.
Jamie York, Co-Host for the Anthroposophical Café, born in Maine, graduated from a public high school in Connecticut, received his Bachelor’s degree from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, and completed his Master’s degree with a degree in computer science from the University of Denver. He has worked in the computer industry, run a tennis camp for children, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. Jamie was the founder of Boulder CarShare, and has been an advocate for alternative transportation since his family moved to Boulder in 1993. He began teaching high school math in 1985, and has taught at a boarding school in New Hampshire, at a university in Nepal, and for more than twenty years at Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado. Currently, Jamie’s life is focused on his “math missionary” work. He offers math workshops for teachers all over the world, is the author of a series of books titled Making Math Meaningful, and is now running an online Math Academy.
Karen van Vuuren, whose inspiration founded the Anthroposophical Café, has been a natural death care educator and end-of-life transitions guide since 2001. In 2003, she founded the non-profit Boulder-based educational non-profit, Natural Transitions. Over nearly two decades, she has had the privilege of supporting countless families whose loved-ones have crossed the threshold. She has led workshops on natural death care and was instrumental in founding the National Home Funeral Alliance.
In her twenties, Karen worked as a broadcast news journalist, and though she left that unenviable profession to become a mother and a threshold worker, her media skills have been employed as editor of Natural Transitions magazine and as director of two award-winning end-of-life documentaries, Dying Wish (a dying doctor’s decision to stop eating and drinking) and Go in Peace! (the caregiver’s role in healing the soul wounds of veterans with trauma).
Currently, Karen is co-founder and owner of The Natural Funeral, Colorado’s first holistic funeral home, based in Lafayette.
Robyn Hauenstein discovered Anthroposophy while living in Germany in the 1980’s through the meeting of her future husband Christoph, who was born into an Anthrosposophical family with ties into Waldorf Education and the Christian Community. Many seeds were planted while in Germany through Anthroposophy that, however, took some time to germinate and fully blossom. Once Robyn and Christoph moved to the United States and settled in southern Minnesota, those seeds then began to grow and take more and more of a rightful place in Robyn’s inner life. This became more and more a type of calling for Robyn, due to the more materialistic culture of the “West” that needed to find a balance of soul. It became a true longing, in truth, based on Robyn’s long term career in the corporate IT industry after having studied Computer Science in college (instead of a medical profession as first considered). However through this field of study, Robyn met Christoph and Anthroposophy a long way away from home in Texas and through a broken computer.
Robyn and Christoph joined the FRAC community soon after its beginnings in 2020 and through a candle and electric “mishap” began to help the board with the FRAC’s key mission of community building and sharing of esoteric wisdom.