National Project Staff
Click each staff members image to read their bio.
NEW VIRTUAL CARE: Wholistic Women’s Healthcare© Telemedicine for Minnesota Women – more access coming soon!
NEW VIRTUAL CARE: Wholistic Women’s Healthcare© Telemedicine for Minnesota Women – more access coming soon!
Click each staff members image to read their bio.

P.O. Box 238 • Ironton, MN 56455, United States
The Guiding Star Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit, EIN: 45-4370118
Hailing from central Minnesota, Leah has been working with young people and mothers since 2000. Leah founded The Guiding Star Project in 2011 after feeling called to help women and families by providing resources that honor Natural Law and promote wholistic feminism. She seeks to create Guiding Star Centers to serve as beacons of hope, joy, and truth — safe havens that uphold human dignity in all stages of life. Leah lives in Minnesota with her family and works as a board-certified lactation consultant. As a mother to seven children, she has a special interest in supporting young women as they transition into their roles as new mothers.
Leah has been featured on EWTN, The Catholic News Agency, The Catholic Mom and more.
Laura Ducote, FNP-C, FCP is a wife, mother of four on earth, Family Nurse Practitioner and FertilityCare Practitioner. She has over a decade of experience in teaching natural family planning and providing a restorative, whole-person approach to women’s healthcare. Her Restorative Reproductive Medicine training includes Naprotechnology, the Creighton Model, and FEMM Medical Management.
She sees adolescent and adult women with an emphasis on hormonal balance for an array of women’s health problems including PCOS, painful periods, irregular cycles, thyroid disease, infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, postpartum care, and peri/menopausal changes. She is very passionate about providing education on all topics of women’s healthcare and practicing medicine that integrates mind, body, and soul, inviting the Divine Physician into every step of the process. Laura and her family reside in Pelham, Alabama.
Angie started working with GSP in September 2022 after meeting Leah at a dinner party and asking if she needed some help with GSP. Leah gave an enthusiastic “yes” and now Angie is the executive assistant. She is very passionate about Wholistic feminism, childbirth, and natural living and aspires to become a Fertility Practitioner and a nurse midwife one day. She is also a homeschooling Mom to five young children and is a registered nurse. Angie and her husband live in central Minnesota with their children and 9 chickens.
Sarah Ward, her husband, and their three children call Michigan home. She has been a licensed massage therapist since 2007 as well as went on to receive her bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design. She has been self-employed since 2007 and runs both a successful massage therapy practice and graphic design business. She has worked with Guiding Star Project since 2017 but has always been passionate about Wholistic Women’s Healthcare© and empowering girls and women through the education of their natural female bodies. She recently trained and has become a certified Guiding Star Cycle Show Instructor in October 2025 and she looks forward to helping grow and share the mission of Guiding Star with the world and her community.
A mom of 11, Lisa Canning embodies possibility in motherhood. Author of the book The Possibility Mom: How to be a Great Mom and Pursue Your Dreams at the Same Time, Lisa wants women to feel empowered by their ability to conceive, carry and bring new life into the world. As the Guiding Star Tampa Bay Liaison, she desires to create the “ultimate village” that every woman wishes she had, one where she wholistically feels supported in mind, body and spirit.
Lisa has been featured on The Today Show, Hallmark Home and Family, The New York Times, The Catholic Channel and more.
Kari Beadner is the Guiding Star Cycle Show National Coordinator. She and her husband Aaron have three living children and call Orange City, IA home. Kari is a certified FertilityCare© Practitioner and has been the Executive Director of Guiding Star Orange City. Kari is passionate about teaching women of all ages about how their bodies work and function naturally while providing all of their options for natural, wholistic, and life-affirming healthcare.
Mary Ferrarelli is the Director of Adult Services for Visitation Home, Inc. for the past 7 years, a non-profit in Central New Jersey that provides day programming and low-income housing for adults with developmental disabilities. Mary decided to do a year of service after being introduced to Visitation Home, where she was a live-in assistant in one of their homes. Quickly realizing she found her dream job, Mary lived at Visitation Home as a “house mom” for 9 years, has worked in the day program, as an assistant director, and now director. Hailing from Ohio and graduating from the University of Dayton with her B.A. in Religious Studies, Mary and her husband Joseph of two years are excited for what the future brings.
Patricia de Lara Smith is a Life Science Engagement Manager at the consulting firm, a-connect. Her expertise is in new technology or program value chain analysis and customer experience. She brings a highly international background, having worked with different teams based in 29 countries. As an independent professional, she consulted for the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, and she wrote her MSc dissertation on fecundity awareness, contraceptive choices, and (un)informed decision-making, at The London School of Economics & Political Science.
Teresa Kenney is a woman’s health nurse practitioner who has been practicing at Saint Paul VI Institute for 20 years. She was born and raised in Omaha, NE and went to the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing where she received a nurse practitioner degree. She is a certified medical consultant practicing the new reproductive health science developed by Dr. Thomas Hilgers called NaproTechnology©. Teresa has been publishing a newsletter online since 2008, called FertilityCare professionals and previously taught the Creighton Model Fertility System as a fertility care practitioner for 7 years. Teresa and her husband Daniel have been married for 20 years and have eight children.
Mark Cavaliere is the Founder and Executive Director of the Southwest Coalition for Life based in the Borderland region of El Paso, Texas & Southern New Mexico. Mark has led thousands to action through 40 Days for Life, developed innovative sidewalk outreach programs, launched a Save the Storks Medical Ultrasound Bus, and has witnessed 3 local abortion facilities close in just over 3 years. Mark credits this success largely to God working through their partnership with Guiding Star El Paso, which he helped launch as a board member in 2017. His experiences with his wife and cesarean section, miscarriages, and homebirths — as well as his countless interactions with women considering and harmed by abortion—have made Mark extremely passionate about wholistic women’s healthcare as the ultimate solution to many of the symptoms we face as a culture an is frequently asked to train pro-life groups across the country He resides in Chaparral, New Mexico, with his wife, five children, along with their numerous chickens and goats.













