I built a career on making complex systems work.

Then I started noticing what wasn't working in me.

I hold two energies that rarely coexist in the same person. Twenty years in management consulting and public finance, an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business, and a PhD in Environmental Science. The meticulous, disciplined work of building and optimizing complex systems. And alongside that, training as a massage therapist, a Reiki practitioner, an aromatherapist — with ongoing focus on integrative somatic trauma therapy. The body as a system with its own logic. Ritual as a technology for channeling attention. Plants as allies with their own powers.

Racing between time zones and PowerPoint decks, I was good at being useful. Behind the scenes, I was starving for something else. Peace, maybe. Or just the feeling of being actually alive.

So I went looking. Yoga studios. Gardens. Kitchens. Essential oils. Meditation. A decade of Costa Rica journeys that became more of a homecoming.

Consulting sharpened my mind. The healing path restored my nervous system and love for life. Terra Vitae was born from that overlap — the place where logic meets soul, science meets experience, and you can finally exhale.

With Love,

Valentina Fomenko

Founder