Meet the steward behind Casa Tortuga
Casa Tortuga is lovingly stewarded by Chemay—facilitator, retreat host, intuitive guide, family constellator, and visionary creating spaces for healing, transformation, and meaningful connection.
This sanctuary is more than a beautiful retreat space.
For Chemay, Casa Tortuga represents a deeply personal return—to land, ancestry, healing, and the kind of spaces that invite people to slow down, reconnect, and remember what matters.
Born in New York to Boricua parents, with family roots close to this land, Chemay’s connection to Puerto Rico is both intimate and ancestral. She spent her summers in the northeastern region of the island, where her grandmother and aunt made sure she and her sisters remained connected to their roots. Though she was not born on the island, the spirit of the land has always been calling her home.
Together with her family, Chemay is stewarding Casa Tortuga as part of an evolving vision: a sanctuary where healing, community, and meaningful transformation can unfold in relationship with the land.
A deeply personal return…
A lifetime of holding meaningful spaces
For years, Chemay has created and facilitated spaces centered around healing, transformation, community, and human connection.
Her journey began as a special education teacher and later expanded through nearly a decade of work with New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. There, she developed and facilitated equity-centered learning experiences for educators, leaders, and school communities, guiding sensitive conversations around identity, inequity, culture, and belonging.
Chemay’s gift is in helping people move beyond defensiveness and division into reflection, accountability, and more harmonious ways of learning and being together.
That gift continued through My Reflection Matters Village, a virtual community supporting over a thousand families seeking more liberatory ways of learning and relating, and now through intimate in-person retreats rooted in healing, ancestral connection, and personal transformation.
Across every chapter, Chemay has created spaces where people can exhale, reconnect, and remember themselves.
More than a venue coordinator
Chemay understands the process of gathering community from the inside.
As a facilitator and host herself, she knows that meaningful experiences are shaped not only by thoughtful logistics, but by how a space feels—emotionally, energetically, and spiritually.
That understanding shapes how Casa Tortuga is held. Guided by her artistic love of intentional interior design, Chemay weaves together natural elements, cultural pieces, and beauty to create an energy flow that supports rest, healing, and deep reflection.
Casa Tortuga is more than a retreat space. It is part of a larger vision rooted in stewardship, reciprocity, and meaningful connection with community, spirit, and land.