Enrique Villaseñor is a multi-ethnic Healer, naturalist, retired educator, cyclist and author with Indigenous ancestry. He is a graduate of California State University, Dominguez Hills; Smithsonian Teacher Institute; University of California, Los Angeles, Teacher Institute; University of California, Los Angeles, School Leadership Institute; and California State University, Northridge, Landscape Design Program.
Enrique was a public school educator for 35 years, teaching in elementary, middle and adult schools. He was a Training Teacher, Mentor Teacher and Lead Teacher for over twenty-five years, as well as a Smithsonian Teacher Fellow concentrating on environmental science. He also served as an Instructional Advisor, where he focused on training teachers and administrators and led school reviews.
Working with the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District, and numerous community groups and agencies, he designed, built, and maintained the award-winning El Oro Way Habitat, a five-acre, outdoor classroom with primarily California native plants and trees.
Enrique learned traditional healing from his mother, a Healer, and Dr. James Adams, Professor Emeritus. As part of this process, Enrique has researched and taught traditional healing, participated in field studies, co-authored several research papers, and is a co-author of the fourth edition of Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West. Enrique is an Advisory Board Member to the Archives of Healing at University California, Los Angeles. When called upon, he conducts medicinal plant walks for fourth-year medical students from the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He also teaches survival skills and ethnobotany with noted survival expert and author, Christopher Nyerges, at the School of Self-Reliance.