About
Meet Lorca
Experienced resilience strategist. Speaker, coach, celebrant — and a farmer in the mountains of Bozeman, Montana.
Her story
Coming back stronger
Lorca Smetana knows about coming back stronger and richer inside after living through crisis. She was born into a mountaineering community and started early thinking about mortality and the choices we make if life were to be short.
At the age of sixteen she was a survivor of the Mt. Hood climbing tragedy that took the lives of nine students and teachers. The awareness of mortality, and its impact on how we live our lives, remains a powerful thread through her work.
She touches and changes the lives of her students and listeners — giving voice to the fragility of life, and inspiring newfound purpose and strength in those who are coping with life’s difficult challenges. She emboldens them to live with resilient intelligence: a life that enflames and inspires.
She remains a climber, a sea kayaker, and a rider.
Fragile and robust — I give who I am into the hands of resilience and compassion.
Lorca Smetana · A Hunger for Joy, TEDxBozeman
The work
Teacher of vibrant life
As an experienced resilience strategist, Lorca teaches vibrant life — developing programs through the application of ecological and contemplative principles to organizational life. Her work with individuals, schools, and organizations includes stress reduction, compassionate relations, leadership development, communication, and vision expansion, all through the lens of contemplative and imaginative practice in action.
At Montana State University she taught resilience and leadership through the Leadership Fellows Program. Each year she trains twelve master-level resilience fellows — truly radiant, resilient leaders making good and important change in the world.
She is an expert in building holistic resiliency skills, helping parents and professionals in high-stress or trauma work embrace radical self-care as they recommit to vibrant, sustainable, creative lives. For organizational leaders, she helps design systems that support human lives and minds.
A few facts
- Holds a Master’s in International Studies from the University of Washington — history, diplomacy, and monasticism.
- Speaks French, Czech, and submerged Spanish; lived and studied in Avignon and Prague, traveling from Europe through Asia.
- In 1997 founded a regional association of volunteer private pilots that merged with Angel Flight West — flying medical patients and their families to treatment, and working closely with families facing cancer and other life-threatening conditions.
- Raises and trains white homing pigeons, offering therapeutic and ceremonial dove releases with people and families in transition.
- Marries people — and helps families bury those they loved.
Home ground
A small farm in the mountains
Lorca and her husband, international outdoor photographer Dusan Smetana, live on a small sustainable farm in the Montana mountains — raising two free-range children, homing pigeons, dogs, Icelandic sheep, and a diversity of other birds and creatures, for sustenance, humility, and delight.
From individual coaching through resilience systems development, Lorca adds space, systems health, and lightness into what is important in your world.
