Pronouns
she/her
What do you do as a consultant/coach?
I co-create confidential spaces with activists. These spaces are for pausing, reflecting and identifying practices that honor values and goals.
What is your approach as a consultant/coach?
I accompany people addressing complex situations and destructive systems during chaotic times (AKA life as a social justice activist). I cultivate in relationship with my coaching partner a space of trust and respect where curiosity and compassion can flourish and where joy can be found as a form of resistance.
Share your experience/background that has led to your work as a consultant/coach (e.g., movement work)
I come from people of the borderlands…what is now New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico. My mother was born a US citizen (identified as Chicana), my father was undocumented until I was grown (he always identified as Méxicano). I identified as Chicana and now also ID as mestiza y pocha. I participated in demos, walk-outs and voter registration drives in high school. Eventually I worked for a free women’s community clinic and a leadership program for women’s health leaders.
In 2005, I became one of the first people of color from the nonprofit sector to become a “certified coach.” I began working with individual coach partners, who were primarily social justice activists and people of color. I also was one of the core members of MAP, that evolved into RoadMap.
At this point I’ve coach partnered with about 500 folx.
In 2010, I joined the faculty of an accredited coach training organization, Leadership that Works. I co-led fourteen certified coach training cohorts in the Bay Area, in Los Angeles, in New Mexico and virtually. That’s about three hundred or so certified coaches, many of whom are BIPOC and social justice activists.
Relevant certifications or trainings
I went through certified coach training, but as usual my real training has been through partnering with folx as their coach and through being a trainer of coaches.