Pronouns
she/her
What do you do as a consultant/coach?
Ever since I was a newbie organizer 20 years ago, my role in social movement and social change has always been as a facilitator. I love designing and hosting collaborative spaces for dialogue, learning, real talk, and change.
When working with organizations, I help teams think through important organizational development questions and tasks. Having spent many years in the niche of racial justice work, I now work more widely in the areas of emergent strategic planning, participatory organizational structures (including decision-making and role distribution), organizational learning and collaboration systems, and cultivating liberatory organizational culture.
And of course, I always relish an opportunity to support a team through any challenging conversation that they’ve been needing to have, whether that’s under the umbrella of transformative justice and conflict work, giving and receiving feedback, or developing creative solutions to a complex problem.
In recent years, I’ve also come to love the work of individual coaching. I so enjoy supporting movement folks to explore how this world has shaped them, what strategies they have used to survive this painful world we live in, how their important but limiting survival strategies have influenced their change work to date, and how they want to evolve and contribute now.
What is your approach?
In terms of organizational work, I have come to believe that the things we struggle with at the organizational level are fractal versions of the systems of oppression in our world at large. While that stance can feel daunting, it also gives our organizational change work a deep political relevance: when we set up life-giving organizational systems, we are literally practicing collective liberation in our crews and communities.
When working with organizational clients, I ground my work in these approaches:
- Designing organizational structures that distribute rather than centralize power, leadership, and decision-making as a political practice of collective liberation.
- Facilitating equitable processes that both engage all voices, and center the wisdom of those closest to the question at hand.
- Hosting spaces where people get to experience more connection with their inherent Dignity, and where the group can experience more connection with their inherent Interdependence with one another.
- Balancing key organizational Both/Ands (for example, structure and flow, working inside the system and outside of it, support and accountability, etc) so that groups can work with more nuance, rather than the oversimplification of Either/Or thinking and practice.
Just like how our organizations are fractals of systems, in terms of coaching, I similarly have come to believe that the things that movement folks struggle with on the personal level are the same patterns that undermine our organizations. And so I hold a deep belief that it is invaluable for people involved in social change to also engage in self-development. No matter how many years we have been in movement, or the role we play, there is always more personal development we could do for the sake of our ability to better participate in and contribute toward liberatory work.
In working with clients, I use a combination of:
- “Parts” work, specifically Internal Family Systems or IFS, as a step-by-step methodology to use during coaching sessions.
- Somatics practices, specifically teachings from the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics, as a process for long-term healing and change over time.
- The enneagram, as one very useful map of core survival strategies that people take on to survive a dangerous world, the inherent limitations of those strategies, and what we can practice to move toward more freedom, both personally and collectively.
You can find out more about my coaching work here.
How has your experience/background contributed to your work?
As soon as I entered the world of social movement, I gravitated toward facilitation roles. I first got involved in social movement community in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2006, where I found incredible mentors, as well as a passion for facilitating dialogues, political education, and the power of transformative conversation. I am grateful to have spent my adulthood grounded in social justice organizing and community. I came up politically in the realm of racial justice, and over the years have also been a part of movements for queer and trans liberation, anti-capitalism and economic liberation, as well as anti-colonialism and movements for self-determination.
Between 2006 and 2016, I worked in community organizing and social service organizations. In 2016, I became a full-time freelance facilitator, organization development consultant, and coach. I’ve co-led local racial justice projects through the lenses of community organizing and healing from whiteness. I’ve also had the pleasure of co-creating a number of self-organized crews and pods, for example Service to Justice, which organized a network of social service organizations committed to shifting from charity models to social change. These days, my heart work is through Healing the Roots, a wildly nerdy project where we learn about and practice politicized healing work in community.
Relevant certifications or trainings
- Blooming Willow — Healing Centered Coaching
- Training for Change — “The Super T”
- Somatics for White Racial Justice Organizers — Ream and Dara Silverman
- Providing effective enneagram solutions — Chestnut Paes Academy
- Masters in Organization Development — American University