People, Teachers, & Thought Partners to Engage WithÂ
This is a circle of wisdom, care, and accountability.
These are some of the people whose work informs, deepens, and expands my own—a constellation of thinkers, teachers, and practitioners I’m grateful to learn with and from.
People to Engage With
Dr. Angel Acosta - A scholar, practitioner, and educator whose work centers healing centered education, technology, and business. Dr. Acosta invites leaders to integrate spiritual depth and ancestral wisdom into the transformation work they carry. His thinking has profoundly shaped me and what it means to lead from wholeness.
Resmaa Menakem - A therapist, healer, and cultural practitioner whose groundbreaking work on racialized trauma and the body has changed how many of us understand healing. Author of My Grandmother's Hands, Resmaa centers the wisdom of the nervous system in the work of racial healing and justice. His practice of somatic abolitionism is a gift to this moment.
Daniel Lim - A systems thinker and organizational consultant whose framework for collective leadership and community resilience offers practical pathways toward shared power and equitable change. Daniel's work bridges the relational and the structural in ways that illuminate both. He is a thoughtful guide for those navigating complexity with integrity.
Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz - Scholar, poet, and educator whose Archaeology of Self™ framework invites deep personal excavation as a foundation for justice-centered teaching and leadership. Dr. Sealey-Ruiz centers love, healing, and critical consciousness in the work of racial literacy. Her voice is both rigorous and tender, a rare and necessary combination.
Bayo Akomolafe - A Nigerian-born philosopher, writer, and teacher whose work gently unsettles the certainties we cling to in times of crisis. Bayo invites us to slow down, sit with complexity, and find meaning in the cracks of what is breaking open. His poetic, post-humanist thinking opens unexpected doorways for those willing to wander.
Kai Cheng Thom -Â A writer, performer, and healing practitioner whose work weaves together trauma, community accountability, and the poetics of transformation. Kai Cheng Thom brings fierce compassion and honest complexity to conversations about harm, repair, and what it means to belong. Her work is medicine for those of us trying to live and lead with greater integrity.
Clarinda Tivoli - A guide and strategist for matriarchal business practices, reimagining how we build, lead, and sustain organizations rooted in indigenous and feminine wisdom, care, and collective flourishing. Clarinda's work offers a powerful alternative to extractive models of leadership and enterprise. She is a voice for those ready to build differently.
Dr. Shawn Ginwright -Â A leading scholar and practitioner in the field of healing-centered engagement, whose work transforms how we think about youth, trauma, and community wellbeing. Dr. Ginwright's framework moves beyond a deficit lens to center joy, agency, and collective healing as forces for social change. His influence on this practice is deep and enduring.
Tony Nabors - Founder of Racial Equity Insights A racial equity strategist and thought leader whose work supports organizations in building the knowledge, capacity, and accountability structures needed for genuine equity transformation. Through Racial Equity Insights, Tony offers grounded, practical frameworks that meet organizations where they are and challenge them to go further. His work is both clear-eyed and generative.
Vincent Hunt - Founder of The Bureau of Creative Intelligence is focused on the relationship between technology, human creativity, and the future. The Bureau’s work lives at the intersection where emerging technologies meet human creative capacity — unlocking, amplifying, and preserving creativity so that leaders can navigate complexity with conviction and integrity in a time of rapid transformation. Vincent is a rare and luminous mind.
Cyndi Suarez - A writer, strategist, and power analyst whose work has sharpened the field's understanding of power, governance, and transformative change. Cyndi's book The Power Manual is a vital resource for leaders committed to building organizations where power is shared and accountability is real. Her thinking is precise and unflinching.
Adrienne Maree Brown - A writer, facilitator, and emergent strategy practitioner whose work has become foundational to a generation of justice-oriented leaders and organizations. adrienne's books including Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism — invite us to find wisdom in natural systems, in joy, and in the small patterns that shape the whole. She is a teacher, a provocateur, and a beloved presence in this work.
Dr. Sara' King and Kierstin Gray - Founders of MindHeart AI A liberatory technology company dedicated to advancing well-being and collective healing. Both visionaries hold a deep commitment to reimagining what technology can be in service of justice and love. Together, Dr. King and Kierstin Gray are building MoLA — the Mirror of Loving Awareness, a conversational AI that fuses advanced technology with ancestral knowledge, neuroscience, and trauma-informed design, daring to imagine a future where technology serves humanity's deepest flourishing rather than extracting from it.
Monica Dennis - AÂ Black feminist and lifelong advocate for racial and gender justice and her work across movements spanning three decades. She curates spaces for radical joy, collaboration and future visioning where leaders, learners and organizations can create new possibilities for a world without violence. She is a highly respected and sought-after speaker, facilitator, strategic and podcast host.
Langston Kahn - A Black, Queer teacher and shamanic practitioner who specializes in radical human transformation, ancestral healing, and restoring an authentic relationship with our emotions. Author of the book Deep Liberation: Shamanic Tools for Reclaiming Wholeness in a Culture of Trauma, A rare guide for those doing the deepest work of change.
Rose Genele - An award-winning global thought leader, speaker, and advisor guiding leaders to ethical, and safe AI adoption - CEO of The Opening Door supporting organizations and professionals to responsibly and strategically adopt AI through advisory, governance, products, and literacy programs that transform insights into action and create lasting competitive advantage, shaping the future with intention.
Yoli Maya Yeh - A coach, facilitator, and culture strategist and co-founder of DEIcipher Group working at the intersections of Indigenous Way, healing arts and social justice. She is an educator in Comparative Religious Ethics, Global Studies and Cultural Anthropology whose teaching style is rooted in Indigenous methodology and experiential pedagogy.Â
Margaret J. Wheatley - A pioneering organizational theorist, writer, and activist whose body of work has shaped how leaders and systems thinkers understand complexity, emergence, and the nature of living systems. Meg Wheatley's books — including Leadership and the New Science — offer both grounding and expanded vision for those navigating a world in flux. A foundational voice in the field.
Kazu Haga - A peace educator and restorative justice practitioner deeply rooted in the tradition of Kingian nonviolence. Kazu's work, including his book Healing Resistance — offers a framework for building beloved community even in the most fractured of times. His teaching is gentle, courageous, and profoundly grounded.
Prentis Hemphill - A somatic practitioner, writer, and therapist whose work on somatics, healing, and collective liberation has become essential reading and practice for a generation of change-makers. Prentis holds the complexity of individual and systemic healing with rare depth and grace that truly brings us into the feeling body. Their voice is one this field deeply needs.
Priya Parker -Â A facilitator, author, and thought leader whose work through The Art of Gathering has transformed how leaders and organizations think about coming together. Priya asks us to be more intentional, more purposeful, and more human in every gathering we create. Her influence is felt every time a meeting becomes a moment of real meaning.
House of Beautiful Business - A global community and platform reimagining what business and leadership can be when we center humanity, beauty, and belonging at the core. The House of Beautiful Business brings together thinkers, artists, and leaders to explore new possibilities at the intersection of commerce, culture, and the human spirit. A vital and generative space for those who refuse to settle for less.
Somatic Spaces & Practitioners
Embodiment Institute: A global learning community dedicated to the practice and proliferation of embodied approaches to healing, change, and human flourishing. The Embodiment Institute brings together somatic educators, practitioners, and researchers from around the world to deepen our collective understanding of what it means to live and lead from the body. A rich and expansive resource for anyone called to this work.
Ream Somatics: A politicized somatic practitioner and my personal somatic coach, whose work invites movement builders into more choice, more agency, more aliveness, and more capacity to feel into what it will actually takes to transform the conditions of our lives forever. into deeper relationship with their bodies as sites of wisdom, healing, and liberation. Through an accessible and deeply attuned presence, Ream offers somatic practices that support embodied wholeness and voice worth following for anyone committed to living in alignment with their commitments for liberation.
Embodying Racial Justice: Dara Silverman A facilitator, trainer, and somatic practitioner whose work sits at the powerful intersection of racial justice and body-based healing. Dara Silverman supports individuals and organizations in moving beyond cognitive understanding of racism into the embodied, felt experience of transformation and accountability. Her work is both rigorous and deeply humane.
SomaSJ: Founded by Staci Haines, a somatic practitioner, author, and co-founder of Generative Somatics whose decades of work have helped define the field of somatics for social justice. Staci Haines' book The Politics of Trauma is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how trauma lives in the body and how healing becomes a force for collective liberation. SomaSJ is her continued offering at the intersection of body-based practice and systemic change.
Wild Body Somatics: Marika Heinrichs, a somatic educator and practitioner whose Wild Body approach reconnects people with the primal, ecological intelligence of the body and with the natural world as teacher and healer. Marika's work honors the wildness within us as a source of aliveness, resilience, and deep knowing. For those ready to come home to themselves through the body and the earth.
Generative Somatics: A transformative organization offering somatic training and practice rooted in the belief that healing the body and transforming unjust systems are inseparable endeavors. Generative Somatics trains practitioners, organizers, and leaders to work somatically, bringing body-based awareness and skill to the most pressing social justice movements of our time. One of the foundational lineages behind healing-centered leadership practice.
Core Texts for Growth
The Healing Organization by Michael J. Gelb & Raj
Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Â
My Grandmothers Hands by Resmma Menakem
Deep Liberation by Langston Kahn
Who Do We Choose To Be by Magaret J Wheatley
Fierce Vulnerability by Kazu Haga
What It Takes To Heal by Prentis Hemphill
Community The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, & Marty Linsky