Experience and learning

I worked at POWER, an interfaith racial and economic justice organization, from 2017–2023 as a community organizer, coach and trainer. I coached individuals and small groups on organizing, leadership, anti-racism, and the challenges and growth that comes with showing up to claim our power. I offered trainings on trauma informed organizing, anti-racism, collective liberation and faith based community organizing, and co-facilitated monthly collective healing sessions with .O and Rev. Yvette Davis–a collaboration that has nurtured and shaped my approach to healing. 

I currently also work as a Domestic Violence Counselor and Advocate at Lutheran Settlement House, and am grounded and inspired by accompanying survivors of intimate and structural violence toward safety and freedom. 

I draw from many different somatics lineages. My approach to somatic coaching is informed by the Power of Embodied Transformation course through Coaches Rising, led by teachers from the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics. My training in bodywork is from the Somatic Therapy Center, which came out of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method. I studied there from 2019-2022 and continue to receive mentorship from Chris Hammer. In 2022 I took the Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy certificate program, which wove together approaches to trauma healing from many modalities, including Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Therapy, Hakomi and Internal Family Systems. Since then, Internal Family Systems has become a central part of my approach. I am currently in the Somatic Experiencing (SE) Professional Training Program and SE has become core to how I support people in renegotiating trauma. 

My own embodied healing and understanding of racial trauma was shaped by the Somatic Abolitionism program led by Resmaa Menakem and Carlin Quinn. Beyond Diversity 101 Race led by Niyonu Spann was a formative experience of embodied healing toward undoing white supremacy.  

Since I was a teenager I've had a Vipassana meditation practice, a form of Buddhist meditation originating in India and taught to me primarily through the method offered by S.N. Goenka. Meditation was some of my earliest experience in a practice of being present with my body, and is still an anchor for me.