One client’s experience:
“Oshalla and Laura initially led a small training for just a handful of our staff, but those of us who were present pushed our leadership to hire them for organization-wide support. With their wisdom, vision, and radical sense of justice, our staff -- at all levels -- have been able to start vital conversations and make vital changes for racial and gender equity.”
-
Co-Founder
Oshalla Diana Marcus is founding member and director of MC Arts and Culture, a membership group of artists, educators, and entrepreneurs from the African Diaspora, committed to fulfilling the vision of collective power through the arts, small business and global networking.
She is also founder and co-director of Sekhmet Community, a collective of wellness professionals committed to natural medicine; spiritual, mental, physical and financial fitness.
Life experience has led her to understand that in times of system re-set, true wealth lies in the richness of communities, cooperatives, coops and other structures that value human life, connection to nature and a life of balance.
A Bay Area native, Oshalla’s diverse experiences provide unique perspective on both the impacts of generational poverty as experienced in a wealthy county, along with firsthand observations of the benefits of generational wealth. As a professional she has used the performing arts as a tool for learning and enrichment, extensively with youth and young adults. A graduate of the California Institute for Integral Studies, she views face to face and group interactive communication through music, dance and personal storytelling as vital for deep change. -
Co-Founder
Laura is a facilitator and healer with fifteen years’ experience building people power and creating spaces for collective healing and liberation. Her work is deeply rooted in the belief that movements are as powerful, transformative, and liberatory as their practices and their people.
From her background as a social worker, Laura has a strengths-based coaching practice and thrives on creating compassionate, honest spaces that foster growth, real relationship, and sustainable change. She holds a BA and MSW from the University of Chicago and is an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church. She is also a proud alum of Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizing Training.
Laura is a queer white person on a journey to undo her own racism, and knows her life is richer and freer and more deeply faithful for having taken steps on this journey. It is life-giving for her to support others who want to do the same. -
Cory is a successful social impact leader and founder of Stewart Consulting & Management, where she helps organizations and businesses adopt socially just practices that improve internal health and advance external results. Her specialty areas include diversity, equity and inclusion, racial justice, deconstructing and addressing bias, fundraising, effective team building, business development, project management, and strategic planning. She is a trusted voice amongst nonprofits, community-based organizations and Fortune 500 companies and has helped numerous businesses design and integrate successful culturally competent business models and high performing teams.
As a coach, facilitator and consultant, Cory has designed and led transformative change efforts for individuals and organizations alike. She is motivated to drive positive culture change and inclusive environments that lead to a more just world for all!
Prior to launching her own business, Cory had a successful career for over a decade in both domestic and international organizations where she successfully raised substantial revenue from individual, corporate, and institutional giving investors. -
Lauren is a founder, facilitator, and C.O.O. of this.us.now., a professional education company that empowers people and organizations to work with better information and more joy. More broadly, she is a process-driven problem solver who has experience managing people, projects, and clients -- both in-person, virtually, and remotely -- since 2005. She believes that curiosity, consistency, and authentic connections are the greatest drivers of great things.
She honed her knowledge and love of learning through play and curiosity over the course of a decade, while helping build the largest LEGO-inspired learning company in the United States. Getting to work with numerous groups of both kids and adults, provided vast insights to the actuality of every person being different and every group of people being different.
Driven by all her experiences, Lauren wants to create psychologically safe environments and communities where people can progress. Establishing inclusivity, learning in an engaged way, and allowing space for people to practice and fail are the foundations for strong movements.
Our Values
Leadership
We follow the leadership of Black and Indigenous people of color, queer and trans people, femmes, immigrants, people with disabilities, poor and working class people, and others impacted by oppression.
meeting people
We meet people where they are and believe in their capacity for change. Practices of equity and inclusion take a lifetime to develop, and we meet you without judgement for the next steps of your journey.
in action.
People learn faster in action. We make use of simultaneous study and action, believing we cannot wait to get everything right before we get moving.
We work on ourselves
We expect conflict, resistance, and mistakes. We respond by leaning into relationship, prioritizing accountability and resilience.
as we work on the world:
We work on ourselves as we work on the world. It is incumbent on us to do our internal and interpersonal work while we dismantle unjust systems.
Together.
We are on a journey together. We provide coaching and resources, and you will ultimately be the one to transform your own practice.
Our Clients
We work with people who already believe racial equity and inclusion matter. Our job is to help you put those values more deeply into practice.
Nonprofits, service providers, faith communities, healers, and educators are often fighting for equity in the world while still learning how to live into that vision in their own work. If you aim to be the change you wish to see, we are here to help.
