Original photo, Cannon Beach Earlier this year, I attended the International Leadership Association Dialogue Lab in New Orleans. Speakers didn’t present or lecture. We opened questions to small groups and participated in inclusive and insightful discussions around the complexities of leadership responding to contemporary challenges: supervision as a sacred act of leadership, the effects of fear, fatigue and competing truths in communities, liberating the collective power of

Recently I decided to hike the Falls Creek Fall trail in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Part-way up, I found that the USFS had locked a gate across the forest road to the trailhead . There was minimal snow and I was curious to understand the closure. I soon found out. Blow down. It looked like some giant had spent days angrily throttling the trees, and the road was covered with shattered branches and entire tree trunks. I moved a few smaller branches aside and then decided

I was at my barber for my quarterly haircut. I’ve known Travis now for about 3 years and he’s the only one I’ll go to. As the writer Saki said, “I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter” (The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope). Hair cutting is an intimate process and a matter of trust: someone is holding sharp implements against your neck. So, after three years, we have what I’d characterize as a co

Original photograph, February 10th, Trail of 10 Falls, Silver Falls State Park, OR Like many other providers, empowerHER runs programs offering strategies to combat micro-aggressions, marginalization, isolation, or prevention of access to professional development opportunities. These are practical workshops with tools to establish boundaries, handle interruptions, being spoken over, addressing the appropriation of ideas and being stereotyped as the Strong Black Woman. As suc