Rise and Thrive Women's Leadership Academy is a mission-driven company that supports leaders to align their work, life, and leadership with their highest callings and deepest values. I believe that as change-makers, we need more access to curated, safe spaces for community, dialogue, and problem solving across difference, so that we can cultivate and support women’s creative contributions. In these types of spaces, I believe that the potential for social change is expanded. In this work, both big and small, we are able to move in the direction of creating a more beautiful and just world that values every human and all life on this planet. 

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For the last several years I served as a Non-Profit Director for a great mission-driven start up environmental organization. In that role, I was able step into and practice my leadership skills as a course-creator, facilitator, and as a change-maker passionate about helping other leaders find their voice and impact. Over those years, I taught a curriculum called Regenerative Leadership and created a heart-centered community of humans who wanted to show up to their leadership in ways that cultivated justice, equity, diversity, sustainability, and meaning. More than 45 women and folx from across 10 states, and six countries have participated in Regenerative Leadership. Together we aimed for whole-heartedness, compassion, and decolonizing practices, while discussing new ways we imagine our world with systems that valued each and every human’s unique contribution while achieving goals efficiently and holistically. 

 

After more than two years in this role, I closed that chapter of my life so that I could step into a new version of myself that is aligned with my deepest values. I am excited for my next chapter as I transition toward a new path that holds the potential for greater impact. I am proud to say that my new chapter is the creation of Rise and Thrive Women’s Leadership Academy. I am excited about this radical new beginning and I’m excited about the potential it holds for collaboration, community, creativity.

 

Through Rise and Thrive, my mission is to hold space for change-makers to align their purpose-driven leadership with social justice and a deep commitment to personal healing in order to show up more fully in the service of collective transformation. I support women of color, their allies, and folk interested in aligning their work with social justice. I am grateful to have the space in my life to launch this iteration of my work today. And I am looking forward to supporting women leaders and folx in their personal and professional journeys around transformation and impact. 

 

In our mainstream culture, we don’t often have access to stories of alternative routes around professional paths. The truth is, for some of us, our life-force and sense of contribution cannot be squeezed into narrow definitions. There are many ways to make a life – weaving work, family, community and connection in ways that are creative, innovative, and deeply meaningful to our sense of place in the world.

 

Many of us have had to fit ourselves into paths around work that ask us to compartmentalize or hide important parts of ourselves, and that prioritize capitalist ways of working that lead to burn out, hyper-productivity, overriding our physical needs, and imbalance. I felt all of these things for the majority of my life. And as I reached a season of life that had me juggling motherhood, step-motherhood, a blended family, all the things that go with daily life, and the continued need to heal from historical and generational trauma as an indigenous woman, I felt like I was drowning. 

 

Healing from trauma and doing all-the-life-things, along with the added responsibility of visible leadership, made my life feel like it was moving faster than I could keep up. I realized the life I created was unsustainable. I was just getting by each day, trying to complete my to-do list while trying to be fully present as a mom and partner. I have learned over time, especially through motherhood and healing from trauma, that it is impossible to be everything to everyone, all of the time.

 

Trying to aim for this impossibly high bar led me to slowly burn out while I continued to hold space for work meetings and workshops, for my Regenerative Leadership students, and at home as the emotional anchor for my two middle-school girls and my family. My self-care barely made it to my weekly list of priorities, and it began to suffer.

 

I desperately needed a change – a transformation, a new beginning, and a sense of reinvention. This is how Rise and Thrive Women's Leadership Academy was born.

 

Rise and Thrive Women’s Leadership Academy is a space that supports mission-driven women to balance their healing journeys with their leadership journeys. It is what I wish I had access to when I was a non-profit director and slowly burning out. My vision is to provide a space that we can co-create together as leaders who want a world made more beautiful and just through every woman’s value centered leadership and creative contributions. 

 

By providing the space to heal and grow within a safe container, I have seen women experience flashes of insight, land on innovative ideas that change systems, and release old patterns that hold them back from showing up as powerful leaders in their work and lives. I have witnessed recognition in their eyes when they are able to voice inequities in a space that is validating and responsive. I am proud of what I have witnessed and co-created in circles of women, and I am thrilled to offer these kinds of transformational spaces to a wider community of leaders in values-aligned ways through Rise and Thrive.

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There is so much more to come for Rise and Thrive. Please return often and stay tuned for workshops (both free and paid), learning journeys, and other community events that will be hosted in the coming months. 

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If you would like to be the first to know about upcoming offerings, resources, and discounts please sign up for my newsletter here.  

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Thank you for being here!

 

I look forward to co-creating community with you.

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In warmth and solidarity, 

Liza