Both/And’s Anti-Oppression Coaching Program
We’ll set you up with a coach that can support you through your learning and unlearning journeys.
What is Anti-Oppression Coaching?
We offer 1:1 and group coaching on anti-oppression leadership and racial identity exploration. Our leadership coaching includes learning and support to align anti-oppression values and action within your sphere of influence. Racial identity coaching involves creating a personal education plan to interrogate how systems of oppression show up in you/your life and create mechanisms for accountable action. Since racial identity coaching involves exploring how internalized dominance manifests in white people and internalized oppression manifests in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, we do our best to match you with a coach who shares your racial identity.
Specializations
✔ Leadership in K-12 & Higher Education
✔ Anti-Oppression in the Classroom
✔ Youth Outreach in Ultimate Frisbee
✔ Conflict Mediation & Accountability
✔ Organizing in Academia & Mutual Aid
✔ Nonprofit & International Development Industry
✔ Racial Identity Development for BIPOC & white folks
✔ Social Justice Career Counseling
✔ Leadership & Equity in Ultimate Frisbee
✔ Leadership in Religious Communities
Coaching Packages
Choose one of our three coaching packages to save up to 15% off! Our sliding scale is available for each package. Click here to find out how to place yourself on our sliding scale.
Meet the Coaches
Lisa M. Gray
I am a facilitator, educator, and strategic relationship builder. I am also a lover of all things warm, sweet, soft, sassy, pink, green and red! I strive everyday to do my work with a radical love-centered, transformative justice-driven focus coupled with a race, intersectionality and equity lens. I’ve done this work within the areas of college student development, diversity, inclusion and social justice education as well as training and organizational development for over 25 years.
I’m skilled at personal and work relationship-building rooted in self compassion, empathy, vulnerability and authenticity. Helping people dismantle and disrupt internalized oppression, supremacy, racism and sexism so they can reclaim themselves and experience joy and self-love is my calling. I bring my lived history, personal experiences and truth-telling to the table in order to help my clients discover their personal paths toward living a fuller, more satisfying and more equitable existence. I deeply desire for everyone that I work with to be the highest and best version of themselves so they can show up and do their part, in whatever spaces they occupy, to co-create a better world for all. I get excited by helping people of all racial and ethnic identities to develop into more effective agents of positive change and am most passionate about coaching BIPOC people - especially those in education, religious organizations and the caring professions.
If you hold a management, leadership or executive level position in your organization and self-identify along the Black racial and ethnic spectrum as African American, Caribbean, African, Indigenous, Afro-Latin@/e/x, or Afro-Asian@/e/x, I welcome co-creating a coaching process that will serve and support you.
Vidhya Aravind
Vidhya Aravind (she/her) is an organizer, educator, and facilitator who has worked in organized labor, student racial justice organizations, trans healthcare advocacy, and mutual aid groups. Her approach to facilitation is profoundly values focused, with an emphasis on developing a person’s capacity to find their own way forward in their work, guided by discovering and aligning themselves with their core values.
If you are serious about understanding your identity and impact, finding the work that best suits your skills, democratizing your organizing or work spaces, navigating harm and conflict, developing social justice curricula, or doing your own political education, and you are willing to dig deep in the discomfort that comes with learning what you really believe and what values you demonstrate in your life, Vidhya will probably be a great fit for you.
Kristina Nance
Kristina (She/Her) has served as a coach/advisor during her nearly 20 years as a college student affairs professional. She also has an extensive history as a volunteer/board member for multiple non-profits. Over the course of her career, Kristina has developed a knack for encouraging people to look at themselves and their situations in new ways, in order to determine a path forward that is in line with their deepest values and most heartfelt goals. Helping people bring all facets of themselves into alignment is her specialty.
If you are rethinking how to work anti-oppressive values into your career goals and/or into your leadership style, Kristina may be a good fit for you.
Khunsa Amin
Khunsa Amin (She/Her) is a facilitator and local community organizer who helps organizing spaces interrogate and uproot white supremacy culture within their processes and structures. Central to her coaching ethos is deep relational work, with an emphasis on the interpersonal level. She believes that everyone has the capacity to sustain both their external-facing activism, as well as continued internal work in one’s anti-oppression journey.
If you are someone who is interested in integrating allyship and activism into your daily life, if you work in grassroots spaces, such as mutual aid groups and/or other local organizing efforts, and want to examine how whiteness impacts the space, then Khunsa is the coach for you! She is a good fit whether you’re involved in a larger collective/group/team or an informal pod of 3-4 people. Everyone has a part to play in our collective liberation -- let’s work together to find what works best for you!
Melina K. Martinez
I coach because I believe deeply in our capacity as people to learn and grow, and because I know that our liberation emerges in connection to supportive others and from a deliberate day by day unlearning and introducing new habits into our lives. My strengths as a coach revolve around incorporating somatics and a deep understanding of how we internalize the systems we live in. Incorporating somatics and embodiment practices grounds the work we do in the living, holding, and remembering body, and allows for us to go further into the change (the unpacking and the healing) that's possible.
In coaching I have the privilege of collaborating as a thought partner, as a mirror, and as a growth instigator for someone. I’m invested in seeing the incremental experiences of growth that over time change the course of our days, our months, our lives, and the world around us along with them.
If you identify as both Indigenous and white, as non-Black Latin@/e/x, Chican@/e/x, or as light-skinned multi-racial person, I would like to offer my partnership in your process.
Zara Cadoux
Zara (She/Her) coaches individuals and small groups to identify how they have internalized oppressive systems in order to shift how they engage in racial justice work. She believes that in order for each of us to contribute meaningfully to dismantling oppressive systems, we must be doing that work in our relationships with ourselves and those we are in close proximity with. She loves how the coaching space provides an intimate setting to go deep, do internal work, and create the conditions for each individual to be part of systemic change. Over the years, coaching clients have included facilitators, philanthropists, nonprofit staff, organizers, and youth workers who want to examine their personal behaviors, set goals, and develop accountability practices.
Zara works with white people on white identity, shame resilience, shifting oppressive behaviors, and accountability practices. She works with people of all racial identities on anti-oppressive facilitation strategies, team and work culture, and developing an analysis of dismantling the non profit industrial complex.
Fernanda Andia
I believe coaching can be a sacred space of confidence. Confidence as a consciousness of one’s power, confidence as a relation of trust, and confidence as a state of intimacy and being. In order to shift our value systems or our relationship to our positionality within this schema we must begin with vulnerability. In coaching I can offer non judgemental listening, imaginative collaboration, active reflection, and testimony to one’s ever present capacity to change.
I firmly believe in being well resourced. Whether that involves a reframing, a change in behavior or circumstance, saying yes or saying no, being well resourced is supportive to the principle of abundance. And contrary to the forces of racial capitalism and carceral logic, abundance makes way for the deep knowing that we already have everything we need, right here.
In coaching I look to follow the lead of the client and their goals. I lean on many tools including relational mapping, meditation, astrology, dream exploration, historical grounding, and reading suggestions. If you identify as multi-racial, mestiza/o/x, both indigenous and white, or as non-Black Latin@/e/x, I can offer being in process together.
Kareen Coyoca
Kareen Coyoca (They/Them) has been a force for change in the international development, non-profit and educational spaces throughout their career. An experienced facilitator as well as a skilled coach, Kareen believes curiosity, openness, commitment and adaptability are the keys to incorporating anti-oppressive values and actions to the way you live your life.
If you have started unpacking concepts around race, class, power, global development, or nonprofits to see how they have shaped your experiences, jobs, or activism, and are now wondering how to deepen your anti-oppression development and engagement further, Kareen could be a great coaching match for you! Whether you are looking to grow as a person, as a leader, or all of the above, they are a skilled coach to lend to your journey.