collaborators & comrades
Stephanie Ghoston Paul is an internationally recognized speaker, facilitator, organizational development consultant, coach and recovering lawyer. She brings over 15 years of experience in advancing equity, fostering inclusive leadership, and sparking systems transformation using racial justice and healing frameworks. Stephanie's unique approach skillfully and wholeheartedly combines her sharp legal mind, problem-solving skills, and love of people to powerfully serve clients and challenge existing systems. She has coached leaders and staff in the nonprofit, for-profit, education, foundation and public sectors to integrate equity and inclusion into the core identities of those organizations. She is well versed in assessing organizational culture, tool building, and strategic coaching for equity. Through her individual life coaching work, she is dedicated to helping clients fully embody being free, whole and enough. Her one-on-one coaching program specifically helps high-achieving leaders embrace their brilliance so that they can fully step into their power and activate their potential. Stephanie walks alongside her clients as they discover ways to stop hiding, prioritize themselves, and start living on purpose. She is also on the board for the Global Youth Leadership Institute, a program she completed in high school as a member of its founding cohort. Stephanie currently resides in Atlanta, GA. She enjoys cooking spicy dishes with her partner, playing recreational flag football, and finding new flavors of delicious tea.
stephanie ghoston paul | she/her
Amy Burtaine has been co-facilitating workshops, providing coaching and mediation, and educating through an anti-oppression lens for over 20 years. While she has experience leading this work on a range of oppressions, her passion and commitment is to center race, specifically looking at how whiteness upholds and perpetuates racial inequality. She most often works in collaboration with people of color to co-facilitate dialogues and trainings on racism. These conversations are critical, yet many of us who are white do not know how to engage with them in constructive ways.Amy’s goal is to bring people together and provide a common language and analysis for seeing and ultimately interrupting relations of unequal racial power. While she follows the principle that as a white person racial justice is on-going, lifelong work and thus her learning is not finished, she has over 25 years of analysis and practice to draw from. She holds a MFA and is trained in interactive pedagogy. In addition to providing training on bias and systems of inequity, she also offers training on team building, leadership, and creative collaboration.
amy burtaine | she/her
Garrett is a yoga and meditation facilitator living on the land of the Cherokee, Catawba, and Miccosukee people, colonized as Greenville, SC. He is part of the Skill in Action mentorship program, and he believes that a yoga practice is much more expansive than just moving through a series of poses. Yoga is a practice of liberation – of connecting with our innate wholeness and dispelling the myth that we are broken beings in need of fixing. Garrett seeks to create spaces for people to slow down, invite in curiosity, and explore new possibilities. They firmly believe that if you’re breathing, then you can practice yoga, and they are passionate about sharing yoga in a way that is approachable and accessible for everyone by offering different options and variations for folks to explore what feels best in their bodies. Garrett is committed to sharing practices that help people care for themselves and their communities because he believes that everything is interconnected. We’re stronger together, and yoga can teach us how to work collectively to disrupt and dismantle the systems of power and oppression that prevent all of us from thriving and being well.
Garrett Jurss | He/they
Tristan Katz (they/he) is a writer, educator, digital strategist, and equity-inclusion facilitator. They specialize in content marketing strategies for justice-focused leaders and queer-trans diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging training and consulting. Tristan’s intention is to share this work with an anti-oppression and intersectional lens.
Tristan is honored to have worked with and supported organizations and clients such as Portland Public Schools, HubSpot, Stanford University’s YogaX program, Northwest Harvest, Accessible Yoga School, Breathe for Change, Williston Northampton School, and so many more.
He was named one of Yoga Journal’s 2021 Game Changers and awarded the Reclamation Ventures grant in Spring 2021 to expand his offerings and dedicate time to writing their first book.
Tristan is proud to serve on the Board of Directors at Accessible Yoga—a non-profit working, through education and advocacy, to share the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized, and to identify and remove barriers to access, build strong networks, and advocate for an accessible, equitable yoga culture.
Tristan Katz | they/he
Johnette Walser is a Yoga and Mindfulness Teacher, Social Worker, Change Agent, Reiki Provider, Space Holder, and Birth and Postpartum Doula. Her background is in social work, and she has served as a mental health provider and practitioner of various different holistic healing disciplines. She has a Bachelors Degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Masters Degree in Social Work from The Joint MSW Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and NCA&T State University. She is a graduate of the Skill in Action: Yoga & Social Justice 200hr Yoga Teacher Training Program, and she has additional training in mindfulness-based stress reduction and other mindfulness techniques. She uses this knowledge to facilitate workshops, small groups, and individual healing for school-aged children and the educators who work with them. Johnette is licensed through the International Institute for Restorative Practices as a Restorative Practices Trainer and she has conducted restorative justice trainings for educators. She is also trained in circle work processes, and she facilitates conversations around race and intersectionality with college-aged students. She has several years of experience working in non-profits, government agencies, and private practice as a social worker and change agent. She has served on several nonprofit boards, and continues to do work in the community to advance the rights of others. Johnette is Usui II Reiki Certified and a trained Doula, and she prides herself on utilizing her knowledge of power, privilege, and oppression to empower pregnant bodies to advocate for the birth experience that they deserve. She has a special passion for working with PoC, especially women and children. Johnette believe in wholeness and healing and in the liberating powers of rest, community, and connection.
Johnette Walser | she/her
Kerri Kelly is the founder of CTZNWELL, an emerging movement to mobilize people into a powerful force for wellbeing for all. She spent seven years as Executive Director of the non-profit Off the Mat, Into the World and is currently board chair. She is relentless in her commitment to elevating leaders, groups and projects to next-level social change makers through her work with The Catalyst Collective, an innovative consultancy designed for mission-based individuals, groups, and organizations that want to be successful and make a difference in the world. Kerri Kelly is a force of nature. She is a skilled yoga teacher, motivating students to effect change in their lives. She’s a fierce coach, whose ability to turn ideas into purpose and action is a gift. And she plays big; straddling the mindfulness and political worlds, so that the social change makers—the visionaries—she works with can mobilize and organize effectively. Kerri was on the fast track in the marketing world until 9/11 hit, when she lost her stepdad, a NYC fireman. That was the wake up call that got Kerri off the “should” path and into purpose. To her surprise, yoga was the most powerful source of healing and transformation during that time. She took the leap and has been on a crusade ever since to elevate wellbeing and help others discover their greatest potential. Kerri is recognized across communities for her inspired work to bridge transformational practice with social change and politics. She’s been instrumental in translating the tools of wellbeing into practical application and social action in the public sector, working in collaboration with community organizers, spiritual leaders and policy makers. She is a commitment to personal transformation that leads to powerful social change.
