Center for Whole Communities

At its heart, the work of CWC... is the work of healing. Healing from the impacts of our extractive economy and supremacy culture require practices that help us to love ourselves... AND community to create and support new possibilities with.

Kavitha Rao

Senior Fellow and Board Chair

The processes and practices CWC grows alongside land and community are so needed in our daily collective efforts to live into the world we need and deeply desire. Deep love and gratitude for offering us more ways to show up to our own lives and with each other.

Tannia Esparza

Board Member, Whole Communities Fellow

With heart, soul, and substance, CWC is making fundamental culture shifts within our movements, organizations, and institutions so necessary to our capacity to thrive on this planet.

Rosa Gonzalez

Board member, Whole Communities Fellow

I’m committed to listening for community stories that acknowledge and work creatively with difference, tension, and grief in ways that are generative, restorative, and life-affirming....

Mohamad A. Chakaki

Faculty Trainer

....I’m constantly being challenged and challenging others to see our interconnectedness. My goal is always to bring history into the present and demonstrate the ways in which... “of all our studies, history is in the best position to reward our research.”

Delma Jackson III

Senior Fellow

CWC amplifies the voices of those who labor for justice and for joy. I learn each day from this team's commitment to transformative action and right relationship.....

Susannah McCandless

Special Projects

I’ve come to believe that the most essential part of change work is cultivating human connection first and foremost.... to create the conditions for the creativity, trust and partnership that will allow us to manifest the world we want.

Julian Mocine-McQueen

Senior Fellow

I believe that the deepest transformation (in our selves and in the world) comes... through understanding brought on by honest engagement, patience, courage, love, and genuine interest—all qualities I see at the heart of the work of CWC.

Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

Faculty Trainer

I am drawn to Whole Communities work because it.... centers an unwavering commitment to holding and facilitating courageous spaces that call us to the core of ourselves with undeniable skill, care, and vulnerability.

Samara Gaev

Senior Fellow

....CWC's thoughtful, deeply inquiring and compassionate approach to facilitating change is a model that can be helpful in solving problems in all kinds of communities.

Kris Butler

Bookkeeper

Through this work, I can practice into the world I believe is possible, where all beings are protected from harm and we are collectively healing the wrongs of the past, remembering and following original codes of reverence, reciprocity, repair and right relationship.

Kristin Rothballer

Senior Fellow

Our ability to be aware of ourselves, our past, is a gift to the present moment. CWC’s work helps us stay present with each other: to fall down, get up, learn, grow and begin again.

Ginny McGinn

Senior Strategist

I love how the work of CWC calls upon us to bring our full selves to one another; to embrace creativity as a means to connect, seek truth, and play; and encourages us to follow the lead of the natural world - always open to transformation.

Richarda Ericson

Senior Fellow

I continue to be impressed by CWC's commitment to justice, people and earth, and excited by their practices of truth-telling, relationship building and care.

Leigh Robbie Gaymon-Jones

Board Member

....In a moment ripe for change, our world relies on the values and work driven at CWC. Grounded in land and planet, connected to diverse wisdoms and moving towards justice through leadership, CWC is the best way forward for me.