Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work (Online) August-September 2025

Design and facilitate the challenging conversations that catalyze breakthrough thinking and lasting agreements

Join us for this intensive learning laboratory where we will experiment with a variety of ways to help people connect in authentic ways that yield productive conversations and solid agreements.

Session 1: Thursday, August 28, 2025 1:00PM - 4:00PM ET
Session 2: Thursday, September 4, 2025 1:00PM - 4:00PM ET
Session 3: Thursday, September 11, 2025 1:00PM - 4:00PM ET
Session 4: Thursday, September 18, 2025 1:00PM - 4:00PM ET
Session 5: Thursday, September 25, 2025 1:00PM - 4:00PM ET

(10 AM – 1 PM PT | 11 AM – 2 PM MT | 12 PM – 3 PM CT)

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Who Should Attend?

This workshop is for anyone who is or would like to be facilitating conversations about race and racial justice, and who wants to sharpen their skills.

Why This Matters

Conversations about race, racism, and racial justice are essential – but they’re not always easy. In today’s polarized climate, leaders need the skills to navigate these discussions with confidence, empathy, and effectiveness.

This workshop offers you the skills and practical tools to foster meaningful dialogue, address challenges in real time, and create a supportive space where people of diverse identities can work together more constructively. Whether you’re leading discussions in your workplace, community, or movement, this training will help you build the internal capacity to hold space, respond skillfully in difficult moments, and guide conversations toward deeper understanding and collective action.

What You’ll Learn

• An exploration of the internal conditions (e.g. mind, body, spirit, heart) needed to build self-awareness to effectively facilitate racial justice conversations.
• Practical skills for facilitating productive conversations and building shared understanding about race, racism, and racial justice, in both virtual and in-person environments.
• A deeper understanding of the development of racial identity, the system of racialization in the U.S., and one’s own story within this context.
• Practice addressing challenges and aspirations as a racial justice facilitator.
• An experience of a caring and collaborative approach to racial justice facilitation and a well-resourced community of racial justice facilitators.

Session Descriptions

1. Foundations of Systemic Racism

• Explore ways to build shared language and develop a shared understanding of racial justice concepts.

2. The Power of Storytelling

• Understand stories of race in the US and how our own racialized identities impact our facilitation.
• Explore how to create and use racial affinity spaces.

3. Preparing Yourself and the Container

• Create the context for effective facilitation.
• Learn strategies for managing when we’re activated as facilitators.
• Reflect on how to sustain ourselves over time.

4. Facilitation Fundamentals

• Explore the different roles facilitators are called on to play.
• Learn intervention strategies for unexpected challenging moments.

5. Coaching & Practice

• Apply these learnings to our own scenarios and exchange feedback while doing so.

This workshop is for anyone who is or would like to be facilitating conversations about race and racial justice, and who wants to sharpen their skills. We look forward to having you join us!

Pricing

• $375/person (Grassroots)
• $750/person (Nonprofit)
• $950/person (Foundation)
• $1,125/person (For-Profit/Social Venture)

Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work is also available as an offering for participants from one organization or network – either as an online offering as described above or as a two-day in-person learning experience. Details and pricing can be found here.

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Facilitators

Kiara Nagel (she/her) is a creative strategist with 20 years of experience building creative and collaborative social change initiatives. Kiara delivers facilitation, training and consulting services to foster collaboration, grow healthy organizations, and support equitable community development. She has contributed to many local, national and international initiatives focused on economic and racial justice and narrative and social change. Kiara can often be found training and supporting diverse sets of organizers, educators, and practitioners across sectors to be more strategic and creative in their work.

Kiara holds a Masters in City Planning from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Recent clients have included: The CARE Fund, Alliance for Community Transit Los Angeles, Blue Cross Blue Shield of California, Why Hunger: Grassroots Solutions to Hunger, Hampshire College, University of Orange, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Marie Michael (she/her) is an embodied coach, facilitator, and equity and inclusion practitioner with over 20 years of experience influencing individual and institutional change. She provides visioning, strategic planning, and concrete action steps, focusing on work that develops the intercultural capacity of educators, leaders, community activists, and others committed to social justice. Marie works collaboratively and passionately, modeling vulnerability, lifelong learning and a growth mindset.

Marie worked at The Blake School for 23 years, the last seven as the PK-12 Chair of Equity & Instruction. She designed and led all school professional development, coached faculty, staff, and administrators, facilitated affinity spaces, and worked to develop more inclusive practices in admissions, communications, recruitment, retention, and teacher evaluation.

Marie has been consulting for six years. As an embodied coach and facilitator, Marie uses strategies she’s learned from Somatic Experiencing and Generative Somatics to support clients in listening deeply to themselves in order to build capacity and resilience, to solve problems and resolve conflict and tension with others, and to better align their actions with their values.

As an equity and social justice trainer, Marie uses an embodied approach with organizational leaders to develop long term equity plans and design training geared to their organization’s particular needs. She’s a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), able to use the IDI to support individuals, groups and organizations in learning to work more effectively across cultures.

Marie loves pinto beans, green chiles, homemade tortillas, and tomatoes fresh from the garden. If she could, she’d spend most of her time talking to weeping willow trees, sitting with turtles, and learning from her ancestors. Healing justice is at the center of all her work because she sees it as a direct, radical path to liberation. She believes equity work is sacred and messy, and her life’s purpose is to help people creatively embody the actions needed to individually and collectively transform ourselves, our systems and our communities.

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Choosing your ticket type

1. If you are individual who works in a grassroots organization or are otherwise affiliated with a racial justice group and you are paying for the workshop yourself, please register as Grassroots*
2. If you are individual with a social or public sector organization, please register as Nonprofit.
3. If you are in individual with a grantmaking or philanthropic organization, please register as Foundation.
4. If you are individual with a social venture organization, please register as For-Profit/Social Venture.

*The number of these tickets is limited, so we invite those who are BIPOC, systematically marginalized or excluded, and have the highest level of financial need to register with this ticket type. If this is the only ticket type that works for you and it’s sold out, please sign-up for the waitlist and we’ll contact you if a spot becomes available.

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Have a question? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions and don't hesitate to reach out!