Meet your facilitators!
The Lead Facilitator, Dr. Leola Dublin Macmillan, will be joined by local grief expert Donna Helete, trauma specialist Artemisia Shine, and a facilitation team comprised of people of color, students, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized members of society.
Dr. Leola Dublin Macmillan
critical cultural scholar, essayist and social justice warrior
Dr. Leola Dublin Macmillan holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Washington State University. Her scholarly production includes work on adolescent identity development in marginalized girls, the representation of women and girls in American visual culture, and how difference (in race/class/gender/sexual orientation/(dis)ability) is understood within US contexts. Dr. Macmillan serves on the board of Just Communities Central Coast, is on the steering committee of RACE Matters SLO County and is a member of the SLO Police Department’s Police and Community Together (PACT) community group. With over 30 years’ experience as both an educator and an activist, Dr. Macmillan has taught at The University of the District of Columbia,Washington State University, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Outside of higher education, she has taught in a broad range of disciplines, from environmental science to adult literacy. She currently works as a consultant, providing diversity training, grant writing, strategic planning, and editorial services for her clients. In 2019, she was named Congressional Woman of the Year by Congressman Salud Carbajal (24th Congressional District).
Donna Helete
regenerative grief coach, relationship tender, mentor and community builder
Donna Helete is a regenerative grief coach, relationship tender, mentor and community builder with experience in non-profit leadership. She sees grief as a pathway to healing our relationships with ourselves, one another, and the planet. She’s lived on the Central Coast for over 30 years and walks a path toward elderhood, bringing with her real life credentials which include the death of her husband of 28 years in September 2015. She is honored to pay forward the support and wisdom she received along the way and guide others to gain access to the full vibrancy of their gifts and life.
Donna on grief and Preparing to Put in the Work: “As we become aware of the ways we unknowingly benefit from and participate in the oppression of people of color, building our capacity to be with and metabolize the grief that arises will allow us to keep showing up to do the work towards building a more just and equitable community.”
www.donnahelete.com/
artemisia shine
counselor, somatic therapist, transformational ally, intuitive healer
artemisia shine is a queer, multi-racial, cis-female, mama, and coyote medicine maker. She’s committed her life to examining and interrupting systems of oppression around gender, race, ecology, sexuality, mental health, and ability. She has 900+ hrs. of training as a certified Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapist, holds three 200hr Yoga Alliance certifications and has been teaching since 2011. artemisia currently serves victim/survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence as a crisis counselor/advocate w/ RISE and mentors folx navigating the criminal justice system thru Restorative Partners. Over 10 years of private practice as a healer, somatic therapist, teacher, and counselor enable her to meet you with profound presence and unconditional warm regard for whatever you bring to the table. She is honored to be offering a trauma informed lens to support this work. www.WildHeartHealingArts.com
Cameron Clay
ethnic studies writer & scholar, photographer, graphic designer
Cameron Clay is a Bay Area native and Cal Poly-Slo Alumni. He has a deep love for the central coast and the relationships he has fostered over the past few years in the area. While attending Cal Poly Cameron majored in Comparative Ethnic Studies, and began writing and publishing Ethnic Studies scholarship. Cameron is a research partner and Creative Director for DMG Consulting, a Social Justice Think Tank, based out of the central coast. His research interests include Art as Resistance, Afro & Indigenous Futurisms, Black Feminist Theory, Decolonial Studies, Literature, and the Black Radical Tradition. His areas of expertise include Photography, and Graphic Design.
Sliding Scale Justice Pricing
We stand for leveraging our privilege to support others and offer the cost of attendance on a sliding scale. If you can afford to, please consider paying it forward by paying any amount above $75 minimum. People who contribute at the top of the sliding scale support our ability to offer scholarship spaces at a cost below the bottom of the sliding scale to those who would otherwise be unable to participate. This allows us to scale the price so that everyone is included. We are only able to offer scholarship spaces once we have a certain number of people contributing at or near the top of the scale.
Self Care:
The content is facilitated through a trauma sensitive lens centering self and community care. Our facilitators have training and experience navigating this territory and will be holding the larger container of the group. Individualized one-on-one care may not be available. Our workshops participants routinely engage in in-depth conversations about topics such as inequity, injustice, and structural inequality. They may also share personal histories. Due to all this, it is natural at some point tension and trauma responses may arise. Please come prepared to support yourself in meeting your physical and emotional needs throughout the workshop and afterwards and let us know how we might best support you. Self-care will be addressed and encouraged throughout the duration of the workshop.
Scholarships:
We are committed to cultivating a diversity of voices and life experiences in our workshop series and making them accessible to people of all income levels. A limited number of partial and/or full scholarships will be offered based on financial need with a focus on individuals from communities which have been historically marginalized and typically under-represented. We explicitly invite participation by people who come from any of the following communities. We know that when these people are included, all communities benefit:
People with visible or invisible disabilities
People who do not have white skin privilege and/or who come from communities who, though in the global majority, are under-represented in positions of institutional power because of racialized discrimination and its direct and indirect impacts.
Low-income/Poor or Working class people
People who live and love outside the dominant norms of cis-gendered, binary, straight, monogamous relationships to sexuality and gender
People without U.S. citizenship status, who are directly affected by U.S. foreign and domestic policy, including the many indigenous people of these lands
People who currently work or volunteer significant time in the front lines of movements or organizations working for progressive social change, human rights, gender justice in the labor movement, housing justice, environmental & climate justice, youth organizing or community outreach