Who We Are
We each come from different backgrounds: Education,Therapy, Yoga, Mindfulness, Somatic Movement, Music, Marketing, Design, Non-Profit and Small Business Management. Our diversity offers a unique and integrated approach to anti-racism work that fosters healing and wholeness.
Lyrica Fils-Aimé
LCSW-R, RPT-S
Lyrica is a Director of Equity Transformation and Culturally Responsive Environments at the New York City Department of Education. She is a New York State Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a Registered Play Therapist, and runs a private practice in Harlem. She obtained her BA in from the Universtiy of Richmond in Psychology and Business, an MSW from NYU and Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership from Fordham University. She creates and designs equity teams, diversity councils, affinity groups, multi-cultural programming and supervises social workers with an anti-racist and anti-oppresive leadership focus. Lyrica is also the author of “The Gift of [Anti-Racist] Therapy,” a series examining clinicians who are working to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive .
This work is ongoing and can feel like I am up against a wall, but as a light-brown-skinned educator and therapist my duty is to address, uplift, and encourage.
Wanna Johansson
Wanna is a creator and designer for clients like Eckhart Tolle, The Sounds True Foundation, and Mindfulness.com. Currently she’s a full scholarship recipient in a two-year certification program for teaching awareness and compassion-based practices through the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley. She is also an E-RYT 500 yoga facilitator, teaching retreats and trainings internationally, and online at The Embodied Yoga Summit.
As a teacher, when BIPOC students looked to me for leadership, I realized I had been trained by white teachers for white students in a white industry, and I needed to make change starting within myself. As a designer, I’ve been tasked to create marketing materials for companies that “look diverse.” It became clear to me that real inclusivity and change can only happen within an organization and staff through anti-racism education and racial literacy.
Rachel Holmes
Rachel is a facilitator of yoga, sound healing, dance, meditation and soul level healing through her work as an oracle. She guides growth of her students to the fullest expressions of themselves, while herself a lifelong student of this work. It is her calling to provide tools for transformation so all can be a clear channel for information to come through. By slowing down in the face of racial anxiety, clarity and evolution are possible.
I believe that racism and biases come from our conditioning, and the trauma we have experienced either in this lifetime, a past life, or passed down through our ancestors. I believe the more clear you become about knowing yourself, and seeing others as they truly are, the more these imprints start to fade away. As you peel back the layers and discover your soul, you are no longer in fear of expressing your authentic self and accepting others.
Sara Utberg
Sara is a Stockholm based yoga facilitator and student of Neuro–linguistic programming (NLP). She is a musician and uses her heartfelt music as a tool to bring practitioners to come into presence in raw and truthful being, to heal wounds of the self.