Exploring the Resurgent Power of the Yin

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee is a proud mother, artist, organizer, facilitator, mindfulness / yoga instructor, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of belonging, equity, and deep transformative change. She is the founder of Our Bodhi Project, a spiritual and political project that supports healthy movement-building and organizing through deepening our critical analyses, centering the health of all living systems, and enlivening the connection between social and collectively spiritual wellness.

Sonali's life work has focused on bringing forward ideas and strategies that speak to wholeness, specifically calling for leading with multiple truths and perspectives required for collective health. She has spent 13 years in U.S. local government, creating, leading, and managing social justice and racial equity initiatives. Her community organizing background has focused on youth development, environmental justice, racial justice, and HIV / AIDS-related advocacy and service. Her current advocacy focus is on resource mobilization for projects and initiatives that speak to the social and environmental antidotes our world so desperately needs. She has recently founded SSoMA (Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary), a space that gathers and protects the medicines of our times, as well as the people and life that tend to such antidotes.

Ginny McGinn is a mother, artist, writer, Zen practitioner and process designer. Her new project, Practice for Change brings her many years of organizational development and deep equity work together with practice-centered coaching, facilitation & strategy. For the last 15 years Ginny served as Executive Director of Center for Whole Communities and continues to collaborate with the CWC collective as a senior facilitator and trainer. Throughout her career Ginny has been deeply involved in the work of social and organizational change and in building partnerships across lines of race, power and privilege. She has cultivated a profound interest in how change happens, from the level of individual transformation through the level of entire communities. It is this process of deep personal learning, change and accountability that she seeks to practice in her leadership. Ginny consults on equity initiatives and organizational change around the country. She currently serves as Vice Chair on the Bioneers Board of Directors.