Damon Azali Rojas

 

Damon Gbuduala Azali-Rojas, PCC is a professionally certified coach and coach trainer.  He is also a trained community organizer, a Babalawo (Ifa high priest) and an instructor for the Innerlight Method of intuition development and trauma release. For over 20 years his work has supported the leadership, and the spiritual and political development of working class youth, elders in their nineties and everyone in between.

 

As a professional certified coach and racial justice organizer he encourages clients to not hide, but embrace their cultural background, their political analysis, and their spiritual practices. From this perfect acceptance, clients find out-of-the-box solutions to the challenges of leading organizations and building movements.

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After over a decade of community organizing, Damon supported the anti-domestic violence movement and multiple Boys and Men of Color organizing projects as a consultant, strategist and leadership coach. He is currently faculty for Leadership That Works and co-leads the Coaching for Transformation coach certification program in Los Angeles as well as Coaching for Healing and Non-Violence, a 7-month program that teaches coaching skills to men inside California State Prison, Los Angeles County. Damon was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He uses that foundation to support cross-sector, multi-racial movement building which is grounded on the lived experiences and cultural nuances of Black, Latino, Indigenous, API and Arab leaders. Damon believes we must pay homage to and revive generational knowledge of such skills to come together around some of the most pressing challenges of our time—climate catastrophe, mass incarceration, genocide, mass-migration due to human rights abuses and other systemic oppressions. 

 

Damon lives in Los Angeles with his two sons, Maceo and Fasola, and his life partner, Cynthia.  For more information about Damon, visit his website. 

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Amanda Berger

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Amanda Berger, CPC Amanda brings twenty-five years of social justice experience to her coaching practice. Amanda has an extensive background in progressive philanthropy and transformational leadership development through her work with the Funders Collaborative for Youth Organizing, the Women Donors’ Network, Rockwood Leadership Institute and Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER). 

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Amanda brings practical experience, direct communication, compassion and accountability to her coaching sessions. Deeply attuned to trust and safety, Amanda works with clients to explore their greatest hopes and fears with an eye toward “what’s possible” and creating new habits and ways of being.

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Amanda currently is the Program Director with Insight Garden Program, a 48-week eco-literacy, permaculture gardening and "inner gardening" curriculum offered to incarcerated adults and youth. In that position, she supports IGP's work in 10 prisons in California. 

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Amanda serves as a member of the Transformative In Prison Program Working Group, a coalition of 36 organizations that offer restorative justice, family reunification, and other humanizing healing programs in California's 36 state prisons and a board member with UnCommon Law.

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She is the co-founder of Coaching for Healing and Non-Violence (CHNV).

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Amanda lives in Berkeley, CA.

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Claire Haas

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People who have worked with Claire describe her as inviting, thoughtful, empathetic, empowering, reliable, conscientious, creative, motivating, and a good listener. 

Claire Haas is a coach, community organizer, facilitator, and musician.

For more than a decade, she's worked with community organizations in just about every role possible. She's knocked on doors, built organizing committees, led direct actions and anti-corporate campaigns, built coalitions, raised money, won policy changes, developed staff, written reports, created leadership development programs, managed electoral campaigns, and run a whole operations and finances department.

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For more information about Claire, visit her website.

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Nancy Smyth

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Nancy is a Professional Certified Coach and Leadership Development Director at LAANE and at the Partnership for Working Families. Working with organizational leaders and teams, Nancy uses coaching as a powerful tool for personal and collective transformation that helps us build a mighty social justice movement. Prior to becoming a coach, Nancy’s career spanned 30 years as a lawyer and organizer with a focus on workers, immigrants and the formerly incarcerated. Nancy has founded organizations, created groundbreaking programs and helped lead them to success. Nancy lives in Highland Park. She speaks English and Spanish.

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Coaching for Healing and Non-Violence is made possible by the efforts of many. Some (but not all) of these amazing individuals include Dave Mashore, Cynthia Azali-Rojas, Claire Haas, Nancy Smyth, Jon Grobman, Ken Hartman, Julia Meltzer, David Thorne, Jiggs, Lou, Dortell and Dara. We also acknowledge that there are many others who have helped behind the scenes.