Scaling Deep

Pieter Oosthuizen is the co-founder of Skymind, a teacher, consultant, and entrepreneur and a long-time student of Tibetan Buddhism. He has been teaching various practices and retreats in Lama Tsultrim's lineage in the US and abroad since 2006. He is the President of the Board of Tara Mandala Buddhist Retreat Center, and an adjunct faculty in the Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology Program at Naropa University.---Follow Tatiana's writings and reflections @ https://tatianafraser.substack.com/

Zach Lavarenne is in his final year of the Sexology program at UQAM, where he's all about tapping into the creative and transformational potential of education. He's especially passionate about working with boys and young men—helping them build critical thinking, emotional literacy, and the tools to navigate masculinity in all its complexity (and messiness) with care and authenticity.In 2021, he threw his hat into the political ring as a Green Party candidate, driven by a deep commitment to social and environmental justice. When he's not diving into big conversations about gender or systems change, you'll probably find him writing music. He's a singer-songwriter and member of the band Novae, where he explores the power of sound, story, and collective expression.

Luis Alejandro Tapia is an Equity Coach + Consultant for the Center for Strategic Solutions. The son of Dominican immigrants, he brings almost two decades of experience in community and youth development. Luis has facilitated unique programs for a range of NYC agencies and is also the founder of BlackBoyRise. His journey from participant to director to consultant aids him in engaging authentically with youth and their communities. He specializes in harnessing the enthusiasm and skills of those he serves, promoting love, power, and connection through experiential team learning and coaching. Luis is committed to transforming leadership and learning into spaces of justice, equity and freedom. He serves as a social impact and equity consultant, a racial and restorative justice coach and trainer, circle keeper, social justice educator, and facilitator at the intersections of spirituality, justice, healing and liberation.--Follow Tatiana's writing on Substack @ https://tatianafraser.substack.com/

Carlos Duran is a spiritual guide to 1000's of people around the world.  With over 13 years of Amazonian plant medicine experience and a lifetime on the streets, he has navigated the path from gangster to healer. Leading from experience, Carlos places you on an ancestral flight towards living in your highest purpose. He is the catalyst to destroying your limiting beliefs and secret shames. Learn more about Carlos' work @ Savage EncounterRyan Carey's journey has moved from the football field to the battlefield, and now into the quiet, ongoing work of healing. A former professional athlete and Canadian Forces veteran, Ryan now walks alongside others—especially fellow veterans—advocating for brain injury awareness and mental health support. His work is rooted in care, connection, and the belief that even the deepest wounds can begin to heal when we're met with understanding. Learn more Ryan's work @ Operation Purify

In this profound conversation, Tatiana and gkisedtanamoogk explore the profundity of understanding masculinity in relation to the cosmic feminine, and the significance of indigenous wisdom. They discuss the Eighth Fire prophecy, the shift in consciousness towards a love-based existence, and the role of ceremonial life in connecting to the sacred. The conversation emphasizes the need for men to restore their true humanity and the hope for future generations to embrace these teachings.gkisedtanamoogk, is Wampanoag from the Native Community of Mashpee located on cape cod south of boston, massachusetts; he is family member of Nkeketonseonqikom, the Longhouse of the Otter, and T8nuppatonseonqikom, the Longhouse of the Turtle; married to Miigam'agan, together with three Children and four Grandchildren. He was one of five Commissioners on the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission and taught for 10 years at the University of Maine, Orono Campus as an Adjunct Instructor and lecturer in the Native American Studies and the Peace and Reconciliation Programs. Since 2016 gkisedtanamoogk joined the faculty of the 6-day Upstander Academy, a summer teacher professional learning program highlighting Indigenous Peoples' challenge to false narratives of american education.His applied occupation includes Cultural and Legal Theory with particular interests pertaining to the social, political, legal, scientific, and spiritual Life of Wampanoag and Wabanaki Nations; he also engages in many activities of advocacy and interest to Indigenous Peoples including, Indigenous Law, Science, Linguistics, and Education.Presently, gkisedtanamoogk is a member of the Kairos Indigenous Rights Circle, Kairos initiated climate change program, For the Love of Creation, and a faculty member of the Upstanders Academygkisedtanamoogk resides with his Family at Esgenoôpetitj on the Burnt Church Reserve, occupied by new brunswick canada.

SUBSCRIBE to Tatiana's Sanctuary Newsletter: https://tatianafraser.substack.com/ --- The first woman elected mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante has distinguished herself through her leadership, attentive listening and closeness to the Montreal population. It is with a progressive, ambitious and innovative vision that she has been able to rally Montrealers from all four corners of the city. Both warm and rigorous, she works with her team to make Montreal a city at the forefront. Her career outside the political arena is one of her strengths. After completing studies in anthropology, museology and multi-ethnic intervention, Valérie Plante developed extensive field experience within several community organizations, including the Fondation Filles d'action. These experiences taught her a great deal about the various issues affecting the metropolis. Following these apprenticeships, Valérie Plante made the leap into municipal politics in 2013. First elected as a councillor for the Sainte-Marie district, she stood out for her audacity and became head of Projet Montréal in 2016. It only took her one year to be elected mayor of Montreal. After four years as mayor of Montreal and the borough of Ville-Marie, the people of Montreal reaffirmed their confidence in her by giving her a second term in the 2021 elections.

Vicki Saunders is an entrepreneur, award-winning mentor, advisor to the next generation of change-makers and leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a way of creating positive transformation in the world. Vicki is Founder of #radical generosity and Coralus (formerly SheEO), a global community of radically generous women supporting women-led Ventures working on the World's To-Do List. Vicki has co-founded and run ventures in Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley and taken a company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Vicki was received numerous awards for her work at Coralus including; UBS Global Visionary in 2020, YWCA Women of Distinction Award in 2020, Business Leader of the Year 2019 by the Toronto Regional Board of Trade, 2018 Startup Canada Entrepreneurship Promotion Award and was selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 2001. - Scaling Deep: The Coralus Case Study

zohra moosa is a facilitator, coach, trainer and advisor to individuals, groups, organisations and funders engaged in the non-profit and for purpose sector. Her aim is to accompany movement actors to change how we make change. In particular, she specialises in supporting feminist, queer and anti-racist approaches to thrive in contexts where there is a will but not yet clarity about the way.As a coach, she focuses on supporting BIPOC femmes in leadership positions to recognise and release the toll that working in predominantly white spaces takes, regather purpose and vision, and generate options, so they may act with renewed energy.In addition to her current activism and contract work, she serves on the boards of climate justice group Fossil Free Netherlands and Transnational Institute (TNI), an international research and advocacy organisation.She has been engaged in multiple social movements over the last three decades, including feminist, anti-racist, 2SLGBTQIA+, and environmental justice movements. She has done so as an academic, as an activist and as a professional/practitioner, working at local, national, regional and international levels. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, zohra worked as the Executive Director of Mama Cash, the first and oldest international women's/feminist fund in the world.Now living in Amsterdam, zohra has also lived in London and Toronto. You can read more about zohra's work here and here. Join our Systems Sanctuary newsletter!

Terrellyn Fearn is a Mi'kmaq scholar-practitioner, Snake clan from Glooscap First Nation and a citizen of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Terrellyn is the Project Director of Turtle Island Institute, a global Indigenous social innovation think and do tank (a learning lodge) grounded in Metuaptmumk: All Around Seeing, a uniquely Indigenous approach to wholistic human development and systems transformation.  Her work spans 30 years exploring the human dimensions of transformative change where systems science, arts and the sacred meet by amplifying Indigenous languages, ancient wisdom traditions and Ancestral sciences. She is a Research Associate with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience and holds a Masters degree in Education. She has worked with over 380 Indigenous communities across Turtle Island (North America) to advance wellbeing and create communities of practice dedicated to social change and heart centred leadership. Terrellyn is a mother and believes large-scale systemic change begins through restoring the sacred feminine and reawakening the human Spirit by connecting to self, each other, our Earth Mother and all of Creation.

Bayo Akomolafe is the grateful life-partner to ‘EJ', father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, son of Olufunmilayo Ibidapo Akomolafe and Ignatius Abayomi Akomolafe, and descendant of Yoruba fields of archetypal becomings and mythopoeic landscapes. He is an author, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual (a concept imagined together with and inspired by the shamanic priesthood of the Yoruba healer-trickster)- whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with, and queering fond formulations and configurations of hope. Bayo was born in 1983 into a Christian home, and to Yoruba parents in western Nigeria. Soon after he was born, his family emigrated to Bonn, Germany with his father on his first diplomatic assignment. This - Bayo's first trip - would foreshadow a life of travel (both literally and figuratively) to come. Losing his diplomat father to a sudden heart complication in Kinshasa, Zaire, Bayo became a reclusive teenager, seeking to get to the “heart of the matter” as a response to his painful loss. After meeting with traditional healers as part of his quest to understand trauma, mental wellbeing and healing in new ways, his deep questions and concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life devoted to exploring the nuances of a “magical” world “too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it.”

Nisha Sajnani, PhD., RDT-BCT is the Director of the Program in Drama Therapy and Theatre & Health Lab; founder of the Arts & Health @NYU and Chair of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium. In her capacity as founding co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, established in collaboration with the WHO, Dr. Sajnani leads a Lancet global series on the health benefits of the arts. An award winning author, educator, and advocate, her body of work explores the unique ways in which aesthetic experience can inspire equity, care, and collective human flourishing across the lifespan.  Dr. Sajnani is also on faculty with NYU Abu Dhabi where she developed a trans-disciplinary course entitled Can Art Save Lives? which unites current evidence for the health benefits of the arts with practice and policy. She is a faculty advisor in the Rehabilitation Sciences Ph.D., Educational Theatre Ed.D and Ph.D. program and co-teaches Improvisation and Leadership in the Management Communication Program and the Executive Education program in NYU Stern. She is also on faculty with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma where she lectures on the role of the arts with people who are forcibly displaced.  --- Learn more about ⁠The System Sanctuary⁠ where Tatiana Fraser and her team teach and train leaders on systems change. We work with individuals, teams and ecosystems to support learning and inform wise action. ⁠⁠Sign up for The Systems Sanctuary Newsletter⁠⁠

A Tonglen teaching and meditation led by the guest from our last episode, Charlotte Z. Rotterdam. Hear her full Scaling Deep interview here. Follow her work @ SkyMind --- Charlotte Z. Rotterdam is a contemplative educator, Buddhist teacher, and meditation instructor. She is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University and an Instructor in Naropa's Core College, World Wisdom Department, and Graduate School of Psychology. She co-developed and teaches Naropa's Mindful Compassion Training, a secular program to cultivate compassion in personal, professional and societal contexts. She is the Lead Teacher of the Mother Lineage (Magyu Lopön) at Tara Mandala Retreat Center. Charlotte received a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. The mother of two boys, she has published essays on the intersection of spiritual practice and daily life in Lion's Roar, Buddhadharma, Mandala and Fearless Nest, an anthology. --- Learn more about ⁠The System Sanctuary⁠ where Tatiana Fraser and her team teach and train leaders on systems change. We work with individuals, teams and ecosystems to support learning and inform wise action. ⁠⁠Sign up for The Systems Sanctuary Newsletter⁠⁠

Charlotte Z. Rotterdam is a Buddhist teacher, meditation instructor and contemplative educator. She received the title of Magyu Lopön, lead teacher of the Mother Lineage at Tara Mandala Retreat Center, by Lama Tsultrim Allione in 2016. She is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University and an Instructor in Naropa's Core College, World Wisdom Department, and Graduate School of Psychology. She co-developed and teaches Naropa's Mindful Compassion Training, a secular program to cultivate compassion in personal, professional and societal contexts. Charlotte received a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. The mother of two boys, she has published essays on the intersection of spiritual practice and daily life in Lion's Roar, Buddhadharma, Mandala and Fearless Nest, an anthology.  --- Learn more about ⁠The System Sanctuary⁠ where Tatiana Fraser and her team teach and train leaders on systems change. We work with individuals, teams and ecosystems to support learning and inform wise action. Sign up for The Systems Sanctuary Newsletter

Tanya Birl-Torres of SoHumanity has taken her 15 years of experience as a Broadway performer, choreographer and movement director and melded it with her love and passion for justice and change on the systemic level. With a deep and grounded sense of presence and urgency, Tanya uses the subtle yet potent power of drawing inwards to provoke curiosity, promote healing and empower oneself to create change beyond what we have been taught and into personal truth telling and embodied experience. Through reflection, moving metaphor and a process called Presencing (The Presencing Institute and Social Presenting Theater at MIT), participants are encouraged to become the change that they wish to see manifest. More on Faye LaRoux/ The LaRoux Method: Tanya's friend and teacher who taught her the principals of Rafical Responsibility and the ancient Hawaiian reconciliation prayer Ho'Oponopono --- Learn more about The System Sanctuary where Tatiana Fraser and her team teach and train leaders on systems change. We work with individuals, teams and ecosystems to support learning and inform wise action. ⁠Sign up for The Systems Sanctuary Newsletter⁠

Welcome to Scaling Deep, a regular heartbeat and inspiration from wisdom traditions and teachers at the forefront of leading change.