A cohort for emerging and evolving leaders
ready to rise into your capacity and catalyze your justice-rooted work.

Together we’ll uplift your unique leadership style, cultivate the artistry of facilitation, and bring your signature offering to life. We’ll create compelling language to welcome people into your work, and you’ll be held in a collective of inspired accountability & collaborative growth as we usher your visions into being.

—

Join the Catalyst waitlist and be the first to
know when the 2024 Cohort is open.

△
In a rapidly changing and uncertain world, the Catalyst Leadership Immersion serves as generative anchor, providing both an integral support system as we rise to meet this profound time, and the vital frameworks on which to grow our offerings into vehicles for justice, liberation, right-livelihood, and reimagination. 

Let’s ride the waves together.
Let’s live into the change we seek.

▽

“You’re gonna really feel it. Being in the spaces that Anya holds is the most accepting, inspiring deep dive into self and other and community that I’ve ever been in. Being in the Cohort is going to be incredibly transformative for you like it’s been for all of us.” —Jenny Downer, Facilitator of Creative Living + Being Seen

This is a call — to the determined healers holding both heartbreak and hope, the artists exploring a new way of visioning, the changemakers and facilitators nurturing a legacy of repair and guiding us into a reimagined future. This is for you. For us.

I firmly believe that leadership work is justice work. That when we rise into our roles as facilitators and guides, we have the capacity and responsibility to change culture.

The facilitation methods we practice and personalize in the Cohort are designed to dismantle the systems and structures that uphold white supremacy, patriarchy, and the grip of productivity — in the world, in traditional learning communities and leadership styles, and in ourselves. Honed over 20+ years of leading and guiding groups, these tools are centered in liberatory praxis, collaboration, reciprocity, and personal & collective healing.

Together we’ll redefine traditional narratives of who a “leader is” so that we recognize ourselves in our reclaimed definition — and we’ll grow our ability to hold up that mirror for the communities we serve.

We’ll delve into the Catalyst Crux frameworks — supporting you to find clarity on your core why, define and communicate with your right-fit community, embody the artistry of engaged facilitation, root your offerings in an explicit justice lens, and personalize our transformative program structure scaffolding. These tools will also provide a grounding compass to guide your work from here forward — with processes you can return to again and again as your offerings evolve.

This isn’t about one right way or one method. This is about choosing what works for you from a breadth of time-tested tools.

“This is the structure that now serves as the foundation for everything I do!! After years of attempting on my own, you’ve given me the tools that tie it all together. I now have a framework, I have boundaries, I have clarity.”
—Clare Kritter, Herbalist + Astrologer

We gather for nourishing and inspiring Immersion weekends (three in person and three virtual) and two restorative single-day virtual retreats throughout our time together.

These Immersions guide us from idea incubation into concrete action — and through the generative cycles of iteration — providing a fertile environment to nurture our visions into being.

Each Immersion offers a mix of embodied, experiential lessons through the use of writing, hands-on art-making, guided conversation, movement, pleasure and play, rest and ritual. *Click to read more about our areas of focus. Our Retreat Days provide dedicated time to get feedback on our writing and workshop offerings and benefit from the energy of the collective as we focus on our individual projects.

There is no need to create in isolation, rely solely on intuition, or simply borrow from others, not knowing if your offerings will land and resonate. Take the guesswork out of it.

1. Before every virtual Immersion, you’ll receive a curated Catalyst care box sent to your doorstep and filled to overflowing with beautiful art supplies and materials, seasonal gifts, delicious snacks, and lots of love and magic — primarily from BIPOC, women, and queer makers and businesses. We affectionately call these “a retreat in a box” — because you’ll receive everything you need to feel deeply nurtured and inspired — with items that attend to all of your senses!

△
How is this profound time calling you up?
What are the unique remedies you want to offer the world?
▽

Every month, you and I will connect for a one-on-one, heart-to-heart, individual phone session to dive into the logistics of your unique vision and work. You’ll also get two bonus sessions to use as desired throughout the year!  We’ll establish soulful systems that work for you — galvanizing you into aligned presence and action.

These sessions are not therapy, but are often therapeutic. They are not coaching, but are definitely catalyzing. Not magic, but mending for sure. And they are completely tailored to you.

Over the arc of our ten-months, mentorship serves as both an anchor and a freedom — a place for powerful witnessing, personalized support, and steady guidance as you navigate the shifts and changes, ebbs and flows, challenges and celebrations of bringing your big vision into being in these turbulent times.

“I feel so honored to integrate what I have learned from you into my work. I find a deep grounding and grace from the way you empower and uplift. The Cohort process brought me from the brink of full burnout into a place of healing and strength in my life and work and I’m able to give again, from this renewed space. Your model of creative incubatorship and facilitation tools have greatly informed and inspired my newest offering.” —Rowen White, Seed Keeper, Facilitator, Writer

△
Hone your leadership capacity.
Hold space for change and transformation.
Harness the power of community.
▽

This is a place of belonging. A sacred container. A beloved cohort.

So many leaders and changemakers do work that is relational and connected, and yet we create and iterate by ourselves. But we’re not meant to do our big work alone. 

A fundamental component of the Catalyst Leadership Immersion is our intimate collective of peers. Not simply fellow learners, but a beloved cohort. This community of practice deepens through our work together — and while we each hold unique identities and life-stories and visions for the world — we come together to witness, uplift, iterate, and grow.

Here there is space for us to be accepted in our messiness and mistakes and perfect imperfection. To take accountability. To set boundaries. To just be. To allow the energy of the group to propel us forward when we feel stuck. To be supported through the changes and adaptations these shifting times demand. To benefit from the wisdom of the collective while simultaneously honing in on our own truth. To recognize our worthiness as we see it reflected back in the loving faces of our cohort. To cheer wildly for one another’s successes — celebrating each other’s triumphs as if they were our own.

Over these last years, the cohorts have yielded energizing cross-pollination of ideas and resources, generous ongoing referrals, creative partnerships and collaborations, life-long kindred connections, and an incredibly vital, ever-expanding web of support.

“I’m feeling the euphoria of this recognition — this love, this energy. Thank you for always breaking me open to new levels of experiencing life. I am so grateful that we had that first conversation way back when — and I am just so grateful that I said yes. Your ability to create containers with the most amazing humans — and hold space for us so beautifully — you all are the kind of people I always want to surround myself with.” —B Merikle, Executive Director, Pleasure Cultivator, Black Joy Catalyst

Together we’ll develop a treasure trove of deeply resonant and compelling language to tell the story of your offering.

We’ll create (or grow) your meaningful online presence that expresses your values and welcomes your right-fit community — with original copywriting that gets to the core of your message and the heart of your work.

You’ll be able to use this personalized catalog of content across any platform where you’re sharing your work (website, social media, course materials etc). We’ll also establish content building blocks so you can easily adapt your writing as your offerings evolve. I’ll be on hand to offer edits and feedback on pieces you’re writing, and if you’d like, the Cohort will provide extra eyes and hearts on your projects as well.

While we don’t do any explicit web design, we will spend time exploring ways to uplift and enhance Squarespace sites — or give directions to a designer — with guidance around visual cohesion, layout, graphics, and general branding for your offerings page.

You’ll be emboldened to share your work from a place of grounded purpose and spread your message as an act of service. 

“I feel so good. I've dreamt it for so long and now it's out in the world being received! And people are signing up! That is literally only because of this work together. Both we as a cohort and Anya (our fierce leader) as a pillar. I just birthed something so significant. This work that we are doing has been everything for me — it's been healing in a transformative way — in my relationships, my ability to stay present, and the way I’m able to create my work.” —Amy McMullen, Writer & Wayfinder, Founder of Navigator

Like a stone skipping across the water — this Cohort is all about our ripples of impact — our circles expanding and reverberating as we take the leap to activate our calling and offer our unique and essential remedies into this fractured time.

At the close of our 10-month learning container, you will rise sure and confidently in your skills as a leader, facilitator, and space holder — knowing that the ripples of your work are vast and deep.

You will have laid the solid groundwork for a justice-rooted offering that can support you on a soul-level and a financial level, lifting up your capacity for right livelihood. You will have moved from the places that have felt stuck or daunting towards flow and thriving — actualizing a new way forward that embraces both self and systems change. You will have trust in your ability to lead groups, use your voice, and offer your skills in service to your community — because you will have already been embodying that work for months. You will have your own signature program as well as an overflowing toolkit of now personalized lessons, activities, and practices that you can use seamlessly in future offerings. You will have a concrete action plan of how to share and promote your new program, as well as clear language framing how you write about and speak about your offer. And you will have a cohort of life-long kindreds elated to see you shine.

You will have catalyzed your vision into being through shifts small and large. 

You will have completed 80+ Immersion and Learning hours, 20-hours of 1:1 Mentorship, and 11+ hours of direct facilitation practicum. A council of Catalyst graduates will usher you through the certification process, and you’ll close our ten months as a Certified Catalyst Leader & Facilitator — a distinction you can feature on your website and marketing materials. You will also have my endorsement and commitment to uplifting your work within my own community. *Read about some of the inspiring work that graduates have catalyzed through their time in the Cohort.

This is the place where my life’s work meets my heart’s pull — the place I feel most alive, most aligned, most myself. Where I am able to truly be of service — holding space, cultivating creativity, and supporting you to go deeper into your capacity as a leader.

I'm committed to creating an intentional container where mistakes are welcome, stories are sacred, and process is just as valuable as outcome. 

As a facilitator and leadership mentor, I have been leading and guiding groups for the last 20+ years. I have designed multi-month artistic residencies for high school students exploring body image and identity through photography and theatre. I have led entrepreneurs on immersive retreats to clarify the heart of their stories. I have worked with changemakers to counter burnout and reconnect to their purpose. I have circled with women and non-binary folks ready to rise into their gifts.

Through the Catalyst Leadership Immersion I serve as idea doula and guide — supporting Catalysts to actualize their visions and do their big work in the world while tending to themselves (and each other) along the way.

You can read more about me and my story here.

△

This is an incantation.
An invitation.
To meet yourself at the place of possibility.
To say yes to what is calling you up.
To rise.

▽

*Images by Catalyst Graduates She Saw Things & Amy McMullen