Jasmine Burnett
Blkfeminst Advisors
United States
Jasmine Burnett (she/her) is a skillful collaborator who embodies her personal values and activist leadership by constantly challenging her cultural conditioning to labor, duty and justice. She creates this reality through her work as an herbalist, executive leadership and psychedelic integration coach, and a strategy consultant for Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice organizations and foundations.
Through her consulting firm, Blkfeminst Advisors, Jasmine has supported institutions and leaders to examine where their bewilderment with social conditions end, and where their activism truly begins. This process has supported leaders to refine their activist inclinations into concrete desires through curiosity, persistence and skill. For more than two decades, Jasmine continues to be a sought after leader, advisor and strategist for some of the most dynamic and powerful leaders in the abortion access movement and beyond.
About
Me.
What is your story?
What drives your work?
My story is connected to crafting and service in the community. I have the joy of being raised in a small town in central Indiana where my grandparents laid a foundation for connection, crafting and service. My grandfather was a janitor at the auto factory which were the only jobs available to Black men at the factories at that time and he was able to establish strong relationships with the United Auto Workers #662 to support more Black families to access union jobs with salaries that would essentially build a solid middle class community in my town. My grandmother was a barber and started this craft in the late 1940s as she was building a family that would include 6 children. The barbershop was attached to my family's home, so I was raised in a space of unions as a tool for generating access to wealth building for Black families. Additionally, my grandmother's craft as a barber established a vision where gender wasn't a question as to whether or not I could be a business owner, or have a thriving business where I am working from the comfort of my home.
Those examples set the stage for me about the seeds that were planted in my family legacy, and blossoms from the labors we build from our love that provides access, representation and wealth. The propagation of those seeds is what drives my purpose to create something that neither my grandparents, nor my parents ever did and that was to create an intentional pivot to rest and reflect on what aspects of my craft truly sustain my life. My work as a coach of leaders in the nonprofit and social justice sector has demonstrated that the work and people we care so much about many times encourages us to leave ourselves behind. My purpose before burnout and numerous health challenges related to exhaustion was to strengthen and transform organizational systems to hold the scaffolding for strong leadership. Now, my focus is supporting the human experience through practices anchored in mindfulness, "staying with the trouble" and embodiment, "feeling true emotions". My work is anchored in caring for the pause that is essential in understanding how we begin to transform ourselves, our lives and conditions. Tricia Hersey's, "Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto" opened the door to my own transformation about my worthiness to pause and reflect in a space to build a legacy that sustains wellbeing and peace of mind as a portal to wealth and abundance. Through Executive and Psychedelic Coaching and Integration my journey is creating opportunities for expansiveness within myself and my work. I am invested in working with people to transform the systems of justice, care and liberation through institutionalizing rest as a way to manage the liminal space of discomfort in our life and leadership journey's.
Describe your biggest strength as a leader
My biggest strength is the curation and experience of Pleasure. As a personal value, pleasure for me represents time, ease and comfort. My practice around time is to remember that "time is on my/our side". I trust that things work out as they are intended to which creates a mindset of safety even in the most uncertain circumstances. This mindset creates an experience of ease in my personal wellbeing. I believe it is important to approach life with a clear mind and grounded intentions. This focus has been especially essential as an author of curriculum and trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute. These aspects show up for me as a trusted advisor to organizations and coach of social justice leaders. My ability to navigate complexities with ease creates a sense of comfort for people who experience my work and services. I am a person who people meet for the first time and then share their life story. In this space of being an active and compassionate listener, I listen for what is being said, as well as what is not being said.
Describe your biggest challenge as a leader
My biggest challenge is latency of behavior when my true emotions and needs are delayed to support the needs and demands of others. I am a person who has facilitated everything from my family's challenges as a child, to the mediator in friendship conflicts and the conflict transformation leader in social justice movements. My level of self regulation can make it difficult for me to remember how I actually feel about something that has happened and what impact it has on me. The impacts of those buried feelings and expressions have created a number of health conditions that are now leading me to pivot off the focus of the machine that is the organizations/foundations/corporations to the focus on the human
About the
Organization
and the Project.
Sector
Private Business
Vision & Mission
Mission:
Blkfeminst Advisors is committed to catalyzing profound cultural shifts by delivering spiritually rooted, strategic, and intentional solutions. We weave the timeless wisdom of
earth-based spirituality into our strategy and implementation, ensuring that the
movements we curate are impactful and deeply resonant with the communities they
serve, fostering a future where every institutional strategy is effective and soulfully
aligned.
Vision:
We envision a world where institutional change management is powerfully and
authentically aligned with the enduring wisdom of earth-based spirituality. BLKFeminst
aspires to be the beacon of transformative cultural curation. We foresee a future where
our strategic implementations and intentional spaces pave the way for sustainable,
meaningful change, honoring the intrinsic values of the communities we serve while
boldly navigating toward a future defined by holistic and enlightened leadership.
Year Founded
2020
No. of Employees
1
Years in the Organization
4 years
Annual Budget (USD)
$500.000
Geographical Area Served
National and Global
Organizational /
Project Description
As a national movement leader turned consultant, there are fewer opportunities for me to deepen my personal leadership beyond the services I offer to my clients. My focus for this fellowship is to create a model of care for myself in the same ways that I extend care to my clients in my practice.
My goals are:
- To craft a year long sabbatical for consultants that supported movement communities, organizations and foundations throughout the pandemic.
- To build relationships and contribute to a growing network of women in the Africa Diaspora to create possibilities and connections in our liberation work in reproductive justice.
- To establish a set of resources for consultants who are seeking pace, balance and care in their practice.
- To expand the care practices of social justice to extend to the people holding and supporting care for social justice leaders and movements.
Why is this project important and timely?
What is the target population of your project?
I am making the pivot from Blkfeminst Advisors to Jasmine Burnett in support of the shift from systems and project management, to focus on the people anchoring in strategy, facilitation, training as a companion psychedelic coaching and integration. The problem I am seeking to solve in the world of my work is the focus on systems changes without focusing on the behavioral changes of people in this time of rapid and dynamic changes.
I launched my firm Blkfeminst Advisors in spring 2020 in response to the lack of systems anchoring and alignment within the reproductive health, rights and justice institutional ecosystem. At a time when our political alignment and institutional strengthening needed to be at an all time high with the fall of Roe v. Wade and the accompanying global impacts of COVID-19 and racial terrorism in the U.S., I designed leadership curriculum, assessment tools and process design to support my organization and foundation clients.
How will you know that you have achieved that impact? What data will you use to assess your impact?
I will know that I have achieved that impact if I am able to create this opportunity for myself and share it with at least 3 consultants. It is my hope to have 10 consultants with at least the planning process for a year long sabbatical by 2028.
How do you anticipate this unique leadership education impacting you personally? What new skills are you hoping too develop & grow through this experience?
I imagine this education will offer me more space to examine ways that I can actively practice making space for creating the conditions to transform my habits around work and labor that will save my life. I know that I have been working through burn out as many other women have. I believe I can center my experience for myself in ways that I have resourced others to do in their experiences with me as their coach/facilitator/consultant. I am only seeking out experiences and opportunities that will extend my life and enhance my wellbeing. This is the personal impact that I believe this leadership education could have on my personal life.
I am seeking to develop skill in how to step into the true form of myself, and to release my attachments to the old narrative/forms that served me before, but that I cannot carry forward in this enhanced life expression of myself.
Where would you like to see yourself professionally in the next 3 years?
In the next 3 years, I would like to see myself as a leading coaching and strategist for people leading institutions that are invested in systematizing expansive wellness opportunities to their staff. I want to do institutional strategy work with established consulting firms to transition my consulting practice Blkfeminst Advisors to Jasmine Burnett. Blkfeminst Advisors provides institutional and strategy support and project management for institutional strengthening. Jasmine Burnett provides leadership support and strategic transformation through psychedelic coaching and integration for individual strengthening. I will be an advisor and strategist to thriving and values-aligned institutional consultancies, have a published book for activists focusing on personal values and community standards for engagement, and have my herbalism business established through immersive learning and retreats.
I see myself extending the generous offers that I make to others, to myself.