How We Stay in the Conservation Movement: A Conversation About Grace

Description

Right now, leaders are being asked to endure, to function, and to support their teams in a time of profound upheaval and grief. In the conservation space and beyond, leaders are navigating impossible tradeoffs, holding deep loss while continuing to push forward within systems that, while always flawed, are accelerating harm and injustice in new and painful ways.

Amid it all, leaders are extending so much grace and care to one another. Showing up for our teams and our communities is a generous and demanding act. Too often, it is leaders with marginalized identities who carry an outsized share of the emotional labor required to keep both people and movements resourced and alive. And still, we want to show up for people and places as best we can.

Join this interactive conversation with:

• Ronda Lee Chapman of the Trust for Public Land
• David Lamfrom of the National Parks Conservation Association
• Kristi Chester Vance of Together Rising as an Environmental Community (TREC)

As we face the heartbreak of this time as well as the chronic harms of ongoing injustice, how do we allow grace — and joy! — to flow back toward ourselves? How do we create practices that allow us to step back and renew, so that we can stay in the work without sacrificing ourselves? And how do we carry the load equitably, and together?

Through conversation, self-reflection, and interactive exercises, we’ll focus on bringing humanity into leadership — creating permission for leaders to acknowledge struggles and burnout. Our goal is that you leave with a trail map to the joy and grace you deserve, a good laugh in your belly, a campfire of validation, and a strong tailwind as you carry forward.

The Conservation Capacity Project is cohosting this conversation with TREC to strengthen our community.