We help youth-serving organizations become hubs of healing, collaborative, and sustainable learning environments that help children and adults thrive.
We help youth-serving organizations become hubs of healing, collaborative, and sustainable learning environments that help children and adults thrive.
Our Mission
Leading A(head) Collaborative (LAC) co-creates with our most proximate education stakeholders and community caregivers to cultivate healing-centered practices that disrupt systemic, intergenerational trauma in homes, schools, and districts so that children can grow up whole, fulfill their purpose, and create generational change.
62662HERE ARE THE facts
In our schools and communities, toxic stress and a lack of healing-centered support systems lead to psychologically unsafe environments for mental and social wellness.
There is a disconnect between family and school. The lack of partnership between the two affects students’ academic and emotional development.
Many districts struggle to maintain teachers and develop their leadership pipeline due to teacher burnout, which contributes to high turnover and lack of teacher retention.
The approach we take
Utilizing an interdisciplinary, intergenerational approach, we work alongside caregivers, educators, and the local community to serve our most essential education stakeholders: our children. We address the root issues impacting education through a community-based participatory model that honors educators’ and families’ cultural wisdom and strengthens family-school partnerships to cultivate healing-centered learning environments.
What We Want to Up Root
Intergenerational Trauma
Children and families in historically marginalized communities often experience systemic inequities, resulting in intergenerational trauma. Families living in under-resourced communities are 4x more likely to develop adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), brain development damage, and health challenges leading to shorter life expectancy rates. In Tulsa, OK, the life expectancy gap is 13 years from North to South Tulsa. In Las Vegas, NV, there is a 16-year gap in only a 9-mile radius.
Educational Inequities
Children living in marginalized communities frequently lack the necessary access to educational, career, wealth, and mental health services and disproportionally experience inequitable school discipline practices, accounting for students missing 82 more days of instructional time due to out-of-school suspensions.
Insufficient Partnerships
Schools in marginalized communities often lack strong family-school partnerships and cohesive school staff teams, leading to division rather than collaboration among educators. Families are seldom empowered to have meaningful roles in their children's schools, while educators grapple with overwhelming pressure to address deep educational inequities, often resulting in burnout. Neglecting the interpersonal dynamics in these relationships can lead to adversarial interactions, further marginalizing children if left unaddressed. These compounded inequities inside and outside school create a significant gap in these youth's educational and emotional development.
Meet Shannon
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
A visionary and purpose-driven leader, Shannon has dedicated her career to partnering with children, families, and communities to counter the narratives of historically marginalized communities by strengthening communal wellness and disrupting toxic stress through her work. She is the Founder and CEO of Leading A(head) Collaborative, an equity-centered organization whose mission is to co-create healing-centered learning communities to dismantle systemic, intergenerational trauma in schools, homes, and districts so that children can grow up whole, fulfill their purpose, and create generational change. Ultimately, as children’s community caregivers’ wellness is prioritized, schools and communities become places of healing, and our children can learn in a reservoir of healing and support.
Who we have worked with
Our ServiceS
Using our LAC framework, our professional development builds participants' capacity by targeting organizational priority needs. Participants gain targeted support that helps them to make shifts in their practice that they can implement tomorrow.
Professional Development
School Consulting & Coaching
We begin our work with healing-centered audits that analyze and determine strengths and areas for growth. Our customized implementation support guides teachers and leaders in developing healing classrooms, transformative family-school partnerships, and effective ways to alleviate toxic stress within systems.
The Village Well Fellowship™
The Village Well Fellowship™ is a series of workshops that equip educators and families with the knowledge and tools to cultivate a more healing-centered home and school environment, develop a deep self-awareness of practice, and co-create a village of support that increases student academic achievement and emotional resilience.
Impact Stories
It made me realize that I am in control and allowed me to take care of myself in ways that I never thought I needed.
Student | Youth Program Participant
I’m learning and putting into practice the value of building relationships with parents. This is the true healing that our school systems need. We need this in schools all over the world.
Teacher | The Village Well Fellowship™
I feel so much peace and love entering the space! It educates me and also my children love it. The fact that it focuses on the entire family is awesome.
Parent | The Village Well Fellowship™
OUR work
To commemorate Juneteenth 2020, we hosted our first community conversation with over 40 participants to discuss how we could facilitate systemic change within our spheres of influence. This robust conversation generated rich dialogue as panelists answered questions centered on the African Proverbs: "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."
During the conversation, panelists discussed whether “all the children were well” per the traditional greeting of the Masai people and how we can partner together across sectors to co-create change.
“The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.”
— bell hooks