Facilitation & Space Holding

Sarah (she/they) is an artist, storyteller, and facilitator. Their work is rooted in a core framework of justice, radical inclusion, creativity, and anti-racist praxis. Sarah embodies a liberatory eco-arts practice in service of right-relationship with land, animals, plants, and people. Sarah is a curious and strategic facilitator who weaves joy, story, connection, and purpose into all of their community building work.

Sarah has experience as a frontline staff member, educator, outreach director, birth worker, project manager, continuity coordinator, and nonprofit operations director. Their work as a birth and death doula is particularly powerful when applied to groups interested in crossing transformative thresholds.

Sarah holds a BA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Gender Studies from Mills College. And they are also a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory Theatre. Sarah is a 2021-22 fellow with the American Leadership Forum of Oregon, a Certified Narrative4 Facilitator, and a Certified Catalyst Leader & Facilitator. Sarah also serves on multiple boards working as a grassroots community organizer.

Sarah is a white, cis, queer, able-bodied, woman of size, with Celtic ancestry and descends from Scottish stone masons, Irish laundresses, and midwestern homesteaders.

Sarah resides in Halfway, OR on the stolen ancestral lands of the Nimiipuu, Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla. To align her recognition more closely with action, Sarah redistributes a percentage of proceeds from her work to local native-led community organizations.

While Sarah works as an independent guide, much of Sarah’s facilitation work happens in partnership with Joy Facilitation, a team-led enterprise founded by Myriam Loeschen.

Invite Sarah to speak at your next event.

Sarah is a gifted speaker, delivering audience experiences and keynotes with poignant humor and emotional vulnerability. Whether Sarah is speaking about disability justice, creativity, neuroplasticity, gender parity in the arts, parenthood, birth, or grief, she has an intuitive ability to understand the needs of her audience. Maybe it’s her strong theatre background. Or maybe it’s the fact that she was raised in a vibrant home full of storytellers (her Dad was once a screenwriter for “Mork & Mindy”). Or perhaps it’s her absolute willingness to “go there.” Whatever the reason, her speaking approach is dynamic, fun, and wildly empowering.

Types of Events

• KEYNOTE ADDRESSES — Choosing Sarah as your keynote speaker promises to be both inspirational and unforgettable. Keeping in mind the uniqueness of each specific group, Sarah blends personal and collective themes that are topical and relevant for your individual event. Sarah’s keynotes are a great fit for conventions, festivals, civic events, universities, and schools.

• CONFERENCES — With more than 20 years of experience working as an artist-activist, and informed by the hard-won lessons of her personal struggles (more about that below), Sarah relates to the overwhelming challenges your conference is addressing within it’s sector. Sarah offers a completely unique perspective centered in resilience, service, justice, and the nature of right-relationship.

• LEADERSHIP WORKSHOPS — In the nonprofit world, Sarah is both a leader and mentor for many. Sarah offers tailored workshop experiences designed to connect participants to their personal “why” and activate around a collective mission.

Keynote Topics

• BIG LEAPS: Moving from a city of millions to a tiny rural town? Leaving a job to pursue life as an independent artist? Escaping a violent marriage? Founding an art collective? Asking for money for your big idea from donors? Organizing large gatherings? Sarah brings her life experience with BIG LEAPS into sharp focus as she shares the “how” and the “why” of risking it all.

• BIRTH: Whether you are having a baby or bringing forth a new project, Sarah knows how to celebrate and honor the profound beauty of beginning something new. Sarah worked for eight years as a birth doula and four as a postpartum clinician in a Dallas birth center. She has walked alongside countless couples as they dream, conceive, labor, and bring life into the world. The mythic, miraculous, and mundane nature of birth is on full display as Sarah shares her hopeful and heartbreaking stories about what it really means to say “yes”, to begin, to trust, and to free fall.

• CREATIVITY & CREATIVE ALCHEMY: Our innate creativity is a powerful tool for transformation, innovation, and liberation. We can change the world by developing our own personal creative practice. Sarah draws clear and surprising lines between creativity, personal growth, the natural world, and movements for social justice.

• GRIEF & LOSS: In 2015 Sarah lost her beloved brother to an opioid overdose. The enormity of this loss broke open a floodgate of grief, illuminating all of the other griefs she had not yet dealt with: an early sexual assault, the dissolution of her first marriage and the death of her ex-husband, the traumatic birth and subsequent disability of her second child, and the loss of her step-father to cancer. Grief has been Sarah’s greatest teacher. And the joy of a creative life has been her greatest healer. Sarah speaks with aching humor and vulnerability about the relationship between grief and joy, loss and awakening.

• PARENTING, NEUROPLASTICITY, DISABILITY JUSTICE, & HOPE: Sarah is the mother of two children. Walker, her oldest, is a curious and sensitive soul who has been a font of wisdom and humor since the day they could string a sentence together. Charlie, her youngest, is a courageous joy-bomb who moves through the world with a variety of intersecting disabilities. Sarah’s stories about parenthood, the elastic nature of the brain, and advocating for her children in the most nerve-wracking of circumstances will elicit laughter, tears, and illuminate for audiences the deep well of their own resilience.

Previous Engagements:

• American Leadership Forum of Oregon 2022 Gala — Portland, OR

• Friends for Good: Interfaith Dialog — First UU in Dallas, TX

• Children’s Defense Fund — State Capital in Austin, TX

• Women In Classical Music Symposium — Dallas Symphony Orchestra

• Andromeda’s Sisters Arts & Advocacy Gala — East Hampton, NY

• Squam Art Workshops — Squam, NH

• Earthday at Skyview Harmony Communty Garden — Dallas, TX

• Great River Shakespeare Festival: Allyship Workshop — Winona, MN

• Exchange Club of Lake Highlands — Dallas, TX

• StateraArts 2019 National Conference —NYC

• StateraArts 2018 National Conference — Milwaukee, WI

• StateraArts 2016 National Conference — Denver, CO

• StateraArts 2015 National Conference — Cedar City, UT

• Graduation Student Keynote 2004 — Mills College in Oakland, CA

• Graduation Student Keynote 2000 — Pacific Conservatory Theatre, CA

“Prior to the wedding, Sarah spent a lot of time speaking with us about how we envisioned our ceremony. She was even a great help in walking us through writing our own vows, as well as helping to ease our heightened levels of anxiety as the date grew nearer. While working with Sarah, she always made us feel comfortable, respected, loved and empowered as a lesbian couple. She is a warm, compassionate and loving person and was also incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. The ceremony that she performed celebrated not only our relationship and love, but the beauty and joy of the LGBTQ community as a whole, which is exactly what we wanted.  She was the perfect officiant for our wedding.” — Kaitlyn Winter & Sheena Cooper