quanita Roberson, Tenneson Woolf
“Friendship is essentially a partnership.”
~Aristotle
Together, Quanita and Tenneson have over 40 years of combined experience
in the fields of leadership, community, dialogue, and change.
They bring unique perspective garnered
over the years with good colleagues and friends
in wide-ranging layers of organizations, systems, and learning communities.
Their individual and shared work is rooted
in a deep friendship, love of learning, growing in community,
and a belief that there is more unseen than seen, that is needing and wanting to be discovered.
Fire & Water is a signature offering
and an expression of growing further into the depth of work needed for times such as these.
in the fields of leadership, community, dialogue, and change.
They bring unique perspective garnered
over the years with good colleagues and friends
in wide-ranging layers of organizations, systems, and learning communities.
Their individual and shared work is rooted
in a deep friendship, love of learning, growing in community,
and a belief that there is more unseen than seen, that is needing and wanting to be discovered.
Fire & Water is a signature offering
and an expression of growing further into the depth of work needed for times such as these.
QUANITA ROBERSONI am the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation in the world. I haven’t always known this but I have always been moving toward it. I started my healing journey at a young age. I am a shaman. It has taken me a long time to grow into this...to grow into me. Mostly because I never quite understood why a person would choose this life. Now I understand that it chooses you. I believe we are in a time that is calling us to remember. Remember what really matters. Remember the truth of who we really are. Remember that we belong to each other. I am a facilitator dedicated to addressing embedded trauma. I am a spiritual teacher, speaker, author, life coach, and a storyteller. My work over the past 20 years has been focused in the areas of healing, initiation, grief, leadership, diversity, and inclusion. I have worked on a couple of national projects including work with The Kellogg Foundation’s, Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation Program and People’s Action’s Heartland Initiative: A Listening Tour of Rural and Small Town America. I am currently working on projects with the International Centre for Conscious Leadership the National United Church of Christ Board, University of Cincinnati Foundation, and Cradle Cincinnati. I have a background in Organizational Management and Development with a concentration in Integral Theory which has supported me in looking at the world in a more holistic way. I also have had the privilege of studying with some amazing elders. Including Sobonfu Some and Jojopah Maria Nsoroma, keepers of ancient indigenous wisdom from the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, Fanchon Shur in Embodying Creative Leadership through Growth in Motion, and Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of The Circle Way. I have authored two books, Soul Growing: Wisdom for 13 year old boys from men around the world and Soul Growing II: Wisdom for 13 year old girls from women around the world. I am currently finishing a book with Amy Howton (2019-2020 Fire & Water participant) called The InnerGround Railroad: A 40 day journey to remembering self and spirit. I was born, raised and currently live in Cincinnati, OH with my two children. I am inspired by the Ohio River and the stories of freedom that were birth from here. I love that I get to work with Tenneson in this work. I once said to him, “We think a lot alike in very different ways.” I believe this adds to the diversity of skill and wisdom we are able to bring to Fire & Water. |
TENNESON WOOLFAll of my life, I’ve been the kind of human that has had as much interest in the unseen as I have had in the seen. I’ve had interest in the mystery and the mystical, with an inherent hunch that things are not as they seem, despite the human ability to concretize belief systems and leadership practices. It is only for a little of my life that I’ve been able to articulate any of that. Some of my hunger comes from a despair, native to times such as these -- I continue to learn that many of us are feeling it. My hunger for such re-storying of who we are as human beings and what we are up to in our work, family, and community, comes from an innate desire to evolve myself and the systems I’m part of. I am a facilitator, workshop leader, teacher, writer, and coach committed to improving the quality of collaboration and imagination needed in groups, teams, and organizations — to help us be in times such as these with consciousness, kindness, and learning. My work over 20+ years has been to design and lead meetings in participative formats. From strategic visioning with boards to large conference design to communities just learning to listen again to one another. I've worked extensively with faith communities, educators, and foundation leaders. I post a daily blog, Human to Human, on my website, in which I offer reflection on varied aspects of participative leadership practices, insights, and human to human depth. In 2020 I published a collection of poems and reflections, A Cadence of Despair: Poems and Reflections on Heartbreak, Loss and Renewal which invites and maps relationship with the deeply personal that so often is surprisingly universal. Three orientations -- living systems, self-organization, and emergence inspire and inform all of my work. So does emptiness, breath, and a fresh-picked garden tomato. My education background includes an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in organizational behavior. My work lineages include The Berkana Institute with Margaret Wheatley, The Circle Way with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, and The Art of Hosting with Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen. I live in a small town where urban meets rural in Lindon, Utah, in a valley at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. I’m originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I am a father to three children (and father-inlaw to one son-inlaw and one daughter-inlaw), all who continue to teach me about exciting and tender aspects of life. I like to kayak, cycle, and grow a few vegetables in my garden. I’m glad to be in colleagueship and friendship with Quanita to offer Fire & Water to people in many walks of life. I love being in depth and play with others in journey that dares to look at the thing under the thing under the thing. |
QT was time for me to sink more deeply into knowing myself,
meeting and knowing others,
and discovering that magic that transforms our individual paths and our communities
because of these newly created relationships
and the new lenses that we see the world through.
Jules Myers, Past Workshop Participant
Former Steward, Hope Springs Institute
meeting and knowing others,
and discovering that magic that transforms our individual paths and our communities
because of these newly created relationships
and the new lenses that we see the world through.
Jules Myers, Past Workshop Participant
Former Steward, Hope Springs Institute
|
Courage
What if the moment we choose courage and step into a courageous act, we move from the private personal into the shared communal? What if, in courage, it is where we transform ourselves and each other? What if the movement from our personal fear into honoring our collective truth is the very needed nature of being alive?
|
Capacity
When we grow, we grow in consciousness. Consciousness gives us access to larger perspective. Larger perspective give us more choice. More choice increases our own personal and internal power. From this, we build capacity to hold and work with the ever-present increasing complexity that characterizes contemporary times.
|
Creativity
Creativity is an act of listening to bring more of what is from the world of the unseen, and unheard, into this world so that it can be seen and heard in a different way. It requires us to listen, trust, and take action in a way that makes it possible to move with the flow of life itself, abundant and sourced.
|
