The Collective / Radical Optimist Collective

The Collective

We strive for lasting change through collective impact.

Radical Optimist Collective (ROC) was co-created in 2018 by a diverse team of facilitators and healing practitioners with a wide variety of expertise. Our collective began as an offering to guide and support individuals and groups in racial awareness and racial healing work as prompted by experiences at the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

While our origin story is grounded by our work in Montgomery, these same processes transcended into deeper consultative, training, coaching, and facilitation work with organizations and companies. Our practitioners have a collective 100+ years’ experience in racial equity and inclusion work with more than a dozen industries representing more than 50 organizations and companies. We have led organizations and initiatives, managed people and teams, and raised and granted millions of dollars in social change efforts.

ROC operates as a collective because we believe in drawing on the experiences and strengths from a broad array of people with different lived experiences. What makes us unique is that the members of our collective do a variety of different things and have a myriad of gifts. From social workers and therapists, university professors and philanthropic consultants, and energy workers and trauma-informed healers. When we come together for our work, it is as a collective that leverages our individual strengths and capacities and does not require our connection to operate in a typical, hierarchical way. This way of being is also how we operate differently from white dominant norms and culture.

Shakita Brooks Jones

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Shakita Brooks Jones is an adjunct professor within Auburn University’s social work program. She seeks solutions to the root causes of poverty and the plight of the working poor, and she works to remove historical socioeconomic barriers that have disproportionately impacted Alabama’s working poor in rural areas. A truth teller who brings ease and comfort, Shakita serves as a lead facilitator, 1:1 coach, and co-creator of design and strategy with our partners and internal team.

Lisa Flick Wilson

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Lisa Flick Wilson loves to inject optimism into problem-solving and make tables larger to include more voices. She does not shy away from putting race at the center of conversations, understands her place as a white woman in racial equity, and welcomes being in the struggle of interrupting racism. Lisa embodies the core of our collective and serves as lead on engagements, design, strategy, and partnerships, while also working as a 1:1 coach and lead facilitator.

Vanessa Jackson

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Vanessa Jackson is a licensed clinical social worker, Soul Doula, and owner of Healing Circles, Inc., an Atlanta-based healing practice. She is a nationally recognized speaker on mental health issues, with a focus on culturally conscious therapy and therapy with marginalized populations. Vanessa’s passion is supporting activists in creating healthy and balanced lives. A compass on a winding path, Vanessa serves as a lead facilitator, 1:1 coach, strategy and design expert with Radical Optimist.

Kenya Jackson-Saulters

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Kenya Jackson-Saulters has spent over a decade advocating for personal discovery through writing, spirituality, and mental health, and works to help women pursue their passions in healthy sustainable ways. She created The Outdoor Journal Tour, a custom personal development experience for women that blends the health benefits of exercise, meditation, and writing. At Radical Optimist, Kenya serves as 1:1 coach, facilitator, and lead expert in creating meaningful space for our partners and team.

Staci Walker

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Staci Lynch is a leader with proven results in communications, relationship development, program design and implementation, and coaching. A German Marshall Memorial Fellow (2009), Staci truly sees the world through a global lens and is passionate about promoting racial equity and diversity. She has spent the last decade and a half working to elevate the quality of education accessible to all children. With Radical Optimist, Staci serves as a 1:1 Coach, facilitator, and strategy and design expert.

Corey Dobyns

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Corey Dobyns is a spirited nurturer of work cultures that value strategic solutions to promote inclusive, diverse, and equitable environments. A proven leader and visionary, Corey has founded three companies and has extensive training and experience in the areas of people-to-people connections, community building, self-compassion, self-care, trauma models, and recovery. At Radical Optimist, she serves as a facilitator, 1:1 coach, and all-around operations support.

Our Partners

We achieve our goals through shared work and shared experiences.

Every aspect of Radical Optimist Collective is collaborative, from the work we do with individuals and groups or organizations, to the engagements we have with other thought leaders working toward similar goals.

The work of Radical Optimist would not be possible without the generous support of organizations, individuals, authors, leaders and all who share our desire for collective progress through inquiry and advocacy.

Dudley’s Apothecary

Aromatherapy blends inspired by Vanessa Jackson's great-great grandparents, formerly enslaved African American herbalists, honor their legacy by passing down their wisdom through this line of healing sprays.

Outdoor Journal Tour

A program guiding participants through scenic landscapes and hiking trails, combining physical activity, journaling, and meditation for a personalized, empowering journey of self-discovery and healing.

Michelle Browder

An American artist and visionary known for her activism, historical tours, and sculptures – notably, The Mothers of Gynecology Monument in Montgomery, Alabama.

Seeing Whiteness

A learning circle experience dedicated to helping white people notice and challenge the ways white people are socialized to protect whiteness and hold racism in place.

I am given a decision point each day, to be in it, or not to be. That is my white-bodied experience, to choose. I am real about that,

and encourage other white bodied people to also choose to be in it, to greet the day, with, "yes, I am in."

Corey Dobyns

Creating space for racial healing is a salve for my soul. I yearn for others to join us in this life-long practice of unlearning and re-imaging a different way,
for that’s where true liberation resides. l am honored to be in community with the amazing women of ROC.

Staci Lynch / Radical Optimist Collective

This work allows me to bring together my passion for history, healing trauma and community-building,

and offer it to communities to strengthen our connections and heal our communities.

Vanessa Jackson / Radical Optimist Collective

Healing is possible when we recognize lived experiences cannot be disassociated from racial history and identity,

and that real solutions are co-created with people and not for them.

Lisa Flick Wilson / Radical Optimist Collective

Healing the impact racism has had on Black people is essential to achieving social and financial integrity,

as well as emotional and psychological equity.

Kenya Jackson-Saulters / Radical Optimist Collective

When doing this work, I draw from my ancestral strength to help increase understanding

about the relevance of the past and to build empathy between cultures.

Shakita Brooks Jones / Radical Optimist Collective

We strive for lasting change through collective impact.

Shakita Brooks Jones

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Lisa Flick Wilson

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Vanessa Jackson

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Kenya Jackson-Saulters

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Staci Walker

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

Corey Dobyns

Strategy & Facilitation Consultant

We achieve our goals through shared work and shared experiences.

Dudley’s Apothecary

Outdoor Journal Tour

Michelle Browder

Seeing Whiteness

“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and corrodes trust, and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”

“No one who has ever touched liberation could possibly want anything other than liberation for everyone.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

“The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.”

“Humanity is not without answers or solutions regarding how to liberate itself from scenarios that invariably end with mass exterminations. Tools such as compassion, trust, empathy, love, and ethical discernment are already in our possession. The next sensible step would be to use them.”

“A real apology requires some labor.”

“We can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-action.’ In other words, our relationship with the land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?”

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Every relationship starts with a conversation.