ABOUT
Cara's education in power dynamics includes experience in more than one high-control group. Deconstructing how coercion and control actually work is what fuels her joy in helping individuals and groups use power intentionally and for mutual good.
About
My work keeps coming back to one thing: power — how it harms when it's hoarded, and how we heal and thrive when we learn to share it.
I'm a leadership coach, a cooperative developer, a film producer, and a survivor advocate. That can look like four different careers. It isn't. It's four tools for one job: helping people who've been harmed or silenced find their voice, their footing, and their power and helping groups learn to hold power together.
In leadership coaching, I work with leaders, foundations, and small businesses. Over the years I've discovered that coaching is often about power: how to hold it consciously, use it well, and share it, both inside a team and inside ourselves.
In cooperative development, I help worker-owned businesses build the governance, communication, and trust it takes to function as a democracy. Sharing power is a learned skill and takes support in how to productively work through conflict.
I learned cooperative development through Cooperation Humboldt's Worker-Owned Academy — and I'm a worker-owner myself: I co-founded the Cooperative Agriculture Network (CAN), a worker co-op doing cooperative and community development in Northern California's Emerald Triangle.
Whatever drew you here — a co-op finding its footing, or a leader learning to share power — I'd love to talk.
In film, I produce documentary and narrative stories about people who fought for human dignity against systems built to criminalize them:
The Migraine — the story of Pebbles Trippett, a lifelong civil-rights force whose fight for justice includes cannabis as a medical right. (Executive Producer)
Join the Club — the story of Dennis Peron, gay-liberation and AIDS-era activist and a father of the medical-cannabis movement. (Associate Producer)
Typically Trafficked — the true story of a Karuk woman who survived trafficking and turned her experience into a mission to protect other women and girls; survivor-led, community-rooted, and narrated in part by her own daughter. (Executive Producer)
In survivor advocacy, I host and produce Fool's Gold: Discernment in the Age of Grift, a podcast on seeing through manipulation, coercion, and grift. I also run a small survivor support group, offer peer support, and help people recognize coercion and coercive control. If you are a survivor and would like to speak with me, please reach out via email or book a time below.
