What does it actually take to stay in the work of changing systems — not for a season, but for a life?
Shawna Wakefield has spent twenty-five years building frameworks for transformative feminist leadership at Oxfam, Gender at Work, and the UN. She is also a practitioner of somatics, meditation, and embodied leadership — a woman who learned, long before she had language for it, that the body holds knowledge the thinking mind cannot reach on its own. She is a mother who lost a child in Cambodia. A Black and mixed-race kid who moved from New York City to rural Vermont in fourth grade and met "othering" before she had a word for it. A daughter of Alan and Pat Wakefield who now meditates with her ancestors every morning.
In this conversation, Renay and Shawna sit with what it actually takes to stay in justice work over the long haul — not as a career, but as life. They talk about Afghanistan after September 11, Cambodia after profound loss, and the turning point when Shawna realized that being well in her own body was the prerequisite to staying in the work. They talk about the difference between guilt and responsibility, and why guilt is not a good motivation. They talk about what changes when a leader stops trying to lead from the neck up.
Across the conversation, Shawna and Renay return to the question of what it costs to stay and what it costs to leave. They go back to fourth grade — to the moment a classmate asked Shawna how she was so tan all year long, and to what a pause in the body actually feels like at nine years old. They move to the turning point in Cambodia that reshaped Shawna's relationship to her work and her body. They sit with a board of directors stuck on a hard decision, and what happened when Shawna told the room to just jump around. They talk about Root. Rise. Pollinate! — Shawna's project gathering feminist changemakers from across the globe into embodied storytelling — and what it is teaching her about imagining new futures while standing inside this one. And they land on what practicing freedom actually looks like on the hardest days.
This is an episode about remembrance — about ancestors who weren't free in their movement, and what it means to remember, every morning, that you are still here.
It's also an episode where the body of work shows up in the body of the conversation. Somewhere in the middle, Shawna does what she has been teaching leaders to do for twenty-five years: she moves Renay, in real time, from her thinking mind into her body. No plan. No preparation. Just the conversation itself, doing the work.
Shawna Wakefield
Shawna is an independent consultant, facilitator, and embodiment practitioner who helps leaders, organizations, and social justice movements align their values with action through creative, contemplative, and embodied practices. She is also the co-founder of Root. Rise. Pollinate!, where she supports healers, justice seekers, and changemakers in navigating conflict, building resilience, and imagining more just futures.
Drawing on more than two decades of experience in gender justice and international development, Shawna has held leadership roles with organizations including Oxfam, UN Women, UNICEF, and the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. She also previously taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where she earned her Master of Public Administration.
Today, Shawna continues to explore themes of resilience, embodiment, and collective transformation through her consulting, teaching, and writing, including her Substack, Practicing Freedom as Things Fall Apart.
J. Renay Loper
Renay is a Clinical Faculty in Organizational Leadership for the Bard MBA in Sustainability, where she focuses on justice-centered transformation in the workplace. Previously, she was the Vice President of Program Innovation at PYXERA Global where she served on the Executive Leadership Team, led five country offices, drove the development of new business and programs, co-led the organization's work on inclusive circular cities, and advised corporate clients on their social impact strategies. Renay also led the organization’s ARC (Antiracist Collective) initiatives, which included internal and external efforts toward dismantling unjust systems. To this end, Renay created Rhetoric to Action, a series of conversations to bridge sectors toward collective action around social and racial justice.
Prior to PYXERA Global, Renay led the grassroots exchange and education grant portfolio at the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, and has served in a variety of leadership roles in higher education, nonprofit, and business prior to that. Renay is an avid speaker and facilitator, has authored and edited numerous publications, including a resource journal, Student Affairs Professionals Cultivating Campus Climates Inclusive of International Students (Jossey Bass). Renay serves on the board of directors of nonprofits including Community Change, Harpswell Foundation, and Girl Rising.