Transformation Series: Building Beloved Community in Online Spaces

Beloved Community doesn’t begin or end within four walls; it extends to our school, work, and lives online. How do we tend to ourselves and each other in virtual spaces, and what does Beloved Community look like in digital meetings, in online classrooms, and beyond? 

Join Rachel, Shirley, and our guest, Phil Weglarz, CIIS Program Chair and Core Faculty in Expressive Arts Therapy and licensed California Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) and Registered Expressive Art Therapist (REAT), for a deep conversation exploring these questions and more. Through their conversation, supportive ideas and practices will be shared that can help attendees practice Beloved Community online. 

What is the Transformation Series?

The Transformation Series is part of the Beloved Community Initiative's commitment to critically engage with the CIIS community by platforming inspiring voices. Designed to enhance our mission of cultivating courageous conversations, bridging divides, and building connections, we hope that this series will inspire hope and transformative action.

Reserve Your Spot

About Our Speakers

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Rachel Bryant, M.A., is an educator, leader, and healer with more than two decades of experience in public and community mental health. She serves as Vice President, Community Engagement and Belonging at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds. With a pedagogical and therapeutic orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis, Rachel is dedicated to working alongside others to heal the soul wounds of poverty, violence, and addiction in our communities.

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Shirley Strong, M.Ed., M.A., is a social justice educator and advocate committed to increasing equity and inclusion in higher education and healthcare for underserved and vulnerable populations. She has worked in higher education, philanthropy and social justice for over 35 years, including eight years as Dean of Students and Director of Diversity at CIIS and five years as Chief Diversity Officer at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. Currently, Ms. Strong serves as senior advisor to the Structural Competency Working Group (SCWG), a cross-section of health professionals who train health organizations to recognize and address structural racism in health care and to develop policies and procedures to improve health equity. She is committed to integrating spirituality with activism in the service of the Beloved Community, as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other prophetic leaders.
 

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Phil Weglarz has served as core faculty in the Expressive Arts Therapy concentration at CIIS since Fall 2012. As a licensed California Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) and Registered Expressive Art Therapist (REAT), Phil's work has focused on the integration of a wide range of artistic and cultural practices in meeting the mental health needs of children, adults, families, and communities. Clinically, he has worked with neuro and culturally-diverse children and adults in medical and psychiatric hospitals, foster care, group homes, after-school programs, and in a studio-based private practice.