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ANTI-OPPRESSIVE COACHING A.B.L.E. INSTITUTE Leadership Without Harm: A One-Day Rebuild
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Employees Leave Cultures; Not Companies.

Lead The Shift™ is a 12-month licensing program that embeds anti-oppressive supervision directly into your organization's leadership structure — so accountability becomes the culture, not a training your people sit through once and forget.

Book a Discovery Call!

IT'S TIME TO DO THE HARD WORK.

Chances are that we already know why you’re here. We know what you did or didn’t do. As you can imagine, there isn’t anything we have heard before and we are, by no means, easily shocked.

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Home of the Anti-Oppressive Advocacy® Framework |  Organizational Development

Most leaders already know something isn't working.
They just haven't found the right place to say it out loud.


Organizations land on this page for one of three reasons. None of them are wrong. All of them are the right place to start.

1

Your retention numbers don't reflect your values
Your best people keep leaving, your teams are quietly disengaged, and you can feel the gap between what you say and what your people actually experience. You know something is wrong in how your leaders are leading. You just don't know where to start fixing it.

2

You've tried everything and nothing has actually changed
You've invested in trainings, brought in speakers, launched initiatives, and checked every box. Yet the culture is exactly where it was. The harm is still happening quietly. Your managers still don't know how to navigate it. You're exhausted by programs that generate reports but not results — and you're looking for something that actually works.

3

Something happened — and you can't afford for it to happen again
A complaint. A resignation that surprised everyone. A situation that exposed exactly how unprepared your supervision culture was. You're not here to do damage control — you're here because you understand that what happened is a symptom of something structural, and you are finally ready to address the structure.

No, we aren't here to judge how you got here.

Leadership culture does not change through intention alone. It changes through accountability, supervision, and systems that people can actually feel.

We know that people usually land on our page for three main reasons:

1

You’re curious about anti-oppression education and assessment

2

You’re exhausted from your surface-level performance of activism.

3

You’ve already been called out for your oppressive behavior.

No, we aren’t here to judge how you got here.

We’re happy to see you and more interested in your commitment to staying and getting a game plan for showing up, really showing up, for communities that have been historically silenced in exchange for your comfort.

That sting a bit? Good.

Checking boxes has never changed a culture.
It was never designed to.
An entire industry is built around making organizations feel like they are doing something about harm without requiring them to change  how their leaders lead.
  • ✖ One-day trainings that leave your supervisors with a certificate but no new tools for Monday morning
  • ✖Mandatory DEI modules that measure completion, not comprehension and how power moves
  • ✖ Outside consultants who deliver their program and leave — taking everything they built with them
  • ✖ Rebranded DEI programs that change the name to survive the political moment but offer the same surface-level approach underneath

You being here confirms that checking boxes won’t change systemic ills.

  • ✖ No anti-racism book clubs
  • ✖ No mandatory trainings that are more CYA than DEI
  • ✖ No in-service training that’s really just a grown-up version of the movie days we used to have in grade school
  • ✖ No more [let’s add one more point here to emphasize this part and to help transition]

None of these change the supervision culture. They lack...

Vulnerability.

Humility.

Accountability.

None of these ideas work without...

Vulnerability.

Humility.

Accountability.

Lead The Shift™ — accountability infrastructure that outlasts any political moment.

We don't come in, train your people, and leave. We license our Anti-Oppressive Supervision™ framework directly to your organization and certify your own leaders to carry it forward.
 
What you build with us becomes yours. Not dependent on our next visit. Not tied to a budget cycle or an executive order. Owned by your people, sustained by your leadership, and designed to work long after the engagement ends.

 

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR SERVICES

Ready to start Practicing Liberation?

Download this FREE GUIDE: Anti-Oppressive Questions to Ask Yourself! This free guide is your first step toward asking yourself tough questions and working through these issues.

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WHO WE ARE

Start By Talking, LLC. is a Georgia-based organizational development company specializing in anti-oppressive supervision, leadership accountability, and culture change. We work with leaders and institutions ready to examine how power operates in their organizations — and to build the structures, practices, and supervision culture that make real accountability possible.

ABOUT US

HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?

Your SBT anti-oppressive journey starts here! Learn more about some of the options we offer for education, training, and community engagement.

Anti-Oppressive Coaching

 For Individuals

You already know something needs to change about how you lead. This is where you do that work. Anti-Oppressive Coaching is a one-on-one engagement for leaders who are ready to move beyond good intentions — examining how bias, conditioning, and leadership habit show up in their day-to-day practice and building a more accountable, authentic approach. This is not cheerleading. It is the personal foundation that organizational change is built on.

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A.B.L.E. Institute

For Orgs & Teams

Your supervision culture is either holding your people or costing you them. The A.B.L.E. Institute is our signature Anti-Oppressive Supervision™ course — combining supervisory harm-reduction theory with accountability-based leadership strategy to build teams that lead with fairness, care, and consistency. Designed for supervisors, managers, and organizational leaders at every level, this is the entry point to the Lead The Shift™ licensing program. Alumni receive preferred access when they're ready to bring the framework to their whole organization.

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Leadership Without Harm: A One-Day Rebuild

Sometimes you don't need a year-long program. You need one honest day. This VIP intensive is a dedicated one-day experience with Wanda & Lissa — designed to expose the gap between your stated values and your actual practice, and leave you with a concrete plan for closing it. Whether you're navigating a specific leadership challenge, preparing to bring accountability work into your organization, or simply ready to stop postponing the hard conversation with yourself, this is where that shift begins.

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HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?

Your SBT anti-oppressive journey starts here! Learn more about some of the options we offer for education, training, and community engagement.

Anti-Oppressive Coaching

Shift from well-intentioned to anti-oppressive by operationalizing an authentic leadership strategy that prioritizes equity and fairness.

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A.B.L.E. Institute

Develop a tangible, liberatory practice with our signature Anti-Oppressive Supervision™ course, combining anti-violence theory with anti-racist strategies to create equitable leadership.

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Leadership Without Harm: A One-Day Rebuild

Take a deep dive into your leadership approach and expose the gaps between your values and your actual practice.
This one-day VIP experience offers dedicated time and space with us to explore how “professionalism” often forces you to choose between authority and authenticity—especially in how you lead and support your team.

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LET'S TALK

White Supremacy is a social conditioning we all breathe in. Aren't you exhausted with pretending it isn’t?

  • The book clubs you over commit to in order to cover the fear of getting it wrong?
  • The same surface-level mandatory DEI trainings no one wants?
  • The guilt (oh, the guilt) that keeps you in a shame spiral?

None of these things are bringing you closer to being better at understanding oppression and White Supremacy.

None of these things are transforming your organizations into ones that prioritize the systemic impact of liberation.

Your cycle is not only endless; it’s dangerous.

LET'S TALK

White Supremacy is a social conditioning we all breathe in. Aren't you exhausted with pretending it isn’t?

  • The book clubs you over commit to in order to cover the fear of getting it wrong?
  • The same surface-level mandatory DEI trainings no one wants?
  • The guilt (oh, the guilt) that keeps you in a shame spiral?

None of these things are bringing you closer to being better at understanding oppression and White Supremacy.

None of these things are transforming your organizations into ones that prioritize the systemic impact of liberation.

Your cycle is not only endless; it’s dangerous.

It's time for some real talk about what unraveling anti-Blackness requires of you.

It's time to stop pretending that you have this all figured out and being a "good human" or organization curiously exploring anti-oppressive perspectives is good enough to dismantle systems harmful to human beings you know, love, work with, and celebrate.

Everything we've been taught about how to address racism and oppression is wrong and designed to keep you spinning your wheels.

I have a strategy that unlocks the path you’ve been looking for.

The A.B.L.E. Institute supports leaders in the life-long journey of unraveling oppressive social conditioning constructs to promote equity-based scholarship.

LEARN MORE

“Wanda supervised me through a graduate internship while opening the Project Safe Center at Vanderbilt. I knew her from undergrad and through the transition to grad school. She’s smart, funny, determined, and a force to be reckoned with. She’ll make you feel weird about who you are and what you “know,” especially if you’ve never asked the questions she asks. But when she does, doesn’t that mean she’s doing what you needed her to?

As she continues her calling, she prods and provokes, because women like her mother had to struggle as single Black parents who were and are still virtually invisible in a Europatriarchal world—among many other reasons. I know her heart breaks, and there are always nights when she can’t sleep for the injustices BIPOC face. That dedication will meet you if you reach out.

While I continue on my journey of pretending to be a grown-up, her presence is still showing me something—honkies like myself have a lot of bullshit clouding our vision. Though I don’t know if I even still take up that much bandwidth in her memory/journey after all this time and with all she struggles with, I’m grateful for that.”

Jordan W.
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Come Get Your White People: A Podcast

Are you a change agent at your wit’s end? This podcast is for you!

If you’re the friend who often gets told, “Please don’t start...” then this is the podcast for you! You want to change the world, you want people to care about anti-Blackness, and you want White folx to take accountability for ending oppression, but your arguments fall flat, right?

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
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