WHAT IS START BY TALKING, LLC?

Start By Talking, LLC is an anti-oppression education, assessment, and multimedia company that supports leaders and organizations in interrogating their personal and professional relationships with anti-Blackness and White Supremacy.

WHAT IS START BY TALKING, LLC?

We are a Black-woman and family-owned operation whose mission is rooted in both the anti-violence movement and Black feminist abolitionism.

Centering Anti-Oppressive Advocacy® and The Strategy of Whiteness™ as core structural frameworks of the company's philosophy, we believe that anti-Blackness validates oppression and oppression validates violence.

This framing allows us to focus squarely on the rhetoric that emboldens superiority myths of Whiteness that later lead to acts of harm. That is the upstream prevention we've all been missing!

Let us support you on this journey.

START BY TALKING SERVICES

1:1 Coaching

This engagement opportunity is perfect for leaders seeking a confidential space for deeper reflection of their role in unraveling oppression.

This program will explore the history of race, individual culture, value systems rooted in oppression, and how this impacts leadership responsibilities.

Coaching components include:

Weekly confidential sessions that unpack the Anti-Oppressive Advocacy® Coaching Curriculum
Journal writing and in-session thought work
Examination of the Eight White Identities
Interrogation of forms of White Supremacy
Strategy for creating change within your sphere of influence

Participation in 1:1 Coaching is an eight month, five-figure investment per participant.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COACHING

START BY TALKING SERVICES

1:1 Coaching

This engagement opportunity is perfect for leaders seeking a confidential space for deeper reflection of their role in unraveling oppression.

This program will explore the history of race, individual culture, value systems rooted in oppression, and how this impacts leadership responsibilities.

Coaching components include:

Weekly confidential sessions that unpack the Anti-Oppressive Advocacy® Coaching Curriculum
Journal writing and in-session thought work
Examination of the Eight White Identities
Interrogation of forms of White Supremacy
Strategy for creating change within your sphere of influence

Participation in 1:1 Coaching is an eight month, five-figure investment per participant.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COACHING

Group Coaching

Start By Talking offers multi-week group coaching for organizational leadership teams and departments seeking to invest in collective dismantling of oppression.

Weekly sessions inclusive of facilitated training on anti-oppressive frameworks and the Strategy of Whiteness(™), homework/thoughtwork, in-session activities, and climate review are available under this tier.

Participation in group coaching is agreement to a minimum eight (8) eight-week, 90-minute sessions and a five-figure investment amount.

SCHEDULE A FREE INFORMATION SESSION

Group Coaching

Start By Talking offers multi-week group coaching for organizational leadership teams and departments seeking to invest in collective dismantling of oppression.

Participation in group coaching is agreement to a minimum eight (8) eight-week, 90-minute sessions and a five-figure investment amount.

SCHEDULE A FREE INFORMATION SESSION

Virtual and Hybrid Learning

Start By Talking offers self-guided and facilitated learning through our A.B.L.E. Institute, an anti-oppression learning center that prioritizes skill development for professionals seeking to expand their anti-racism education and expertise.

Online courses and minicourses, facilitated trainings, confidential community space for members, certification programs, and assessments to determine assimilation to the conditioning of White Supremacy are available options.

Participation ranges from four and five-figure price points per participant.

TELL ME MORE

Virtual and Hybrid Learning

Participation ranges from four and five-figure price points per participant.

TELL ME MORE

Organizational Transformation

Interested in assessing your investment in the strategy of Whiteness?

Start By Talking supports organizations in the co-creation of a new culture through a combination of qualitative assessment, leadership coaching, and multi-week training sessions. Using the 15 Tenets of a White Supremacy Culture as a baseline and Anti-Oppressive Advocacy® as a goal, we are able to determine organizational oppressive traits, introduce foundational concepts rooted in liberation, and provide recommendations for divesting from White Supremacy.

Minimum participation is an 18-month, six-figure investment.

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What is Anti-Oppressive Advocacy®?

Click here to learn more.

Organizational Transformation

Interested in assessing your investment in the strategy of Whiteness?

Minimum participation is a 24-month, six-figure investment.

TELL ME MORE

our consulting community has included

our business partners

MEET THE TEAM

Wanda Swan

Founder and CEO

Wanda Swan is a nationally-recognized thought leader in survivor advocacy, anti-oppression work, restorative justice, and violence prevention. A speaker, scholar-practitioner, anti-oppression coach, and Research Fellow for the University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovations Research Center, she has been deeply embedded within the anti-violence movement for over 15 years.

Wanda's work has spanned across higher education, local and state agencies, and nonprofits dedicated to survivor resiliency and sustaining anti-oppressive environments. As both a curator and co-conspirator of systems disruption and research that informs her field of practice, she is co-founder of, and currently holding co-leadership roles in, professional organizations like Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association (CAPPA) and NASPA’s Sexual and Relationship Violence Prevention Education and Response Knowledge Community (NASPA SRVPER KC).

As founder and CEO of Start By Talking, Wanda supports clients through individual and group coaching, organizational assessment, and virtual learning on the strategy of Whiteness and how those messages reverberate across policy, procedure, and practice.

Her research project, now nine years old, on identifying and reseating the Black founders of the anti-violence movement serves as the vehicle that first allowed her to birth a company with the audacious goal of liberation for all through 1:1 conversation. Today, Wanda's vision has expanded beyond her ancestor's wildest dreams.

MEET THE TEAM

Wanda Swan

Founder and CEO

Lissa Swan

Co-owner and Chief Operating Officer

Lissa hails from the great state of Mississippi and comes to this work from the Accounting and Banking & Finance fields. She is enjoying the second chapter of her life and this opportunity to dedicate herself to supporting anti-oppression work that intersects violence and race.

She strives to make Start By Talking LLC one of the premiere anti-oppressive training and educational institutions and continue the work of prioritizing Black people and normalizing the amplification of our both varied and culturally-specific needs.