Transformational Leadership

Decoding Whiteness:

Racial Justice for a Re-Imagined World

Decoding Whiteness is a 2½-day course (5-day virtual training, 4 hours per day). This cohort-based series includes group meetings and coaching sessions focused on identifying, naming and dismantling whiteness.

We introduced Decoding Whiteness in response to events of the summer of 2020, when many people of color – already overloaded in their own work and emotional burdens – reported being inundated by requests from white folks asking them how to be an ally. We created Decoding Whiteness to lessen the burden on people of color even just a little bit, and to engage white folks to make positive, generative change on personal and interpersonal, systems and organizational, and movement levels.

Decoding Whiteness provides a critical opportunity for people to deepen their understanding of equity, diversity, inclusion, healing, justice, and liberation and to learn how to embody that work in everyday life in multiple contexts. We focus on community building and behavior change to support more effective engagement in anti-racism practices and behaviors. The course supports building capacity to work together across dimensions of diversity toward shared goals for a more livable and just society and environmental movement.

Participants Will:

  • Co-create a community that is committed to ongoing, daily, sometimes painful growth
  • Explore content from diverse sources to deepen analysis and support a new vision
  • Practice refining a new vision and changes in behavior, beliefs and advocacy needed for transformation
  • Evolve a system and thinking of abundance and reciprocity
  • Make tangible commitments to learning about, understanding and practicing behavior that pushes back against the legacy of colonization and engaging in regular anti-racism actions
  • Action planning focused on racial equity and justice

Participant testimonial:

“[The course] made me think about who I am and what I can do in my world to try to create a more just society. It was a shared space to critically think about whiteness and its impact on me personally and relationally.”

All Programs

Building the Foundation

An entry-point for individuals just starting out or wishing to strengthen the foundation of their equity work

Exploring Power, Privilege and Tools for Change

An intermediate course for individuals ready to take their equity work to the next level of action

Environment 2042 Leadership Program

A multi-month immersive leadership development program for individuals well-along in their equity work

The Inner Work

Courses designed for community connection and healing

Decoding Whiteness

A course for people in the environmental movement to identify, name and dismantle patterns of white supremacy in their lives and work

Leadership Coaching & Consulting

CDE offers leadership coaching and consulting services to individual clients who have taken part in foundational work with us.

Contact Us