Perform without burnout.

I really admire Soil and Shadow's approach to feedback. After the training, I ended up constantly referencing and thinking about the frameworks!

Sara Chandler, Elemental Excelerator

Soil & Shadow’s “Giving, Receiving and Integrating Feedback” training was a powerful and rich source of content guided by expert instructors that hit the root cause of whether you have high-functioning successful teams that know how to grow trust, integrity, and empathy.  During the workshop, we were able to break out into small groups and immediately put the principles into practice and work on our next action steps.  By having the workbook, recording, slide deck, and other materials from the workshop, I can refer to the learnings and continue the process of getting feedback right, even when it’s challenging and uncomfortable.  Everyone needs this critical training (and ideally we’d all have learned this as children)! 

Elaine Patarini, No Regrets Initiative

I found one company and was in the beginning stages of launching another - I thought it would be the perfect time to get support. The Joy + Impact Framework connects personal health and concepts like productivity, how resting soil is like resting our brains, and ways to manage “pathogenic” behaviors in team members. It's the perfect metaphor for building resilience and a relational way of being within a team, a very rich template for organizing wisdom! The women in Nikki’s community are diverse and aligned on core beliefs, values, equity and regeneration. There are so many badass women who are running on fumes who really need this!

Christine Su, Senior Director of AI Recommendations at eBay

I started working with Nikki to get to the root of some pretty entrenched behaviors: I had a tendency to focus more on what my team members needed than what actually worked for me, I wasn’t very good at celebrating or giving myself credit for what was going well, and I was too self-critical.

Working with Nikki really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. She challenged me to be more self reflective and PUSHED me to dig deeper. The relationship-centered approach she takes is absolutely essential, especially considering how transactional we’ve gotten as a society. When I faced some huge changes during our work together (I had a baby and changed jobs laterally in my company - no big deal :), she helped me care for myself throughout and pay attention to what was going to work for me. It enabled me to show up better, more positive and more productive for my new role. 

Jamie Dean, Director of Impact Investing at 11th Hour Project

As a long serving executive manager, I am always striving to enhance my leadership and communication skills and have participated in numerous executive education leadership programs and trainings. Nikki has a unique approach, language, and foundational tools - her highly personalized coaching style and approach are non-traditional and evoke a different conversation and way of thinking about leadership.

The most difficult challenge of an executive manager is to identify tangible ways enhance a critical (yet squishy) skillset - maintaining effective, trustful and positive communications and relations with a broad and diverse range of people. Nikki’s excellent listening and analytical skills allowed me to gain footing in this nebulous and complex paradigm. We focused on specific leadership and communications and developed real solutions.

After the coaching sessions with Nikki, I absolutely believe I am better equipped to address leadership challenges more effectively.

Kip Memmott, Audits Director at State of Oregon

This framework helped me to look at my capacity with a healthy balance of work, family, and things I love. The Academy got me to be very, very specific, realizing all I do and being clear about what I can take on and what I can't. Setting some really clear boundaries to guard my time, making sure that my life is rich and full and not just overextended all the time. 

Rowen White, Sierra Seeds

I was seeking a new direction in my life and honestly, perhaps even a new career path, and was really excited to see your particular combination of experiences around the environment as well as in sustainability as well as community work, which is something that's unfamiliar to me.

I was looking for help in actually making contact with other people who are doing that kind of work, learning a little bit more about it, and what it takes while trying to hone in on my own vision.

The 'power over, power with, and power under' (concept) has completely transformed a difficult relationship.

Alison Fairbanks, Co-founder | Creative Director at Shop Class Creative

I had issues with emotional intimacy, and those issues led to intensifying fear in my many aspects of my life. This body of work has been intensely helpful through out the whole process. I felt like I wasn't trying to change - I was actually discovering that who I already am is great. This is such deeply healing work and I'm so glad I found Nikki!

Elizabeth Graham, Contract Administrator at H2I Group, Inc.

I was interested in the Academy because I was at a point of overwhelm in my work and wanting new tools and ideas to figure out how to be more efficient and effective [in my] organization.'

'The productivity planner is number one. I am working with it every day, and it has been such a great tool and really helped me dig into projects that felt daunting. Being able to chunk them out and get them done easily. It's provided me a way to reprioritize every day, which has been really important to kind of keep me on track with what's most important. I'm able to prioritize fundraising more because I'm looking at what's most important, not what's coming in my inbox.'

'I love the work [we did] around beliefs. It was just very striking to me to look at my own beliefs around money. I feel my beliefs around money are pretty solid, but I see the impact on my organization. These are the issues that my organization is dealing with because I'm dealing with the same. [I learned that] I can work that out, and then the organization can work that out. Leadership brings their own set of beliefs, which then becomes organizational problems.  The vision is awesome and scary.  It's been very inspiring to not only write my own but hear everyone else's and be inspired by the other people in the group with their vision.'

'I feel like I have more tools in my toolbox as a leader. I feel personally more able to manage my job. I have some ideas of where we need to do more work, both personally and [in my] organization. It's exciting to have delved into some areas where we need to do race equity inclusion work with our staff, and work on some of our core beliefs. These will be things that are I will prioritizing the next year.' 

 'I recommended [the Academy] to a friend, [a dynamic leader, a woman leader of color] because she was feeling overwhelmed. She was kind of at that edge of needing more tools, you to help her get to the next level in her leadership. I think that this Academy is good for people in that space.'

"You're a dynamic woman leader who's feeling overwhelmed and in need of more tools to help you get to your next level of leadership.

Malaika Bishop, Bluebird Farm

The reason I reached out is because I wanted some help. I didn't have all the words and clarity on what I needed help with, but I knew I needed a structured way to dig into the foundational components of doing my work, do it better, and to connect to my vision and values.'

'Expanding your capacity [by creating a] personal and professional vision statements [has] had such an impact [over] the several weeks/ That alone has been worth my time and investment.  I can see the impact of having read it to myself, having read it to my friends of having made a recording. It is showing up already.'

'One [impact I have seen as a result of the Academy] that showed up is  I will recognize, In my day to day life, where I am doing the things I said I wanted to do and where I'm making moves.  One of the items in my vision [statement] was I'm going to monitor my self-talk as a means of understanding where my mental health and moods are. '

"[Because of the Academy], I'm not as amorphous in my likes, wants, and desires. I have more clarity in understanding what I want for myself. There's something about having named and committed it to paper that makes it feel like it's possible [now]. These multiple ways of internalizing goals and visions have brought me a place of clarity. Now that I have the goal I can build a pathway to it.

Nicole Thomas, Trainer and Facilitator

I was struggling with leadership issues, in particular, authenticity and feeling respected in my work. I wanted it to be received, the way I intended.'

 'The priority planner just gave me a tangible way to organize myself and introduced me to the Pomodoro method. I've heard about it before but hadn't had the encouragement to explore it. It's been very helpful to estimate the amount of time something might take to accomplish and then have the impetus to review if there's any disparity where and why.'

' I really appreciated the encouragement to look at aspirational versus operational goals or behavior in my business and life. I  have been reorganizing my thought processes, so I'm not feeling defeated when projects don't come out the way I had intended, because perhaps my operational goal wasn't in alignment with my aspirational goal. That's something I will take forward for a while.'

'I appreciated the encouragement to write a three-year vision, to first sketch it out, then go back and put some flesh on it. Then a second round with deeper thinking and more freedom because the structure of my vision had already been written so I could go in and write details that put me in those places.'

'This Academy encouraged me to, instead of internalizing a recent issue, decide to get feedback as I was operating in a vacuum. I gained grounding to hold my stance and push into the work having the women in this group as a holding container able to learn from them and find myself in alignment.'

'I do feel that I have found a different kind of balance and capacity for dealing with challenges by participating in the Academy.'

'Fortification of the skills have put on a shelf and forgotten. I can now stand comfortably, shoulders squared, holding my space. This includes scaling my business and interpersonal/ work relationships. Reminders, like resting expansively, taking holidays and vacations for the purpose of vacating the workspace to return to my own pace. Also, the idea of being public with gratitude, forgiveness, and using that to explain or advance.'

'This Academy is for women committed to a cause or enacting change in their community but overwhelmed by the scale and magnitude of the work. A woman who is under-resourced and whose calendar is bulging at the seams.

Yavette Holts, Founder at BAOBOB

Because of the mindset work you and I did together, I just have no doubt about what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. I was coming from a place last year of such deep financial scarcity, and after the Academy I had a $12,000 launch. I think that a lot of this work scaffolded that in terms of having laser sharp focus with my energy and attention. I felt really held by you, and the really practical things have also translated.

Meg Berryman, Writer, Facilitator and Coach

I had just ended a three-year job and It felt like an opportunity to be more intentional about what I do next, and how I do it. So I don't fall back into previous patterns that didn't work very well for me financially, physically, spiritually, all of that. So that it felt like a good moment to invest in doing something about that.

The productivity planner has been helpful in prioritizing, getting things done and concentrating.

What I took away was the necessity of proper planning and grounding and making sure that things are in the right alignment before I invest my time and energy.

Andrea Dean, Founder, Sustainable Initiatives