Bari and Tanya
After an interesting beginning to their relationship, Bari Katz and Tanya Williams have developed a relationship over the years deeply rooted in their shared beliefs and values around social justice and liberation. As a design and facilitation team, we have worked with a number of outstanding organizations to disrupt the nature of white supremacist patterns and culture. Hear what others have said about our work together below, and click here to watch our video resources.
OUR STORY
Bari first met Tanya when we were both working with the Posse Foundation in 2011, Bari in the National Office and Tanya as a mentor for Posse Scholars at Mount Holyoke College. They reconnected a few years later when Tanya moved to NYC to take on a new role as the Deputy Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Community Engagement at Union Theological Seminary. In 2016, Tanya became a full-time social justice consultant and founded Authentic Coaching and Consulting. Bari and Tanya have a strong connection as two people who believe deeply that a more socially just world is possible, and are committed both personally and professionally to creating spaces that invite others to imagine and work toward that possibility.
Bari and Tanya’s Frame
You’ll notice that what’s mentioned here sounds like much of what you’ve read throughout this site. That’s because Bari and Tanya have a genuine partnership, shared values, and an aligned vision for how to show up in the world, and in this work.
Bari and Tanya’s work together is based on and in the following:
Connectivity and belonging
Analysis of power
Acknowledgement and disruption of white supremacist and white cultural practices
Social justice
Liberatory perspective
Oppression theory and system oppression
Connecting the head, the heart and the body
Individuals create organizations and people matter most
Diversity matters deeply to us as a training team; affinity matters as well
What Bari and Tanya Do
As a team, we offer sustained, regular, consistent engagements including training, coaching and consulting. We support leaders and staff development. We design and facilitate custom trainings for organizations to reach their social justice and equity goals.
How Bari and Tanya Do Their Work Together
With care
With honest and integrity
With a recognition that we are all doing our best
With respect
With maintenance of humanity
With our whole selves and space to allow others to bring their whole selves
Shared Clients
Bari and Tanya have designed and facilitated engagements for many incredible clients, some of which are listed here:
DEMOS
Chicken and Egg Pictures
Brooklyn Community Foundation
Weill Cornell Medical College
SONY Music
Kolot Chayeinu
WEPOWER
One Goal
Testimonials
“From the paired focus on community and self-care, to the guidelines, definitions, and affinity group work, Tanya and Bari created a tangible space of constructive dialogue and learning for our team. That is not easy to do even in optimal conditions, and the virtual realm adds in unique challenges, which Tanya and Bari acknowledged and helped us navigate. I was especially inspired by how they modeled listening with care and focus, and responding with compassion and honesty.”
—Senior Leader, Colby College
“Bari Katz and Tanya Williams created a safe and open space for our staff to explore. In order to better serve our community, we did some intense work analyzing and exploring our own identities. As a result of the ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion work with Bari and Tanya, our staff feels better able to engage with our school partners with across the five boroughs. Additionally, Bari and Tanya targeted the trainings to the specific needs of our organization. When necessary, they skillfully pivoted to meet our team where we were, based on what we needed on that day.”
—Tiffany Zapico, Executive Director of Literacy Trust
"Our work with Tanya and Bari put us on better footing to move the DEIB work forward together as a staff; it gave us tools and the confidence to have necessary but difficult conversations with our diverse staff. While they continue to be difficult, and to present new challenges each time, we feel able to keep pushing this work forward in the ways that we hoped when we first reached out to Tanya and Bari."
—College Access Research & Action (CARA)- CUNY Graduate Center (Janice Bloom)
"My interactions with Ms. Katz and Dr. Williams were consistently inspiring and affirming. Their wisdom, insights, and discernment were evident in each of our planning meetings and debrief sessions. I walked away with a healthy respect for the best practices associated with effective culture change."
—Weill Cornell Medical College- Department of Pediatrics (Joy D. Howell, M.D.)