Let’s Befriend Dragons Together

Cindy Gross [she/her] – Workplace Thrival Coach, Speaker, Gracious Space Facilitator, and Strategic Adaptive Leader at Befriending Dragons

• I nurture equitable cultures via coaching partnerships with folks on their own culture change journeys.
• I lead & coach with empathy & an intersectional social equity perspective so you can unleash the change & impact you want to have in the world.
• I seek wise justice.
• I nurture equitable cultures via coaching partnerships with folks on their own culture change journeys.

#BlackLivesMatter #MeToo

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Services

Featured: Anti-Racism – From Learning to Action Workshops + Coaching

Join the waitlist to get started in early 2022.

You’ve been to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training and watched your yearly anti-harassment training. You signed up for an anti-racism book club and listened to some podcasts. Now what? You’re motivated, you want to do something, but… what? What do you do when someone speaks up about the racism they just experienced? What mindset do you want to be in when you decide how to respond to someone saying or doing something that upholds white supremacy? How does it affect your actions if you’re able to decide if a racist act is an individual responsibility vs. systemic oppression? How will you know when you’ve scrubbed every racist bone from your body? Spoiler alert – racism doesn’t reside in our bones, race isn’t found in our genes, and Anti-Racism is about committing to the journey.

We’ll focus on that move from learning to action. #BlackLivesMatter.

Generative Coach

I am a Workplace Thrival Coach, an Adaptive Community Leader, an Anti-Racism Leader, an ex-techie, and the founder of Befriending Dragons. I nurture equitable anti-bullying, anti-racist cultures via coaching partnerships with folks on their own personal culture change journeys. Our internal DRAGONS make us small, but we can BEFRIEND them. We can regain our voices. We can heal. We can make tech stronger, better, more innovative. I lead and coach with empathy and an intersectional social equity perspective so you can unleash the change and impact you want to have in the world.

My clients are

• Women Pivoting at Work – you’re ready to define the way YOU want to show up at work, fully authentic with great boundaries, and commit to a journey to get there.
• Folks Deepening an Anti-Racism Journey – we explore where you want to go, what impactful actions you can take within your scope of control, and how align your goals with other stakeholders in the area you want to impact.
• Tech Leaders – you’re committed to DEI and want an individual action plan that creates true culture change. Regardless of your formal title or authority, you are ready to make a change and traditional DEI efforts aren’t getting you there.

Culture Change Partnerships

• Cindy delivers Anti-Racism group coaching workshops combined with individual coaching for folks to develop their own specific, ongoing intersectional Anti-Racism action plans that align with their own goals and scope of control.
• We share our knowledge and skills with your Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) groups, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), HR organizations, and internal executive, leadership, and career coaches. Cindy’s 25+ years as a techie and extensive coach training make her uniquely qualified to bring culture changes to technology organizations.

Speaker

See examples of talks I can customize for your events at Innovation Women. Past recordings and popular blog posts can be found on my schedule page.

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My Story

Cindy has met many scary dragons in her life – breast cancer, divorce, a layoff, changing roles and technologies, workplace harassment as a woman in tech, fighting for LGBTQ+ and abortion rights in a hostile state, constant striving to meet an impossible to meet “White Male Shaped Bar” for success, and the idea that we always have to put work first. Most recently she left the corporate tech world to strike out on her own as a coach, speaker, and Strategic Adaptive Leader. She is immersed in a rich community filled with people like her who create justice, meaning, allies, and dreams. Each time she steps back and looks at the situation from a different perspective to open up more useful choices. She befriends each dragon, learns how to make it a part of her past, and takes only the parts she wants forward to the next stage of her life. That’s what Befriending Dragons is all about – take those scary things and blend the best parts into our lives. Then we can respond in the way we each need, the way that takes us down the path we want.

Hear more of my dragon stories here.

Schedule a Meeting or Contact Me

Cindy Gross She/Her/They – Cisgender straight white woman, atheist, sociable introvert, trauma survivor, 50+, depression and anxiety haver, American and Delaware Tribe of Indians citizen, English speaker, & breast cancer survivor. I reside on the stolen lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish.