Kara Bender (she/her) is a systems thinker, organizer, participant-centered educator, and a skillful and playful facilitator. Through her consulting organization, Seed & Spiral, she encourages growing our collective imaginations for liberation through body-based, earth-centered, equity offerings. Kara specializes in team building and takes an experiential approach to all of her facilitation in order to foster a mind-body connection, which supports long-term integration and change. She has experience working with departments of Health and Human Services, universities, non-profits, philanthropy, faith-based institutions, along with, for-profit companies. Kara is actively curating customized curriculum in online and retreat settings for white folks going deeper on their anti-racism journeys as well supporting multi-racial organizations in innovative and equity focused systems re-design. Deeply committed to naming her stake and responsibility as a white woman in ending oppressive systems, she has committed over 15 years to learning with and from anti-racist communities of color and anti-racist white folks. Her biggest influences have come from serving as an affordable housing organizer, co-directing a legislative advocacy program, being a racial equity facilitator and educator, and participating in creative projects like the Carnival de Resistance, that bridged art, activism, and faith to engage communities in conversations about environmental justice. With roots on the east coast, she now lives at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, on unceded Osage land that is colonially known as St Louis MO.