Jeremy Blanchard
Jeremy Blanchard supports changemakers to find their passions and bring their dreams into reality with ease. He believes working for justice and equity is some of the most challenging work we can be doing right now, and we need support to do it in a way that is sustainable. We all want to see a more life-giving world that moves us beyond the systems of domination that currently shape our lives. Jeremy works with leaders in social movements, community organizations, and nonprofits as well as social entrepreneurs, mission-driven solo entrepreneurs, artists, and all kinds of other do-gooders. Jeremy has been a lifelong climate activist. He got his start in coaching because he saw what a difference it was making for him in his life and social change work. As someone who cared deeply about the world, he found he was exhausting himself trying to contribute to every cause and organization that so deeply needed support (maybe you can relate!). Since then, coaching social change leaders has been his way of supporting our movements. Jeremy has been coaching for 10 years (he started in 2012) and has over 2,400 hours of experience coaching social change leaders, nonprofit directors, activists, community organizers, and social entrepreneurs. Personally: he cares deeply about communal living, has been learning to play piano (90’s rock out sing-alongs!), and he loves rock climbing. In Jeremy’s view, a part of bringing social justice principles into coaching is shining a light on social location and being able to have frank conversations about differences in identity, background, and experiences. To begin that conversation, here’s a bit about him: Jeremy is a white, cis, straight man. His ancestors were from England, Sweden, and Denmark. He is 34 years old. He grew up in a middle-class family and has an undergraduate degree. He is able-bodied and generally neurotypical. Jeremy grew up in a Catholic home and now identifies as spiritual but not religious. He has recently started practicing Buddhism in the Plum Village Tradition. As part of his ongoing journey to wake up to his own social conditioning, Jeremy strives to be a student and practitioner of anti-racism and decolonization. He is currently a part of an active multi-racial community of practice of Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) facilitators and practitioners through Holistic Underground. They are a source of accountability and support for one another around JEDI principles as they engage in the work.
Nellie Cabane
Nellie Cabane is a Registered Facilitator with ETDP and SETA as a Constituent Assessor and SDF, Coach and Mentor, that specializes in facilitation of learning, Job coaching, assessment of learning, training and development, project management, team and business change processes, Coaching and Mentoring Entrepreneurs. Nellie has been involved in learnership programmes for over 10 years as a coach and assessor. She has developed young graduates, supervisors, team leaders in all aspects of the industry. Nellie offers experiential learning that makes her learners or candidates want to learn more when they are in the class. Nellie facilitated in many different industries and very big organizations like a Arcelor Mittal, Clover, Mtn, Absa, Std Bank, Fnb, Anglo American, Dept of Justice, Wesbank, Nedbank and Blake International and many more. In all these industries Nellie has excelled! As a result Nellie in 2007 & 2008 she was awarded Trainer of the year in 2 Provinces KZN & Eastern Cape. In 2008 she was nominated as a finalist External trainer/Facilitator of the year in South Africa. Duke Corporate Education nominated her as one of the BEST top 5 facilitators out of 21 facilitators in South Africa. Nellie has a lot of experience in the Call center field where she developed young graduates that have never worked before to be successful employees that ended up to be leaders in their field. Nellie has done a lot of customer service training and leadership development programmes. She has empowered employees that have been working as managers for many years without qualification. Nellie was able to coach them to cover the gaps up to a stage where they can get a management certificate; she does that through a programme called RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning). This programme has helped many managers to bring up to speed and help them to have a qualification so that when they leave the organization they can be employable as managers because of their experience. Nellie was nominated by Anglo Platinum as one of the top 5 Educators for the Leadership Academy programme she ran for Duke Corporate Education. Nellie had very good feedback from the participants and received very high scores. Nellie is a member of Dukece Global Learning Resource Network. The experience she gained during the years has helped Nellie to get results from her training. Nellie has contributed her skills to the South African market by making the young graduates to be more marketable and be successful leaders. When training leaders, Nellie makes sure that leaders transfer skills to their employees and the organization benefits by getting ROI. Nellie always makes sure that after training clients call her back and participants -and they do! Nellie Cabane is very passionate about skills development and working with Duke has helped her to gain more experience and sharpen her skills as a result Duke Clients are happy and learners achieve results. Nellie has done work for different organizations and that has made Nellie always up-skill herself all the time. Nellie is a Diversity specialist, call center, leadership and is more passionate in empowering women in Leadership. Nellie assisted many organizations in assessing their employees in what they do and excel. The knowledge that Nellie has gained through the years has opened many doors in her career. She has worked for various community based youth organizations, facilitating life skills and has mentored a number of youth in terms of life skills in general and youth in business. Nellie has pioneered skills development participation to more than 120 companies in various sector Education and Training Authorities as a skills development consultant . Nellie has facilitated generic courses and ensured compliance with skills development processes as laid by the Ministry of Labour in the National Skills Development Strategy. Nellie has assisted a number of organization with skills development facilitation process, ensuring effective skills development planning and implementation, management of learnerships, skills programme, bursaries, ABET, Artisan and internship programmes, advising management of skills development legislation compliance, designing training quality management systems and policies and procedure in the SDA, SAQA, SDLA.
Gloria Alvarez
Gloria Alvarez has over 10 years of experience in philanthropy and specializes in connecting and convening the right people and resources to solve complex systemic problems. She most recently worked as a Strategic Partnership Manager and as Senior Project Manager at Color Of Change and was tasked with managing day-to-day operations and initiatives of the President’s Office. Gloria worked as an Alternative Responsible Officer and Operations Manager at Smaller Earth and International Cultural Homestay, where she served as the Department of State compliance liaison for 14 offices around Europe, the USA and Latin America. She is passionate about social justice and has represented Harvard, Tufts and Brandeis University service employees while working as a Contract and Grievance Enforcement Officer at 32BJ Service International Union. After the 2016 elections, she decided to move to New York where she worked on assisting undocumented people and DACA recipients while serving as the Queens Library’s Immigration Counselor. Gloria graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a graduate degree in nonprofit leadership from Fordham University. During her free time, Gloria volunteers with adult and incarcerated youth at New York State prisons.