Spiral Path is a liberatory approach to shaping organizational culture.
Our mission is to support social justice movement groups, nonprofit organizations, institutions and foundations through deep racial equity work, healing justice and building cultures of belonging.
We offer the resources, tools, and frameworks to develop and embolden organizations’ and communities’ capacity to advance equity.
We do this with an intentional analysis of power and a deep commitment to liberation that guide us every step of the way.
Tamiko believes that equity efforts should be rooted in relationships and that transformation is possible when the most impacted communities are centered in the work toward change. Over the last two decades, Tamiko’s work has included nonprofit leadership, academia, community organizing, participatory research, and cultural work. As a racial equity strategist, she brings a toolkit that reflects a unique perspective and a wealth of experience that ranges from facilitation and training, to cultural organizing within frontline communities.
Beyond her consulting practice, Tamiko is a mother of two grown children, a role that offers her the greatest lessons of all. She is also a freelance writer and spends her spare time writing lyric prose and poetry.
She is deeply committed to moving this work beyond “thinking and feeling about it” towards being ever more rooted in meaningful action towards subverting structures of white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization and advancing equity and liberation. Her work has become that of holding spaces for people’s visions and strategies; their conflict and healing; and their deepening analysis of power and liberation.
It is Marisol’s hope that her work can contribute to the creation of radical spaces where we can witness and accompany each other through our healing and struggles. And then to be bold – to dream and vision liberation and “add our small stones of activism to the building of an edifice of hope.”
Marisol lives in a house full of noise, laughter, and love with her son, Roan, in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.
Research Associate
Mira was raised in Asheville, North Carolina and earned a B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She has supported survivors of sexual and domestic violence and folks with chronic housing insecurity and mental health challenges. She previously worked in a variety of non-profits as a volunteer coordinator and now brings those organizational skills to Spiral Path Consulting.
Our Collaborators
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas
JaNesha Renee
Heather Laine Talley
Isela Gutierrez
Lydia Martinez
Omisade Burney Scott
Beth Trigg
Beth Trigg
Taproot Consulting
Beth grew up in the Southern Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina and has worked with organizations and communities in WNC for more than 20 years. Grounded in a deep commitment to equity and social justice, Beth works with organizations, collaboratives, and movements to build capacity, create consensus, mobilize resources, and develop strategy. In her consulting practice, Taproot Consulting, Beth partners with organizations and co-facilitators in caring, collaborative, creative facilitation of collective strategy and organizational change. Beth’s approach to working with clients is open, participatory, collaborative, and creative. With roots in popular education, anti-oppression organizing, and formal and informal consensus process, Beth draws on a lifetime of experience as a participant in movements and organizations. Beth is a mother and a gardener and her work is informed by her connection to the natural world and her community of activists, artists, community builders, culture workers, caregivers, farmers, family, and friends.
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas
Ngiwa Consulting
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas is originally from the valley region of Tecamachalco (founded by the Nwiga people prior to Spanish colonization) in the state of Puebla. She has ten years of experience developing community-based projects with expertise in popular education,coalition participation,language justice, racial equity, cultural organizing and development of cooperatives. Dulce Mirian is dedicated to social justice in which she lives in her experiences as a woman, immigrant, mother, friend, and colleague. She served as executive director of Nuestro Centro from 2013-2017 and brought a strong focus on advocacy and policy change, particularly within the Erwin school district where she organized with mothers and youth from the local community. She also worked advocating for immigrant rights and an end to collaborations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Buncombe County. Through this work, she also helped create a sanctuary network in Western NC to protect immigrants at risk of deportation. In the last few years, she has focused her efforts on the development of housing cooperatives, equitable lending practices, and worker-led real estate initiatives. Recently, she also co- led the development and delivery of a leadership curriculum for grassroots organizers.
Dulce Mirian brings her skills in community engagement, organizational development,coalition participation, community cooperatives, activism, cultural organizing, and facilitation.
Heather Laine Talley
Heather Laine Talley has collaborated with wide-ranging community organizations standing for queer justice, the eradication of white supremacy, and a world where women and girl’s lives are valued and celebrated. Born in Louisiana, she established her roots in Asheville, NC in 1998, drawn by a vibrant queer and deeply Southern community. Heather has worked as a sociology and gender studies professor, writer and editor, facilitator, and program developer. In recent years, she co-directed the Tzedek Social Justice Fund to redistribute wealth and served on the leadership team in the Masters in Leadership for Sustainability program at the University of Vermont. Regardless of what her paid work is, she aims to use generous hospitality, sincere words, deep analysis, and honest storytelling to transform herself and community. Heather has a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University. Her book Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance is the winner of the biennial Body and Embodiment Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association. When she is not working with organizations to build cultures of belonging or parenting her daughter, Heather is tending new writing projects and holding space for people at the end of life. www.heatherlainetalley.com
Lydia Martinez
Mictlancihuatl Spiderwebs Consulting
Lydia Zulema Martinez Vega, ella/she/her, Hija de Campesinos, brought into this country as contraband from the Sinaloense Ocean, raised on a bag of potatoes and a jar of water, porque aveces ni para el frijol había. Bringing over 20 years of experience providing project oversight and development, focusing on wellness among youth and adults. She holds a Bachelor’s of Art in Chicano Studies/English/African American Studies from the University of California, Riverside and a Master’s in Expressive Arts Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Trained with Eduardo Duran, Ph.D. in addressing Historical Trauma within Native American communities all the while addressing Healing and Justice. Areas of focus are The Razalogia Model (Roberto Rodriguez/Samuel Martinez), Incarcerated Youth, Mental Health of Indigenous/Latino Immigrant Community, Effects of Racism in the Chicano/Indígena/Latino Community. She holds publications both nationally and internationally. Her work in the community has always been guided by her Elder’s teachings. Using the creativity of writing and theater as a tool for social justice, personal growth, and community healing. She states that, “art is the direct connection to the soul.” Somewhere along the lines of migration and commercialization, we have forgotten that we come from communities and legacies that are rooted in resilience and strength.
Omisade Burney-Scott
Ananse Consulting
Omisade Burney-Scott is a seventh-generation Black Southern feminist, storyteller, and social justice advocate. She is the founder and principal of Ananse Consulting, LLC and she is also the creator/curator of The Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause (BGG2SM), a multidisciplinary culture shift project focused on normalizing menopause and aging through the centering of the stories of Black women, transgender and gender-expansive people. BGG2SM’s core programs are their Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause podcast, which is a guide to the different stages of menopause, intergenerational storytelling gatherings, and an annual zine called “Messages from the Menopausal Multiverse”. She has been featured in numerous outlets, including Oprah Daily, Forbes, VOGUE, Prevention, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Omisade attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with a BA in Communications Studies in 1989. Over the past 25 years, Omisade’s work has been grounded in social justice movement spaces focused on the liberation of marginalized people, beginning with her own community. She has worked in the nonprofit sector around social justice since 1995 and has been an organizational development and capacity-building consultant for 16 years for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. She has served on various nonprofit boards, including Fund for Southern Communities, Spirithouse NC, Village of Wisdom, Working Films, and The Beautiful Project. She currently serves on the wisdom circle for the Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom and the board for the National Menopause Foundation.
Omisade currently resides in North Carolina and is the mother of two sons.
Isela Gutierrez
Isela Gutiérrez is a consultant with over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit sector in three states (Washington, Texas, and North Carolina). She has deep expertise in NC election law, and has also worked on drug policy, juvenile justice, and criminal justice policy reform efforts. Isela’s policy and research work has focused on elevating the voices and experiences of directly affected individuals and communities in understanding policy impacts. While she is still actively engaged in democracy and elections issues, her other professional interests include climate justice, developing sustainable work cultures in movement and nonprofit spaces, and growing community skills and resilience to meet the various challenges of this time. Isela received her B.A. in History from Scripps College in Claremont, California, and a M.S.W. from the University of North Carolina School of Social Work in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her three children and husband.
JaNesha Renee
JaNesha Renee (she/her) was raised in the occupied territory referred to as North Carolina, which deeply informed her analysis of how oppression can appear in the subtle and the subconscious. After studying and living in Asheville for more than six years, she developed a deep passion for facilitation, qualitative analysis, arts-based community building, and ancestral tools of healing and relationship building. While pursuing her BA in Political Science, with concentrations in History and Africana Studies, she engaged in a multitude of professional and extracurricular projects. These included curating an oral history project on the topic of Inequitable housing, producing and directing a play on the topic, and helping develop and facilitate a student organizing coalition. Her work experiences post graduation have included being an organizer for a statewide electoral organization, deep canvassing residents of rural NC, providing artistic and political guidance as a mentor for a bilingual arts program for Black and Latinx teens, and facilitating Black healing and arts spaces. Some of the labels that feel deeply important to her identity is that she is a daughter of two, sister to four, and a proud auntie of one (so far). She currently resides in so-called Durham.
Our Collaborators
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas
JaNesha Renee
Heather Laine Talley
Isela Gutierrez
Lydia Martinez
Omisade Burney Scott
Beth Trigg
JaNesha Renee
JaNesha Renee (she/her) was raised in the occupied territory referred to as North Carolina, which deeply informed her analysis of how oppression can appear in the subtle and the subconscious. After studying and living in Asheville for more than six years, she developed a deep passion for facilitation, qualitative analysis, arts-based community building, and ancestral tools of healing and relationship building. While pursuing her BA in Political Science, with concentrations in History and Africana Studies, she engaged in a multitude of professional and extracurricular projects. These included curating an oral history project on the topic of Inequitable housing, producing and directing a play on the topic, and helping develop and facilitate a student organizing coalition. Her work experiences post graduation have included being an organizer for a statewide electoral organization, deep canvassing residents of rural NC, providing artistic and political guidance as a mentor for a bilingual arts program for Black and Latinx teens, and facilitating Black healing and arts spaces. Some of the labels that feel deeply important to her identity is that she is a daughter of two, sister to four, and a proud auntie of one (so far). She currently resides in so-called Durham.
Beth Trigg
Taproot Consulting
Beth grew up in the Southern Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina and has worked with organizations and communities in WNC for more than 20 years. Grounded in a deep commitment to equity and social justice, Beth works with organizations, collaboratives, and movements to build capacity, create consensus, mobilize resources, and develop strategy. In her consulting practice, Taproot Consulting, Beth partners with organizations and co-facilitators in caring, collaborative, creative facilitation of collective strategy and organizational change. Beth’s approach to working with clients is open, participatory, collaborative, and creative. With roots in popular education, anti-oppression organizing, and formal and informal consensus process, Beth draws on a lifetime of experience as a participant in movements and organizations. Beth is a mother and a gardener and her work is informed by her connection to the natural world and her community of activists, artists, community builders, culture workers, caregivers, farmers, family, and friends.
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas
Ngiwa Consulting
Dulce Mirian Porras-Rosas is originally from the valley region of Tecamachalco (founded by the Nwiga people prior to Spanish colonization) in the state of Puebla. She has ten years of experience developing community-based projects with expertise in popular education,coalition participation,language justice, racial equity, cultural organizing and development of cooperatives. Dulce Mirian is dedicated to social justice in which she lives in her experiences as a woman, immigrant, mother, friend, and colleague. She served as executive director of Nuestro Centro from 2013-2017 and brought a strong focus on advocacy and policy change, particularly within the Erwin school district where she organized with mothers and youth from the local community. She also worked advocating for immigrant rights and an end to collaborations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Buncombe County. Through this work, she also helped create a sanctuary network in Western NC to protect immigrants at risk of deportation. In the last few years, she has focused her efforts on the development of housing cooperatives, equitable lending practices, and worker-led real estate initiatives. Recently, she also co- led the development and delivery of a leadership curriculum for grassroots organizers.
Dulce Mirian brings her skills in community engagement, organizational development,coalition participation, community cooperatives, activism, cultural organizing, and facilitation.
Heather Laine Talley
Heather Laine Talley has collaborated with wide-ranging community organizations standing for queer justice, the eradication of white supremacy, and a world where women and girl’s lives are valued and celebrated. Born in Louisiana, she established her roots in Asheville, NC in 1998, drawn by a vibrant queer and deeply Southern community. Heather has worked as a sociology and gender studies professor, writer and editor, facilitator, and program developer. In recent years, she co-directed the Tzedek Social Justice Fund to redistribute wealth and served on the leadership team in the Masters in Leadership for Sustainability program at the University of Vermont. Regardless of what her paid work is, she aims to use generous hospitality, sincere words, deep analysis, and honest storytelling to transform herself and community. Heather has a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University. Her book Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance is the winner of the biennial Body and Embodiment Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association. When she is not working with organizations to build cultures of belonging or parenting her daughter, Heather is tending new writing projects and holding space for people at the end of life. www.heatherlainetalley.com
Lydia Martinez
Mictlancihuatl Spiderwebs Consulting
Lydia Zulema Martinez Vega, ella/she/her, Hija de Campesinos, brought into this country as contraband from the Sinaloense Ocean, raised on a bag of potatoes and a jar of water, porque aveces ni para el frijol había. Bringing over 20 years of experience providing project oversight and development, focusing on wellness among youth and adults. She holds a Bachelor’s of Art in Chicano Studies/English/African American Studies from the University of California, Riverside and a Master’s in Expressive Arts Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Trained with Eduardo Duran, Ph.D. in addressing Historical Trauma within Native American communities all the while addressing Healing and Justice. Areas of focus are The Razalogia Model (Roberto Rodriguez/Samuel Martinez), Incarcerated Youth, Mental Health of Indigenous/Latino Immigrant Community, Effects of Racism in the Chicano/Indígena/Latino Community. She holds publications both nationally and internationally. Her work in the community has always been guided by her Elder’s teachings. Using the creativity of writing and theater as a tool for social justice, personal growth, and community healing. She states that, “art is the direct connection to the soul.” Somewhere along the lines of migration and commercialization, we have forgotten that we come from communities and legacies that are rooted in resilience and strength.
Omisade Burney-Scott
Ananse Consulting
Omisade Burney-Scott is a seventh-generation Black Southern feminist, storyteller, and social justice advocate. She is the founder and principal of Ananse Consulting, LLC and she is also the creator/curator of The Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause (BGG2SM), a multidisciplinary culture shift project focused on normalizing menopause and aging through the centering of the stories of Black women, transgender and gender-expansive people. BGG2SM’s core programs are their Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause podcast, which is a guide to the different stages of menopause, intergenerational storytelling gatherings, and an annual zine called “Messages from the Menopausal Multiverse”. She has been featured in numerous outlets, including Oprah Daily, Forbes, VOGUE, Prevention, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Omisade attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with a BA in Communications Studies in 1989. Over the past 25 years, Omisade’s work has been grounded in social justice movement spaces focused on the liberation of marginalized people, beginning with her own community. She has worked in the nonprofit sector around social justice since 1995 and has been an organizational development and capacity-building consultant for 16 years for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. She has served on various nonprofit boards, including Fund for Southern.
Communities, Spirithouse NC, Village of Wisdom, Working Films, and The Beautiful Project. She currently serves on the wisdom circle for the Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom and the board for the National Menopause Foundation.
Omisade currently resides in North Carolina and is the mother of two sons.
Isela Gutierrez
Isela Gutiérrez is a consultant with over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit sector in three states (Washington, Texas, and North Carolina). She has deep expertise in NC election law, and has also worked on drug policy, juvenile justice, and criminal justice policy reform efforts. Isela’s policy and research work has focused on elevating the voices and experiences of directly affected individuals and communities in understanding policy impacts. While she is still actively engaged in democracy and elections issues, her other professional interests include climate justice, developing sustainable work cultures in movement and nonprofit spaces, and growing community skills and resilience to meet the various challenges of this time. Isela received her B.A. in History from Scripps College in Claremont, California, and a M.S.W. from the University of North Carolina School of Social Work in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her three children and husband.
We work in community with visionary organizations
Our work is grounded in the Spiral of Transformative Change – an ancestral and nature-based approach to transformative change work that can grow in scale from your culture to your strategic equity efforts. If you are exploring new ways to deepen your culture of belonging and advance your equity work, we’d love to talk with you.