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Elena Thurston Elena Thurston

What Is Inclusive Leadership?

Is it just buzzwords? Does it impact the way you communicate with your team? Can it help you find solutions among the many challenges of being a leader?

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Elena Thurston Elena Thurston

COS Tragedy Creates Need to Connect with Your Employees

This means that many members of the primary workforce in the US are parents of LGBTQ+ youth. And they are struggling right now. Being a parent is hard enough given the increase in school shootings and other violent acts that target our young people. Add a child whose marginalization is compounded, and you have a whole other set of problems. Parents of LGBTQ+ youth struggle to walk the line of encouraging their children to be true to themselves, while also being safe in a homophobic and transphobic society that is getting increasingly more violent against them.


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Elena Thurston Elena Thurston

How can you measure your allyship?

As a corporate diversity and inclusion consultant, clients often ask me, “How do we measure our allyship? How can we know where we need to grow?” It feels like a grey area, too nuanced to be measured objectively, right? But at the same time, most of us want to ensure we're hitting our allyship potential. We want to be a person who is actively part of the solution and acting as the change we want to see in the world.

For my clients who'd like to understand their baseline knowledge of allyship, I created

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About Elena Joy Elena Thurston About Elena Joy Elena Thurston

Mom by day, Equity Activist....Also by Day

Have you ever struggled with "naming" yourself and what you do? Recently I presented this quandary to my mastermind. "What do I call myself in three words or less? I am a speaker, trainer, author, podcaster, executive coach, and documentary subject. How do I say alllll that in a concise way?"

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Elena Thurston Elena Thurston

Finding me in Sedona, AZ

We left Phoenix at noon and went directly to Oak Creek Canyon. Driving up Highway 89A immediately transported me back to the magic of childhood. Living in the house on Roadrunner with the huge wild backyard, playing fairies in the red dirt, and feeling like outside was the only safe place to be. 89A in the Canyon is just two lanes with no shoulder, a narrow path snaking through one of the most beautiful and photographed places in the world. When I was in high school working in the Sedona restaurants, tourists would tell me it was prettier than the Grand Canyon (just two hours north) and how much did I love living amongst so much beauty?

I never had the words to tell them, that you don’t know Sedona’s beauty until you’ve sat in her forest and felt her speak peace to your 7-year-old heart. You’ve never known solace until you’ve sat on the smooth rocks of Red Rock Crossing, toes in the water, ears filled with the sound of ancient wind with whispers that even though your family is imploding, the earth still loves you. You don’t know celebration until you’ve climbed to the top of Bell Rock, past all the tourists asking you if it’s actually possible, and stood on the literal top of the world, feeling both soulfully huge and physically tiny. That’s my Sedona.

We parked at about the place that Kristen said we would emerge from and then hiked back down the highway to get to the starting point. With no shoulder on the road, we walked single file, our packs on our backs, fly rods in hand. It was so warm, that we definitely didn’t need waders but the rocks are still slippery so we still wore our fishing boots, a technique called wet wading. As we walked to our drop-in spot….

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Elena Thurston Elena Thurston

Coming Home to Myself

After TED, I was all out of whack. And all my old strategies weren't working. I've done a lot (like a TON) of personal growth in the last few years. And I've learned many times over, that after a period of expansion, comes contraction.

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