Community Education Manager

Danielle joined the Prospera team in January 2020 as Evaluation and Learning Manager. Many things drew her to Prospera, but it was the organization’s commitment to social justice and popular education that convinced Danielle that she could find a professional home here.  

Danielle grew up in the East Bay, but has spent extensive time living and working in Latin America. While earning her Master of Public Administration, Danielle worked in Brazil and Colombia in environmental justice, program monitoring and evaluation, and humanitarian assistance for displaced persons. Building on her experience as a yoga instructor, Danielle applied a trauma-informed, mind-body perspective to her work and discovered her passion for working in the intersection of social justice and healing.

For the last ten years, Danielle has worked in Bay Area nonprofits, schools, and youth detention facilities as a mindfulness instructor, trainer, curriculum developer, and program evaluation specialist. She has trained hundreds of community leaders in cultural humility, restorative practices, and trauma-informed education, and launched a successful social and emotional program to improve school climate at an alternative high school in Mexico City.

Danielle is co-founder of a social enterprise that provides training and leadership coaching to advance racial equity and healing, and she loves learning how to be a better bridge for fellow white people to increase their awareness and allyship. When not at work, Danielle can be found dancing and performing, supporting environmental and social justice movements, and hanging out with her multi-lingual, multi-generational “family”.   

“I grew up in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, an area where the values of individualism, materialism, perfectionism, and competitiveness were rampant. A good little Catholic girl, I swallowed them whole, and they made me sick. As an adolescent with debilitating anxiety and disordered eating, I made up my mind to leave the “toxic” U.S. for good!

While living and working abroad, I learned several languages and found healing in community, meditation and yoga. I later came back to the Bay, where for a decade I shared trauma-informed mindfulness practices with youth, teachers and healthcare professionals. Here I embarked on a journey of understanding what it means to be white in a racially segregated and stratified society, a journey which led me to co-found a business centering race equity and trauma healing.

I joined Prospera two years ago, and here I have found a diverse community of women driven by a rare and radical conviction to treat each other like family. My values are reflected in Prospera’s values of holistic health for all, unlearning what harms us, popular education, and collective power. My Prospera family stretches me to empathize with experiences that I haven’t lived and encourages me to value and share my own perspectives. I currently manage our evaluation and learning systems, and I hope to continue to grow here.“