CADENCE

The Liberatory Leadership Incubator for Black Women Ready to Lead Without Losing Themselves

Grounded in 15 years of clinical practice, doctoral research on Black women's healing traditions, and the Liberation-Focused Healing Framework
Join The Incubator -- Enrollment Now Open

In 8 months, you will know exactly who you are as a leader — in your body, in your history, and in the room — and you will never lead the same way again. 

 

This is not a mindset course. It's not a coaching program. Cadence is a clinical-grade, culturally-rooted 8-month journey that rewires how you lead — starting with what your body has been carrying for years.

You are exceptional at what you do. You are also exhausted in a way that rest doesn't fix.

 

 We’re taught from girlhood to sacrifice, serve, produce, and hold it all in. To chase success, to tough it out, to never need anyone.

 

But no one is teaching women leaders to listen to our bodies, draw from ancestral wisdom, and transform leadership from a grind into something that heals. Leadership that makes space for rest, joy, and presence—without costing us our health. 

 

McKinsey's 2025 Women in the Workplace report confirmed what you already feel in your bones: nearly 8 in 10 Black women in senior leadership are burning out. The institutions are not coming to save us. Cadence is.

The cycle stops here. I'm ready.

Here's What Changes in 8 months: 

...If you are ready to...

 

  • Regulate your nervous system in real time — so you can stay present and powerful even in the most high-stakes rooms

  • Lead from critical consciousness: understand how power moves so you can navigate it, challenge it, and stop being drained by it

  • Double your influence at work and at home — by finally leading as yourself, not a performance of yourself

  • Break the masking habit that fragments your identity and drains your vitality, and step into discerning, whole-self leadership

  • Trace the roots of your leadership patterns — all the way back to childhood and lineage — so you can choose something different

  •  Follow a framework built by Black women for Black women, tested over 15 years of clinical practice and doctoral research

Then CADENCE: The Liberatory Leadership Incubator for Women, is for you.

The Undoing Work Curriculum

A six-module journey designed by a PhD clinician and cultural historian to dismantle the leadership conditioning that's exhausting you — and rebuild from your own roots.

FEATURED MODULES

START HERE

Restoring Connection — 

You were never meant to lead alone. But somewhere along the way, you started to. In this opening module, you'll uncover how the systems you move through were designed to isolate leaders — and how that isolation has quietly become part of your identity. You'll learn to reclaim interdependence not as a weakness, but as the original foundation of powerful leadership. By the end, the way you see your relationships — at work, at home, in community — will never look the same.

MODULE 2

The Body Remembers — 

You've been told you're strong. Your body tells a different story. In this module, you'll learn why exhaustion lives in your muscles and not just your schedule — tracing how the labor of your lineage has shaped the way you carry responsibility today. Through elder wisdom and embodiment practice, you'll begin to understand the difference between pushing through and actually healing. You will leave with tools to reset your nervous system on the spot — and a new language for what your body has been trying to tell you for years.

MODULE 3

A New View — 

What if the definition of success you've been chasing was never yours to begin with? In this module, you'll do the uncomfortable, necessary work of examining whose measuring stick you've been using — and how deeply it has shaped your choices, your worth, and your vision of what's even possible. Through guided self-assessment, you won't just identify the pattern, you'll locate exactly where it lives in your daily decisions, so you can finally start making ones that are actually yours.

MODULE 4

Truth as Leadership — 

You've felt it in the room — the unspoken rules, the invisible hierarchy, the moments when you had to decide how much of yourself was safe to bring. This module gives you a framework to name what you've always sensed. You'll develop critical consciousness as a leadership practice — learning to read how power moves, when to navigate within a system, and when the moment calls for something bolder. Truth becomes not just something you speak, but the way you lead.. 

MODULE 5

Presence vs. Performance?

You know the exhaustion of being excellent and invisible at the same time. In this module, you'll trace the masking that started long before your career — back to the child who learned which parts of herself were safe to show. You'll follow that thread all the way into the boardroom, the Zoom call, the family dinner. Then, you'll learn the difference between strategic discernment and slow self-erasure — and begin building the capacity to lead as your full self, not the version of you that makes everyone else comfortable.

MODULE 6

Finding Self— 

Who are you when you're not performing, producing, or holding something together for someone else? This final module asks the question most leadership programs never touch. You'll do the deep work of reclaiming an identity that is not contingent on your output — and discover what becomes possible when you lead from that place instead. This isn't just a personal shift. When you stop living for the role, the people around you feel it. The systems you move through respond to it. You become, in the truest sense, a model of what's possible — for every woman watching you figure out how to be free.

REGISTER NOW.

 Your FULL Container for 8 Months of Supported Transformation

Collaborative Huddle Sessions

You will not be processing this work alone. In our Huddle Sessions, you tap into the lived wisdom of a circle of women who get it — strategizing, problem-solving, and co-creating in real time. This is what collective leadership actually looks like.

  Laser Executive Coaching

Bring your hardest challenge — the conversation you're dreading, the boundary you can't seem to hold, the decision that keeps you up at night. In Laser Executive Coaching, Dr. Shawna will guide you through the Liberation-Focused Healing Framework to cut through the noise and find your clarity.

Womanist Wisdom Circles

This is where the whole woman gets to show up. Womanist Wisdom Circles are where we talk about parenting, money, partnership, and friendship — through a liberatory framework that doesn't ask you to leave any part of yourself outside the door.

Return to Presence Workbook 

A living practice guide developed by Dr. Shawna — not a generic journal. The Return to Presence Workbook is your anchor: reflection prompts, somatic practices, and intentional actions that integrate the work into the moments when you need it most.

Guest Speakers

Powerhouse guest speakers bring you living proof. Practitioners, cultural keepers, and thought leaders who are actively doing the work of liberatory leadership — so you can see what's possible and steal their wisdom for yourself.

Return to Presence Online Healing Studio

Between sessions, the Healing Studio holds you. 12 months of on-demand meditations, live and archived Qigong, African dance fitness, and healing workshops — a sanctuary you return to when the week gets heavy.

REGISTER NOW.

The Invitation 

 

This work saves lives. Not metaphorically — literally. When Black women stop running on empty and start leading from wholeness, everything changes. Their health. Their families. The people they lead. The communities they serve.

Cadence is not another task on your to-do list. It is a container to hold you. A rhythm to return to. A circle to walk with.

If your body is whispering yes — it's because it already knows what your mind is still deciding.

You have been leading by yourself for too long. This is your invitation to stop.

Enrollment is limited. This cohort begins now. Your seat is waiting.

FOR A LIMITED TIME...

Cadence + Communion:

Designed to Flow Together

 

Cadence gives you the tools, practices, and community to reimagine leadership and return to wholeness. Communion takes that work deeper—an all-inclusive 4-day / 3-night retreat in the mountains where you embody what you’ve learned, connect with the land, and honor your ancestors.

 

Together, they create a powerful rhythm of learning, practice, and renewal.

 

April 23-26, 2026

River Mountain Retreat Center

Everett, PA

 

What’s included in Communion:

  • Workshops on lineage healing, liberatory leadership, and ancestral reflection

  • Meditation, Movement and Healing Circles: Qigong & African dance 

  • A Heritage Hike and oral history listening session

  • Guided journaling and reflection practices

  • Hammocks in the trees + silent time in nature

  • Farm-to-table, chef-prepared meals 

  • Minimalist, modern lodging designed to help you sleep deeply (according to your circadian rhythm)

Get the 4-1-1 on Communion HERE.

 

 

Girl, I'm Coming!

Cadence + Communion: The Full Journey-- The incubator that transforms how you lead. The retreat that lets your body believe it.

Save $400

$1,600 Deposit + $325 per month

Some lessons land in the mind. Others only land when your feet are in the earth, your sisters are around the fire, and someone who loves you says: "You can put it down now."
Communion is that moment. Four days in the mountains of Everett, PA — April 23–26, 2026 — designed to deepen everything you've built in Cadence and give your body the chance to fully receive it.
Bundle price: $4,200 — save $400 when you commit to the full journey.
Everything in Cadence plus…
  • Healing circles & guided workshops to deepen your leadership and presence.
  • A Black Heritage Hike and hammock time to reconnect with land, body, and ancestors.
  • Daily Qigong practice and embodied rituals for balance and vitality.
  • Nourishing meals, intentional rest, and sisterhood to restore and renew you.
  • 12 months of access to the Return to Presence Healing Studio — your on-demand sanctuary
  • The full Undoing Work curriculum: 6 modules that change how you see yourself, your body, and your leadership
  • Guest practitioners and cultural keepers bringing living examples of liberatory leadership
REGISTER NOW

Cadence: The 8-Month Incubator

$350 per month

or $2,600 Paid in Full (Save $200)

This is not a workshop. Not a one-time retreat. Not a course you forget in two weeks.
Cadence is 8 months of consistent, held, clinical-grade support — from a PhD practitioner who has spent 15 years inside this work. Here's what that looks like:
  • 8 months of live Womanist Wisdom Sessions with a circle of women who have skin in the same game
  • 12 months of access to the Return to Presence Healing Studio — your on-demand sanctuary
  • The full Undoing Work curriculum: 6 modules that change how you see yourself, your body, and your leadership
  • Guest practitioners and cultural keepers bringing living examples of liberatory leadership
Total investment: $2,800 over the course of the program. (save $200) 
Many participants use employer professional development or wellness stipend funding. We provide a letter of support and invoice upon request.

 

REGISTER NOW

Frequently Asked Questions