Issa Victoria Guzman

Associate Consultant

she/her/ella

Íssa Victoria Guzmán (she,her,ella) is a heart-centered facilitator, organizational health consultant and certified professional coach based in Brooklyn. She is committed to facilitating organizational health and transformation by cultivating resilient, just and healthy work environments; supporting collective visioning; and translating big picture dreams to sustainable, practical and actionable steps. As a steward of social change with over 18 years learning, leading and consulting with diverse nonprofits and social justice movement spaces, Íssa has partnered with progressive organizations spanning the sectors of environmental justice, food justice, economic justice, the solidarity economy and cooperative development, all working to advance social justice in unique and necessary ways. 

Íssa’s primary focus as a Power, Belonging and Justice Practitioner include culture change work, values-based action planning, learning and praxis support, racial affinity group and caucus facilitation, equitable management, strategic direction, and healing-centered coaching. She engages popular education and human-centered facilitation. Íssa believes that cultivating strong and trusting relationships across diverse teams and organizations is key to advance equity and wellbeing. She is a scholar of anti-oppression, Black Liberation, and Emergent Strategy with an embodied commitment to decolonization and undoing systemic oppressions, dismantling anti-Blackness, deepening analysis of racialized capitalism, intersectionality, Black feminism, settler colonialism, cis-hetero patriarchy, ableism and other forms of oppression.

Some identities that currently inform her approach to this work include being a Peruvian immigrant, a cis-gender, mixed-race and melanated woman of Afro, Indigenous and Chinese descent, experiences living with chronic illnesses, and exploring her emerging queer identity. Through these lenses Íssa approaches her work to help unravel how different identities impact power and privilege and our ability to transform towards collective liberation. 

Íssa holds a BS and a BA in Environmental Science from Santa Clara University and holds credits toward an MA in Sustainable Food Systems from NYU.  Íssa is an enthusiastic plant-keeper and co-conspirator to the natural world. She facilitates in both Spanish and English.