Wednesday, May 31 at 1 PM UTC | 9 AM NYC | 10 AM São Paulo | 3 PM Amsterdam | 4 PM Nairobi | 8 PM Jakarta (Find your timezone here)
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We hold a multitude of identities as leaders: activist, artist, office worker, sister, son, adult child, parent, caregiver, immigrant, friend, athlete, science fiction lover, elder, and beyond. These identities dance within us and can show up in different ways in the various spaces we inhabit. When the systems we are a part of do not feel welcoming for the wholeness of our identities, we navigate manifestations of discomfort, tension and disease in our inner and outer worlds. In this next session, we’ll explore how poetry can support us to become more connected to the wholeness of our identities and embrace ourselves more fully as leaders with Neha Misra नेहा मिश्रा — an award-winning climate justice advocate, immigrant poet, and contemporary eco-folk artist.
Neha encountered a separation between her creative and climate justice communities and felt that a more integrated way of being was calling. Through passages of personal loss, climate activism burn out and a leadership transition at the crossroads of multiple cultures, she found a way to integrate her full self through poetry. Her poetry on themes of renewal, enoughness, and power embodies lessons that she’s learned through the triumphs and agonies of these experiences.
Join us on May 31 as Neha shares her poems and their birth stories rooted in her reclamation of wholeness.
Speaker bio
Neha Misra नेहा मिश्रा ((she/her) is a first-generation immigrant poet, a contemporary eco-folk artist, and an award winning climate justice advocate with a deep belief in the power of human (re) imagination to create new realities. Neha’s multi-disciplinary creative studio centers feminist Earth wisdom to build bridges between private, collective, and planetary healing. Neha grew up in the vibrancy of New Delhi, India. An intentional community on the border of Washington, DC is Neha’s adopted home where she practices transformational worldbuilding.
Neha’s regenerative art practice has roots in the diverse eco-folk traditions, spiritual ecology, and colorful vibrancy of her South Asian heritage combined with her foundational education in Physics. Neha describes her poetry as a passage of finding words for the wordless, a self-revelation, and an instrument of co-liberation. As poetry emerges from private spheres to communal life, Neha believes it is a gift to renew, to connect, and to move the spirit.
Neha is recognized globally for her intersectional climate justice work. Neha has advanced women-led grassroots climate solutions across Asia, Africa, North America—bringing life changing renewable energy access to millions. She serves as the inaugural Global Ambassador of Remote Energy which is making the solar movement more inclusive for people of color, especially women. She co-founded Solar Sister to support transformational women power to generate solar power in off-grid communities across East and West Africa. Neha has been honored as a Presidential Leadership Scholar, and as a Regenerative Artivist with the Buckminster Fuller Institute and habRitual's Design Science Studio. She is also a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis —an initiative of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication to change who writes history. You can read her full bio here.
The Leap of Leadership is Spring's free, monthly meet-up space that dives into exciting social justice topics and gives leaders a space to deepen their relationships with other changemakers around the world. Each session, we share perspectives and practical tools to help bridge the gap between the reality of today and the future we know is possible.