C. Nicole Chandler

I've done a lot of nonprofit work over the years, working with individuals, groups, families, and communities. I was the founding executive director for the Chain Center, which was a nonprofit I created for young adults and teens, giving them a safe space, a third place, to help combat violence that was occurring in the community. This space provided work and recreation, therapeutic services, and became a staple in the community and a major hub for the flagship university in that city to do college readiness and employment skills. Through doing that work across the years with individuals, groups, families, communities, and leaders, what I learned was that all of who we are shows up everywhere we go and in all of what we do. Things that kept showing up were things that had happened and people were still carrying, had not processed, and had not resolved from childhood or various different interactions. This led me to really focus on doing the internal work to process and resolve those places of trauma and grief, to really show up more whole in all of what I did. It was the impact of doing my own work and how it reverberated throughout my life in all the places that inspired me to open my own practice, providing the space and opportunity to help others have that same experience. It freed me in so many ways, and I wanted to provide that opportunity particularly for women.