Meet Amarilis!
Raíces Coaching and Consulting was born from a desire to hold, love and push Black, Brown, Indigenous, Latinx and People of Color to stand in their purpose and power as leaders. Raíces is a labor of love for my people. I’ve succeeded for the past 20 years in my career as a social worker, nonprofit, and philanthropic leader because I’ve centered my identity and lived experience as a leadership strength.
Prior to founding Raíces Coaching and Consulting, I was the Program Officer at the Perrin Family Foundation, where I stewarded our grantmaking and capacity-building strategies to support ”ecosystems that build the collective leadership and power of Black and Brown youth in order to advance movements for racial and social justice.” I developed a framework for social change focused on youth developing their critical consciousness as a methodology to dismantle structural oppression and fight for liberation.
Before joining PFF and philanthropy, I was the Director of Adolescent Services at the Educational Alliance, a settlement house in the Lower East Side of New York City. During my eleven-year tenure there, I led a talented team of 15 full-time staff, 300 part-time staff, and vibrant programs serving over 2,000 youth. As a youth development practitioner, I designed, implemented, and managed initiatives that bridged leadership development, college access, visual arts, and social-emotional wellness, undergirded by an anti-oppressive lens and analysis. My deep commitment to developing our staff team led to the creation of workshops, retreats, and conferences addressing the impacts of race, culture, and structural oppression for Black and Brown staff.
My alma maters include Temple University, where I earned a Bachelor of Art in English, and Columbia University, where I earned a Masters in Social Work. In my free time, I’m with my beloved Maltese, Lola, a former dog olympian, and wandering the magical corners of the earth with my wonderful husband.
What are your raíces/roots? I can’t wait to hear your story and support your journey.
In Solidarity,
Amarilis Pérez Pullen
My Journey Story: Finding my Rootedness
When will I arrive? Ever since I could remember, I’ve been so preoccupied with the concept of “arriving” at success. That if I checked every box on society's status quo lists of accomplishments; school, career, marriage, that I would arrive at the mountain top of success. I had experienced burnout, overwork, underpay, harm and trauma no matter where I was in my career and my personal journey. I knew in my gut that I needed a deep mindset shift. Instead of thinking “when” and “what” questions to “how” questions.
How do I meet this moment?
How do I listen to the messages from my mind, body and heart?
How will this impact my life in tomorrow, in three months, a year, five years?
By exploring the how, I became rooted in my understanding that my journey, my transformation and my success are not linear.
As Adrienne Marie Brown says “Transformation doesn’t happen in a linear way, at least not one we can always track. It happens in cycles, convergences, explosions. If we release the framework of failure, we can realize that we are in iterative cycles, and we can keep asking ourselves—how do I learn from this?”
The belief that my worth is directly related to my accomplishments did not come from thin air. It is threaded into the fabric of race, systemic oppression and power in this country. As a women of color, these invisible whispers that say I am unworthy of success no matter my talents, work ethic, leadership and success are living rent free in my mind. It was time to break intergenerational cycles of trauma. And I learned the hard way that this “arriving” is a false destination, because our journeys are not linear.
I share my story because the beginning of all of our leadership stories start with our most vital super power-vulnerability. It’s time to live fully into your purpose and stop folding yourself into spaces that deny who you are and the power of your raíces.
It’s time to unpack your own leadership journey and tap into coaching as a space for transformative leadership. Let’s connect!
Start your coaching journey today!
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive, and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
-Maya Angelou