Community Call

Rockwood Community Calls are a FREE online event series created to support leaders from everywhere within the social justice ecosystem so that you can feel connected, supported, and replenished.

Every other month, we host a 60-minute Zoom call with a teacher, healer, leader, activist, artist, or speaker who will hold space for whatever our collective spirit is seeking in that moment.

Everyone is welcome, whether you’ve been through a Rockwood program or this is the first you’ve heard of us. Register for the next call and give yourself the gift of space, ease, and joy in your workday.

March 27, 2025 | Vanessa Priya Daniel

Join us in partnership and personal ecology as we hear from author Vanessa Priya Daniel for a truth telling conversation about women of color and social justice from her book, Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning. From the streets, to the ballot box, to elected office, no other demographic group stands up more consistently and unequivocally for human rights, democracy, and the planet. Yet when they are in leadership positions, women of color face persistent and unfair obstacles. For them, too often, the game is rigged.

Vanessa Daniel has worked in social justice movements for 25 years as a labor and community organizer, writer, researcher, and funder. She is the founder of Groundswell Fund (a 501c3), and Groundswell Action Fund (a 501c4), two leading funders of women of color-led organizations in the U.S. Vanessa was named one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Players in Philanthropy” by Inside Philanthropy. She is the recipient of the 2022 Smith Medal from her alma mater Smith College. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and The San Francisco Bay Guardian, among other publications. She is currently a fellow with the Decolonizing Wealth Project, and her consulting firm, Vanessa Daniel Consulting LLC, offers strategic advising and executive coaching to donors, foundations and grassroots leaders. Vanessa and her co-parent Tricia are mothers to two daughters, ages six and thirteen.
Learn more about Vanessa at vanessapriyadaniel.com.

May 22, 2025 | Evolve Benton

Join us in resilience and personal ecology for an interactive workshop that will equip leaders with strategies to recognize early warning signs of burnout before they escalate. Participants will learn practical stress management techniques and energy renewal practices for busy professionals. The session includes hands-on exercises and immediately implementable tools that help maintain peak performance without sacrificing personal well-being.

Evolve Benton (they/them) is a pioneering DEI practitioner with over a decade of experience transforming organizations through strategic equity initiatives. As CEO of Evolve Benton Consulting, they collaborate with organizations across North America to implement sustainable DEI strategies and enhance employee well-being through stress management approaches. Previously, Evolve established the first comprehensive Equity and Inclusion Program at UCSF School of Medicine, where they co-created an anti-racist curriculum that became a model for addressing systemic inequities in medical education.

With dual master's degrees in Clinical Psychology and Creative Writing from Antioch University, Evolve combines analytical expertise with compelling communication skills. Their professional background includes leadership roles at UCSF and UCLA, where they developed programming that reached thousands of participants. Evolve is also a published author and frequent speaker at national conferences on race, gender, and LGBTQ+ advocacy. Their unique approach focuses on translating aspirational equity goals into concrete, measurable actions while creating safe spaces for difficult but necessary conversations.

Learn more at evolvebenton.com.

July 31, 2025 | Norma Wong

Join us for a virtual gathering for reflection, connection, and conversation as we welcome Norma Wong sharing her new and very timely book, When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse. This powerful work distills years of Norma’s teachings and arrives at a moment when so many of us are holding both deep loss and profound possibility in our hearts.

Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawaiʻi. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years.

In earlier years, Wong served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She led teams to negotiate agreements on the munitions cleanup of Kahoʻolawe Island, ceded land revenue for Native Hawaiians, and the return of lands and settlement of land issues for Hawaiian Home Lands. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years.

In recent years, Wong has been called back into service to facilitate breaking the impasse and transforming policy and governance on issues of seeming contradiction. In the conflict between native culture/science and western discovery science posing as a dispute over the construction of a telescope on Mauna Kea, Wong was a team member narrating and facilitating a path forward through mutual stewardship. She is currently an advisor to Speaker of the Hawai‘i House of Representatives Scott Saiki, serving in policy development and facilitation roles on issues such as the protection of the aquifer from fuel contamination at Red Hill, and the long-term response to the Lahaina wildfires.

Norma has spent many years in the applied space – the direct application of indigenous and Zen ways, values and practices to living and transformational change critical to our times. Norma is part of the Collective Acceleration community of practice.