ABOUT SIRIUS
I have spent most of my career trying to understand what happens between what we say we believe and what we actually build.
That question has taken me into organizations and movements, executive leadership and consulting, classrooms and conference rooms, writing, spiritual practice, and work about bodies and power.
It has also made for a career that doesn't fit particularly neatly into one sentence.
I'm Sirius Bonner. I'm a strategist, executive, writer, facilitator, and creator. I lead Sirius Bonner Consulting and serve as CEO of the Center for Body Trust. My work spans organizational strategy and leadership, writing and public thinking, body liberation, and spiritual and intuitive practice.
These aren't all versions of the same work. They are, however, all mine.
The Work I've Done
I've spent more than 20 years working inside organizations and helping change them.
I've been an executive, strategist, educator, facilitator, consultant, and advisor. I've worked in reproductive and sexual health, higher education, nonprofit leadership, healthcare, gender justice, racial equity, and community-based organizations.
I also serve as Interim Executive Director of Call to Safety and lead my consulting practice, where I work with organizations, executives, and boards navigating strategy, change, leadership, conflict, and complicated decisions.
Earlier chapters of my career include executive leadership at INTERSECT and equity and education leadership at Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, as well as work with Clark College and Portland State University.
I earned my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Reed College.
What I Bring With Me
I am a Black, fat, queer, cis woman. Those identities matter to how I understand the world, but I don't experience them as a list of qualifications or a tidy explanation for everything I think.
They have taught me a great deal about power.
So has leading organizations. So has working inside institutions that want to change and discovering how difficult change actually is. So has sitting with people in conflict. So has studying bodies. So has making decisions when the values are clear and the correct action isn't.
I care about liberation, but I am also interested in what we do before liberation arrives.
We still have to make decisions inside imperfect systems. We still have to live in our bodies. We still have to lead organizations, care for people, make things, survive losses, experience pleasure, change our minds, and decide what comes next.
A lot of my work lives there.
What I'm Doing Now
You can find my organizational strategy, facilitation, executive coaching, and leadership work through Sirius Bonner Consulting.
I write Freedom & Desire, a publication about the things I am trying to understand and the things I can't leave alone.
Through Hourglass, I work with astrology, tarot, intuition, and deep listening.
My work with the Center for Body Trust, continuing work that has profoundly shaped how I understand bodies, power, care, and liberation.
And through Curiosity, I am bringing back into the world a fictional universe my aunt left behind.
There is more than one way into my work.
Speaking
I like a room where we're allowed to think.
I've spent much of my career speaking to groups about things that resist easy answers.
Leadership. Power. Organizations. Equity. Bodies. Culture. Change.
My goal isn't to arrive with a polished set of conclusions and spend an hour delivering them at people.
I want to give a room language for something it has been experiencing, make a complicated idea easier to hold, ask a question people keep thinking about after they leave, and occasionally make everyone laugh while we're doing it.
What I Speak About
My speaking work draws from the full range of my work rather than a fixed catalog of talks.
Leadership & Organizational Life
Leadership under pressure, organizational change, decision-making, complexity, and what happens when the neat answer stops being useful.
Power, Equity & Intersectionality
How power operates through organizations, relationships, identity, culture, and the choices we make
Bodies & Fat Liberation
Body liberation, weight stigma, anti-fat bias, healthcare, workplace culture, and what our beliefs about bodies reveal about the systems we've built.
Culture, Identity & Difference
How we understand one another across difference without pretending difference is the only thing happening in the room.
My writing and creative work also increasingly inform my public conversations, including ideas emerging through Freedom & Desire and Curiosity.
FORMATS
Keynotes
Conference sessions
Workshops
Panels and moderated conversations
Leadership and organizational learning
Customized talks and facilitated conversations
I speak at conferences, organizational gatherings, leadership retreats, panels, community events, and other places where people are gathering to learn or think together.
I generally prefer to understand the room before deciding exactly what belongs in it.
Bring Me Into the Room
If you're considering me for a conference, gathering, retreat, panel, or conversation, tell me about the people who will be there and what you're hoping the time together can do.
Selected appearances & Clients
