Toni Anderson, Founder of Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab & Mindful Rant

Toni Anderson is a southside Chicago native dedicated to healing and bringing equity to the spaces supporting and threatening climate & culture. Ms. Anderson is an urban ecologist, spiritualist and founder of Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab and Mindful Rant, organizations dedicated to healing and supporting the spaces between climate and culture as a vehicle for providing youth with the tools they need to be agents of mindful social, environmental change and proactive community engagement.  Ms. Anderson is a human emergence practitioner, coach and facilitator of participatory leadership design, transforming planning and practice process across personal and organizational development. Believing our youth deserve to have an enriched understanding of the relationship between the natural and social environments, in 2012 she founded Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab, an organization dedicated to ‘teaching our youth to inherit the Earth’ by providing robust coursework youth programming in environmental science, global travel/service leadership, space equity, mindful leadership and the arts — intentionally examining the value systems and sacred earth keeping traditions of indigenous cultures and their influence on how people of color relate to space, nature and community.  Ms. Anderson speaks passionately about the connections between gentrification/serial displacement disorder, migration history and public space activation as revolutionary praxis — spreading the word on the importance of re-connecting our youth to the outdoors and the oppressive and emancipatory narratives that space holds within communities of color.  She facilitates environmental workshops on the materials economy, ecology explorations, sustainability and conservation and innovative leadership design. Toni is also a trainer for the University of Minnesota’s Monarch’s in the Classroom (MITC) curricula, Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project (MLMP) and is a member of the Monarch Flyways Connection. Toni is also a Chicago Conservation Corp Environmental Leader, Core Member of the Chicago Sustainability Leadership Network (CSLN) and serves as a Water Ambassador for the Illinois Delegation for the Alliance for the Great Lakes, dedicating herself to bringing planet consciousness to the communities she serves.  When not in the lab, Ms. Anderson takes on the role of human emergence practitioner, coaching and facilitating participatory leadership design as Mindful Rant, a consulting and coaching practice dedicated to transformative planning and practice across personal and organizational development. Toni is a trained facilitator, achieving certifications as an Advanced Youth Development ™ and Circle Keeper ™ practitioner and is currently pursuing a license as a Technology of Participation ™ (ToP) facilitator from the Institute of Cultural Affairs. She is also a trained Zen Shiatsu practitioner. To contact Toni, call 312.647.7709 or email toni@mindfulrant.net