Hello! My name is Jamila Osman and I’m a lead consultant and facilitator with Root and Rise. I am a certified K–12 educator, doula, and mediator with over a decade of experience at the intersection of education, creative strategy, and restorative justice. I have worn many hats in my professional life, working as a high school teacher, an editor, a journalist, a curriculum developer, a policy analyst, and have lived on three different continents.

I have helped grow babies, nurture young minds, and expand readership and audiences, but the most important work I have ever done has been learning to tend to our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the planet, and supporting others as they learn to do the same.

Years ago, when I advised the multicultural club in the high school where I taught, my students were in charge of planning a diversity assembly. The theme they chose was: It is a line from a poem by Luis Valdez that draws on Mayan philosophy. This is the ethos and guiding light of my work — the recognition that true healing is collective, and that in an era of intense social fragmentation and isolation, we are healed only by our willingness to face each other and ourselves.