Priya Parker
Facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering
Prentis Hemphill
Author, political organizer, founder and director of The Embodiment Institute
“We need to stop thinking that we can have individual solutions to collective problems.”
Prentis Hemphill (they/them) is a political organizer and was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network. They are the author of What It Takes To Heal and an expert embodiment practitioner who has partnered with Brené Brown and Esther Perel, among others. Their work focuses on dismantling systems of oppression and fostering inclusive communities. With a deep understanding of intersectionality, Hemphill has a remarkable ability to connect with diverse audiences and has worked with individuals and organizations to navigate leadership transitions, support community accountability, and inspire transformation.
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About Prentis Hemphill
Prentis Hemphill is a dynamic and influential activist, embodiment teacher, group facilitator, and author who has made significant contributions to various fields, including social justice, community organizing, and mindfulness. They are the Founder and Director of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative, and the host of the acclaimed podcast, Finding Our Way.
For over 10 years, Hemphill has been working with individuals and organizations during their most challenging moments of change. They do this by unearthing the connections between healing, community accountability, and our most inspired visions for social transformation.
Hemphill is an engaging, authentic, and captivating speaker with a natural ability to connect with audiences and create safe spaces for meaningful conversations and dialogue. During their events, they explore the societal tendency to suppress emotions (to the detriment of individual and collective well-being) and examine how existing power structures can hinder the formation of communities while promoting marginalization and exclusion. Their talks are filled with personal anecdotes, humor, and powerful storytelling that leave a lasting impact on listeners and encourage participants to embrace their emotions and build deeper connections.
Before founding The Embodiment Institute, Hemphill was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and a lead somatics teacher with generativesomatics, an organization committed to bringing politicized somatics to movement building, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a group dedicated to rebuilding Black movement infrastructure. In 2016, Hemphill was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought.
Hemphill’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Shondaland. Prentis is a contributor to The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines as well as the upcoming You are Your Best Thing edited by Brene Brown and Tarana Burke and Holding Change by adrienne maree brown. Hemphill currently lives on a small farm in Durham, NC with their family.
Contact us for more information about booking Prentis Hemphill for your next event.
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Speaking Topics
Creating Community and Collective Resilience
In this dynamic talk geared toward corporations, non-profits, and educational groups alike, Prentis Hemphill helps audiences understand the transformative power of collective resilience in creating thriving communities. With a keen focus on the dynamics of belonging, the disruption of power structures, and the exploration of emotions, Hemphill challenges audiences to embrace vulnerability and forge meaningful connections.
What It Takes to Heal
Join Prentis Hemphill in an interactive conversation on the intersection of individual healing and societal transformation. We explore questions of what it means to be well in an increasingly unwell earth and in fractured societies and families. Together we can look for ways that our pursuit of healing can be reparative for ourselves, for our relationships, our communities, and the places where we live.
Embodying Our Values
Embodiment is a way of understanding how we learn and internalize beliefs, habits, and actions. We often find ourselves (for reasons of training and socialization) embodying values that don’t align with what we deeply know to be true. In this talk, and in practice, we discover more about what we currently do and what we might need to practice in order to become who we know ourselves to be.
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Video
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Praise for Prentis Hemphill
Praise for What It Takes to Heal
Hemphill teaches us where healing begins, and how crucial our healing is for the worlds we want to conjure.
— adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure ActivismThis book will be both the ‘aha’ moment and the balm for so many people who are saddled with vacant platitudes that don’t give them a way forward. It is what we need in this moment and will be foundational for generations to come.
— Tarana Burke, author of UnboundA powerful, prescient, incisive book that helps us better understand ourselves, our relationships, and how to fully be in this world, all while creating the next.
— Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering -
Books by Prentis Hemphill
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Media About Prentis Hemphill
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- Prentis Hemphill travels from Durham, NC
Featured Title
What It Takes to Heal
“I love this book. Prentis Hemphill offers us a visionary, personal, compassionate, empowering guide for our healing as individuals, within the histories of our families and deep within the broader contexts of our communities, societies, and the world at large.”—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score
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