Farewell, Avarna

Avarna Community, 

It is with nearly all the emotions you might find in an emotions wheel that I am announcing my departure from the Avarna Group. I have felt sadness, anxiety, excitement, relief, pride, and a lot more as I think about moving on. But the one feeling I keep coming back to, as trite as it sounds, is gratitude. 

First and foremost, I will be forever grateful for the partnership with aparna – I am still wrapping my head around what our partnership has meant to me personally and professionally, but I do know that it has been life-changing. It’s difficult to describe what I have loved about working with aparna, but I keep coming back to the fact that we were incapable of a quick check-in – we needed to share life updates, give blunt feedback, make jokes, commiserate, go down rabbit holes on obscure topics, and talk about whatever else was on our minds. Our meandering, expansive conversations were daily reminders of how lucky I am to have found such a great partner. 

Cianna is a newer addition to the team, but I am just as grateful for her partnership. Of course, I appreciate the new skills, experiences, and life she brought to our team (quite literally, actually – in July 2024, she welcomed the newest member of her family, Julian!) But more meaningful to me was the trust, openness, and care she brought to our team as we transitioned from a team of two to three. When we met up in person in April 2024, it took us a while to realize we hadn’t actually seen each other since 2017 – I don’t take for granted the closeness you can feel with someone even without seeing them for 7 years. 

It’s not just aparna and Cianna who have made my experience at Avarna so meaningful – it is all of the Avarna collaborators who have shared their ideas, experience, and knowledge with us throughout the years. What a gift to work with so many thoughtful, kind and innovative colleagues whose contributions helped expand and shape my own understanding of DEI work and the world in general.

Of course, the Avarna Group would not be what it is without our clients – occasionally, I have an out of body moment where I think: “I can’t believe these people trust us to do this work.” My disbelief is really gratitude in disguise for the faith they put in us to guide them through complex work. I’m not just grateful for the trust, but also for the opportunity to learn about so many different interesting projects, programs, policies, and more – our client work often left me curious and inspired to learn more about their particular corner of the environmental movement. 

Finally, I am grateful to all of those who helped me navigate this decision – I have spent countless hours on the phone with friends, family and colleagues thinking through all the details, implications and possibilities of me leaving. You all have helped me arrive at this decision with a strong sense of clarity, which is the only thing keeping my head on straight as I voluntarily heave myself into the unknown. 

I imagine this list of gratitude suitable for an Oscar acceptance speech may leave you wondering why I am leaving such a great gig. The simplest answer is that I feel I’ve given and grown all that I can in my current role and position. 

The longer answer is that I got into consulting because I felt like I had something helpful to say in the mainstream environmental movement – namely that social and environmental issues are inextricably linked. It was not necessarily something new (the environmental justice and Indigenous justice movements had been making this argument long before my time), but it was a framework that was often ignored or misunderstood in mainstream environmentalism. In the early years of the Avarna Group, we laid down a framework so that organizations could connect the dots between their mission and DEI work. As organizations built their own narrative around DEI, we shifted our focus to building robust implementation plans so they could put their vision into action. In the last few years, the work has shifted again toward integrating DEI into strategic plans, making it all part of a cohesive strategy. It is where I hoped the work would eventually land and yet, this latest shift has sent me adrift in my own career aspirations. The newest iteration of Avarna work is important and needed, but it’s not the place where I feel like my skills, curiosity, and ambition are most useful. I found myself daydreaming about equity and justice work that did not fit within the structure of the Avarna Group, and thus began the process to slowly exit from the company. 

As for what’s next – I would love to tell you that I have a clear 10-step plan, especially as DEI, efforts to address climate change, and democracy are so heavily under attack. While I have a few small projects in the works, I have come to embrace that the ambiguity in my near future means I have more space for two essential components for durable equity and justice work: creativity and community building. I don’t know where that will lead or what change I might be part of, but I often take inspiration from a 2020 interview with Barbara Ehrenreich. The interviewer, Jia Tolentino, asks how Ehrenreich reckoned with the feeling of futility in her work. She responds, “The idea is not that we will win in our own lifetimes and that’s the measure of us but that we will die trying.” Which is to say, I don’t know exactly what my next move will be or its potential impact, but I do know that I will keep trying to advance equity and justice.

With gratitude, 

Ava

P.S. One of the projects I’m working on is about white nationalism and environmentalism – if your organization has been facing white nationalism in your work, I would love to talk to you about what you are up against (ava@theavarnagroup.com).