Nature Has the Best Models for Leadership— our leadership lab and narrative studio brings them to live
A Lab for Leadership and Work, Inspired by Nature
We don’t need more heroes. We need ecosystems. Leadership isn’t just about visionaries pulling us forward. It’s about networks, resilience, adaptation—the same forces that sustain forests, rivers, and soil.
Soil and Shadow is a Leadership Lab that turns to ecosystems to understand what makes systems thrive, adapt, and regenerate. Because leadership, like nature, isn’t static. It evolves. And in a world defined by uncertainty - visceral, gut-wrenching uncertainty - leaders and teams must become more like ecosystems—resilient, dynamic, and deeply interconnected. The best models for leadership don’t come from boardrooms. They come from ecological wisdom. Microbiomes teach us how to collaborate. Biodiversity teaches us resilience. Soil health principles show us how to sustain long-term growth. We take these insights and apply them—in coaching rooms, executive teams, classrooms, and conference halls.
For over a decade, we’ve been designing new ways of leading and working. We’ve published papers that push the climate sector forward, partnered with universities to teach what we’ve learned, and shared our research from national and international stages. With executive coaching and consulting we’ve applied our mix of innovation and best practices in real-world settings.
Our purpose-driven sectors need spaces where bold ideas are tested, where new ways of leading are designed, and where leaders are inoculated with the mental toughness, emotional stamina, and skills to pull hopeful futures into reality.
Our Leadership Lab is that space.
A Narrative Studio for a Regenerative Future
We’ve also learned from our soil health mentors (thank you, No Regrets Initiative) that if you want to understand whether a living system is thriving, ask two simple questions: Is it beautiful? Is it complex? The same is true for the future we are building. Our Narrative Studio exists at the intersection of this beauty and complexity.
Some truths can’t be taught through leadership coaching or team consulting (though we do those too, through our Leadership Lab). Some truths live deeper—underneath logic, beyond language. These truths must be felt before they can be understood.
Soil and Shadow creates the short films, podcasts, and audio/visual experiences that awaken the part of us that believes in exponential change. The part of us that reaches for possibility even when we have nothing left to give. The part of us that trusts in regeneration.
The stories we tell in our Narrative Studio shape the world we create.
Work With Us
At Soil and Shadow, we help leaders and teams cultivate connection, adaptability and renewal through coaching, facilitation, and professional development training designed to regenerate workplaces from the inside out. Just as healthy ecosystems rely on biodiversity and symbiotic relationships, resilient organizations depend on trust, clear communication, and structures that nourish their people. Whether we’re guiding executive teams through connective conflict, supporting women leaders in coaching sessions, training teams on feedback and implicit bias or embedding regenerative HR practices through fractional People Ops services, our work is rooted in one truth: thriving workplaces, like thriving landscapes, don’t happen by accident—they are intentionally cultivated.
February 27th: Fertile Feedback and Connective Conflict Training
Engage and Learn
Adaptive Roots: A Framework for Resilient Leadership and Culture
Soil and Shadow’s Adaptive Roots Framework integrates models from organizational development, leadership development, power-building and movement-building, and ecological management for biodiversity. Adaptive Roots strengthens structures, team culture processes, and skills training to cultivate resilient leadership and a thriving organizational culture—with a focus on ongoing practice, accountability (the ‘rubber meets the road’ execution over time), and joy.
A Mycelial Network of Hope & Commitment
Every ecosystem is shaped by both intention and action. A seed doesn’t grow by chance—it responds to the conditions around it, bending toward sunlight, sending roots deep into the earth, and drawing in unseen support from the soil. Our leadership, our movements, and our futures evolve the same way. Intention is the root system of transformation.
At Soil and Shadow, we honor the ritual of setting intentions and the rigor of following through. When spoken, written, and shared, intentions become a form of stewardship—an active way of shaping the world we want to live in. Like the mycelial networks beneath the forest floor, our collective intentions connect us, nourish us, and shape the landscapes of change.
We take this work seriously. Four times a year—on the equinoxes and solstices—we print these prayers and intentions on seed paper and plant them in the ground, allowing them to take root, decompose, and bloom into something new.
What intentions are guiding your leadership? What quiet prayers are shaping your journey? This will only be shared among our team, not publicly.