Experience Sanctuary.
A place of brave rest where you can step away from urgency and expectation and into stillness, spaciousness and care.
Our Offerings
We believe that lasting change is possible when we invest in the women cultivating a more just and liberated future. Our Sanctuaries, in Washington State and Mexico, are open to all women doing this work, and we prioritize Black and Indigenous women.
They are remaking the systems that shape all our lives while carrying the weight of systems never built for them to thrive. They are extraordinary. They are also exhausted. What stands between them and rest is not personal. It is structural. Rest costs money and time most cannot spare, and the places built for restoration were rarely designed for them.
Sanctuary Fellowship
An individual 2-4 week immersive experience where women rest, reconnect with self while remembering their wholeness.
Sanctuary Journey
A collective one week experience co-designed with practitioners that embody the values of the Sanctuary Experience.
The Sanctuary Fellowship
Most rest is something a woman has to earn, afford, or justify. The Sanctuary Fellowship asks none of that. It is a two to four week individual immersion for women changing the world, built on one belief: being is enough. Fellows are not asked to produce anything. There are no deliverables, no reporting, nothing owed. We remove what usually stands in the way, and then we get out of the way.
We remove the financial barrier. Every woman who comes to us receives an unrestricted stipend to cover time away from work and caretaking, along with travel, meals, and lodging. She does not have to choose between rest and rent.
We shift the culture. Fellows arrive from a sector that rewards sacrifice and treats needing anything as weakness. Here, nothing is asked of them. Just time and space to rest, reflect, and reconnect.
We create places that hold them. We steward two sanctuaries, one in the Washington State and one in Mexico. A Sanctuary Steward walks alongside each woman before, during, and after her stay, so the practices of rest and remembering go home with her.
That is where new possibility lives. A woman who has rested can reimagine her relationship to work and life. She can lean into her wholeness instead of depletion. When we hold her, the movements hold too.
The Sanctuary Journey
Alongside our individual Fellowships, we offer collective Journeys: a week together at sanctuary for like-minded women who are changing the world. So many of these women carry the work alone. Coming together offers something an individual stay cannot: community. Rest, held together, becomes a kind of solidarity.
We build each Journey with partners. Every Journey will be co-designed with collaborators who share our values and bring lived experience, expertise, and curriculum rooted in care. No two will be the same, because no two communities of women need the same thing.
We remove the financial barrier. Every woman receives an unrestricted stipend to cover time away from work and caretaking, along with travel, meals, and lodging.
We create places that hold them. One week at sanctuary in Washington State, with guided practices for rest and remembering, and time that belongs to no one but the women in it.
That is where something new becomes possible. A woman who rests alone returns restored. Women who rest together return to each other, with people who understand the weight because they carry it too.
If you are building something that belongs at sanctuary, or you know a group of women who should be in a room together, we would like to hear from you.
Meet Our Sanctuary Fellows
Our fellows embody visionary, transformative leadership at the intersections of justice, healing, and liberation. They are nationally recognized advocates, organizers, scholars, and strategists whose work spans criminal justice reform, climate and environmental justice, racial and gender equity, philanthropy, and cultural transformation.
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Bianca van Heydoorn is a native New Yorker and proud Philadelphian. For over two decades, Bianca academic, personal and professional efforts have focused on supporting communities impacted by interpersonal and state violence.
She is currently the Executive Director at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), a nonprofit organization working to mitigate the harm children experience when they are forced into the adult criminal legal system. Prior to joining YSRP, Bianca served as the founding Director of Philadelphia’s Office of Reentry Partnerships.
Earlier in her career, she worked directly with adolescents; developed programs to intervene in commercial sexual exploitation; prepared teens for employment; helped incarcerated students and returned citizens engage in post-secondary education; and influenced policy related to conditions of confinement.
Bianca has an undergraduate degree in Correctional Sociology from the City University of New York and a graduate degree in Criminal Justice from John Jay College. She is certified in Permaculture design and enjoys applying these principles on her mini homestead.
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Connie Wun, PhD, is the Executive Director and co-founder of AAPI Women Lead. Connie has published in academic books, journals, and mainstream press, including the anthology, Antiblackness, as well as Educational Policy, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Critical Sociology and Elle magazine. She is a co-editor for the anthology, Abolition for the People, with Colin Kaepernick and Christopher Petrella.
Dr. Wun has appeared on Democracy Now!, MSNBC, NPR, and a range of podcasts. She is a former National Science Foundation Fellow, Soros Justice Fellow, UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellow and more. She’s also been recognized by California API Legislative Caucus with the 2021 Excellence in Civil Rights Award and by GoldHouse with an A100 award.
She is a former sex worker, high school and college educator, anti-sexual assault advocate and organizer. Dr. Wun continues to co-facilitate community-driven research projects on racial and gender violence with organizations across the US. Connie has a daily meditation practice and is a yoga instructor who has also trained in Muay Thai and kickboxing.
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Layel Camargo (Yaqui and Mayo of the Sonoran Desert) was born on the unceded lands of the Kumeyaay, now known as San Diego, CA. From a young age, they loved writing telenovelas, swimming and performing for their family. For 15 years, Layel has joyfully worked at the intersection of climate justice, storytelling, cultural strategy, diversity, inclusion and nonprofit leadership. Their expertise spans from non profit leadership, partnership engagement, organizational management, communications, impact strategies, marketing, branding, and audience engagement; with a background in startups.
In 2020, Layel co-founded Shelterwood Collective, a 878-acre forest restoration project. As Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, they helped secure $20M in funding over 5 years, including a $4M land acquisition and a $2.5M annual operational budget. During Layel's tenure, they also served as Director (lead) of Arts and Culture, shaping the collective’s artist network, artist programing, narrative, storytelling and cultural strategy.
In 2018, Layel co-founded Climate Woke, a storytelling platform in collaboration with The Center for Cultural Power. They organized 500+ artists of color for climate justice, influenced the creation of cultural strategy programing within movement organizations, and produced 120+ original media pieces, films, and campaigns. Managing the program’s $600K budget, they led its expansion and impact.
Alongside Movement Generation, they co-created cultural strategy efforts using social media to amplify the Just Transition Framework, an equity based climate justice framework. They produced Did We Go Too Far?, commissioned artists for wildfire rapid response, transformed the Creative Wildfire trainings into an artist cohort, and served as impact producer for The North Pole Show, facilitating screenings in 17 locations nationwide.
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, Layel earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Legal Studies and Feminist Studies while engaging in performance art and activism. Since coming out as transgender and gender non-conforming, they have committed to ending gender-based violence and challenging sexism while making connections to the larger societal and environmental impacts.
Most recently, Layel played a key role in stabilizing artist employment in the east coast by supporting a $9M fiscal sponsorship with Tribeworks Cooperative. Layel was recognized as a 2020 Fixer by Grist, they also co-received a Humanitarian Award from the International Association of Sufism in 2023, and a former fellow of Climate Story Lab.
A recognized Indigenous storyteller, Layel advances cultural change through powerful oration, land connection, inclusive art making and storytelling.
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Stephanie Kimou is a philanthropic facilitator, equity strategist, writer, and lecturer working to make the NGO and philanthropic sectors more equitable and accessible for Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive folks. She has a decade-long career in African development and now supports philanthropic institutions in defining decolonization and implementing next-generation equity initiatives.
She sits on the boards of the Global Fund for Women and The Black Doula Project. She is an angel investor/supporter for Black women-led startups like Somewhere Good, HoneyChile Productions, ProHoe, and Auttrianna Projects. An aspiring Buddhist, cannabis enthusiast, and yogi, Stephanie resides in Washington, DC, with her family.