NIDAL KARIM

As a liberatory coach, learning and strategy consultant, and somatic healer, I support social justice organizations and changemakers in aligning their actions with their values, grounded in courage and integrity. My approach is rooted in liberatory and decolonial feminist principles, and informed by over 20 years of experience spanning small community-based organizations to large international funders.

My social justice roots are in gender-based violence prevention. I have had the privilege of collaborating with organizations and activists in the united states and globally across racial justice, immigrant and refugee rights, and reproductive justice struggles. As a survivor, researcher, mother, healer, and truthteller, my life is actively dedicated to dismantling the oppression, weaponization, and exploitation of the sexuality of women, girls, and femmes as a political tool.

Navigating higher education institutions (MA in Counseling Psychology and a PhD in Community Psychology), and working within federal government and the non-profit industrial complex, I have moved through many cycles of learning and unlearning. Time within these spaces has given me a deep understanding of how oppression and white supremacy are institutionalized, even within institutions striving for justice. Simultaneously, my journey of building beloved community, mothering, and engaging in ongoing self-study equips me to ideate a world beyond these systems and support those committed to transforming existing institutions. As a consultant, I hold space for these contradictions and help organizations shift their practices, recognizing that transformation happens through relationships and the integration of our minds, bodies, and spirits.

My work as a somatic healer and liberatory coach emerged from my personal healing journey as I sought ways to live fully in alignment with my values and commitment to our collective liberation. I had to intentionally navigate the contradictions between what my formal education had ingrained in me and the ancestral wisdom within my body that guides me toward justice and equity.

My offerings are rooted in the wisdom and teachings from Black and Third World feminist literature, healing justice, abolition, and indigenous worldviews. I believe in the sacred dignity of people of the global majority and the centrality of decolonization in our world building efforts.

In addition to consulting and coaching independently, I get to practice liberatory research and evaluation with the amazing crew at Social Insights Research and grow my coaching skills with the inspiring teachers at Coaching for Healing Justice and Liberation. I also provide erosomatic healing services to women, femmes, trans, and non-binary survivors, supported by the Atlanta Institute of Tantra community.

Currently, I am homemaking on the traditional lands of the Muscogee Creek and Cherokee peoples in Atlanta, GA with my life partner, our teenage daughter, our fur baby and our ever increasing plant babies. I am in creative community with South Asian SOAR and am working to build beloved space for queer muslims in the greater Atlanta area as the co-founder of Queer Muslim Peaches.