Welcome back to Honing In and to my interview with Jillian Hess.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia is a facilitator, advisor, and writer based in New York City. She works with senior leaders at justice-rooted organizations -- especially queer folks and women of color -- helping them use conflict as diagnostic information about power, culture, and what needs to change. She came to this work after a decade inside public health, crisis response, and community-based care, where she kept noticing the same pattern: the most persistent strategy problems were almost always relational ones, rooted in power, story, and unaddressed conflict. She is also the writer and host of Intimate Practice, an ongoing research project on tending, thresholding, and what it means to move through transition.

Here are some of the things Shivani and I discuss:

Shivani’s background as a facilitator in public health focused on birth, sex, and death
Why learning to disagree better is key to building the world we deserve
Accountability as an invitation into deeper relationship, not moral judgment
How systemic dimensions of privilege and oppression live in our intimate interactions
Claiming agency and making meaningful change in this political moment

Resources & Links:

Shivani’s website
Cody Cook-Parrott’s class, Quilt in a Weekend
Shivani’s essay, How Conflict Becomes a Design Input
Sign up for Shivani's newsletter, Intimate Practice

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Podcast editing and support by Softer Sounds Studio.
Theme song by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter.

Building a Generative Culture Around Conflict with Shivani Mehta Bhatia