Community Dreams

We chose to call ourselves ChainLink Strategy to honor the strength we have in community and our interlinked stories while also recognizing the very real barriers to justice and well-being we face.

We dreamed of a space where we could work side-by-side with folks who are both personally and communally doing the work. ChainLink Strategy is that space.

Nayantara

she/her

I’m a strategist, anthropologist, writer, and artist who loves connecting with dogs and people. I come to this work through the serendipity of working with both David Graeber and Urvashi Vaid. Witnessing how they approached their work, rooted in deep love and kindness in their relationships with people, fundamentally shifted how I wanted to show up.

ChainLink started as a zine, exploring our intersectional experiences. I opened ChainLink Studios to explore different relationships and creative work. As that work expanded, we grew ChainLink Strategy to work specifically in community with our siblings in the movement who are building futures together.

But this isn’t about me - it’s about us. It’s about being in community, building relationships, and resourcing each other. Let’s talk!

Maureen

she/her

I’m an anthropologist, writer, mother, and community organizer who loves exploring systems - food systems, social systems, really any system we all move through!

I pair an insatiable intellectual curiosity with a sometimes overwhelming concern for my fellow human. Across my career, I have been an advocate for newcomers, including refugees, immigrants, migrants, and undocumented arrivals. I am also an advocate for disability and mental health, and served as a caseworker for individuals whose mental health symptoms had become debilitating. Throughout my work, I have consistently sought to broaden my personal understanding of social, cultural, economic, and legal contexts while never losing sight of the very real, very human nature of my work.

After advising for ChainLink for years, I decided to join the team because we shared dreams for the future of this work, and we also shared values in how we approach this work.

  • We (Nayantara and Maureen) believe that nothing matters except our relationships to each other and how we all experience the world around us. This means working in community with people fighting for liberation, celebrating each other, and preserving our humanity. This work is by nature intersectional and grounded in justice. We believe that justice work is not about making small changes within the existing systems, it is envisioning and actualizing new systems that work for everyone.

  • We take on any type of movement building work. If it’s not a good fit for ChainLink Strategy, it may be a fit for our content and creative arm, ChainLink Studios, or it may be a whole new thing we want to take on!

    Get in touch with all of your ideas, we love hearing them!

  • Do you feel like we are aligned, but don’t feel that you don’t have any tangible idea to work with us on? Don’t worry, we love meeting new people and building out our constellation of folks. We are rooted in community and we take that really seriously.

    We have time for everyone.

Our Partnership

The seeding of our relationship was a Ph.D. program, in which we –quite accidentally– engaged in our first act of organizing, something we discuss in a podcast that can be found at sorapod.com. Our north star has become exploring and honoring our relationships to each other and not just the two of us, but the collective 'us.' Over the past decade, we have learned not to just show up for 'us,' but to truly understand those actions as cultivated care and collective action. Our conversations about how we, as two separate individuals, embrace this work and show up, each in our own way, have expanded our knowledge, perspective, understanding, and alignment.

We have collaborated continuously over the past decade - brainstorming and editing each other’s intellectual work, supporting each other as we both took on our first nonprofit leadership experiences, and encouraging one another as we’ve moved on through various endeavors - consulting, convening, parenting, and disability.

Our collaboration is rooted in the fact that we have different experiences and knowledge bases, and that we are strengthened by each other’s contributions. Where one is less knowledgeable, the other brings expertise; where one struggles, the other understands and supports.

We did not train to be leaders, yet we became them—mobilizing our skills, using our insight, trusting our instincts, reflecting while in motion, and adapting. In doing so, we learned that we value first and foremost the person - the whole being (who exists in a world beyond work) and who comes to a team with strengths to be honored, shared, and cultivated.