(323) 919-2607 (323) 403-5500
energy reset, intuitive guidance
equine facilitated: horse & herd inner journeys
consulting & speaking
ABOUT
Dr. Val is a certified energy and nervous system reset practitioner and is accepting individual clients.
She is also a consultant and workshop facilitator whose work is informed by being neurodivergent and surviving institutional trauma. Dr. Val compassionately guides individuals and groups/organizations toward introspection and proactive change around equity, overcoming workplace bullying and institutional harm, decolonial cultural literacy, and social-emotional agility.
Professional Bio
Val Thomas is an energy practitioner, keynote speaker, writer, social justice advocate, certified equine assisted learning provider, consultant, educator, and workshop leader. She earned a PhD and MA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, and is the first African American and first BIPOC tenure track faculty (now
Val Thomas is an energy practitioner, keynote speaker, writer, social justice advocate, certified equine assisted learning provider, consultant, educator, and workshop leader. She earned a PhD and MA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, and is the first African American and first BIPOC tenure track faculty (now Emerita) in the Pomona College English Dept (while being joint faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliated with Gender & Women's Studies, American Studies, and Media Studies). Dr. Val taught Pomona’s first and for decades only courses in Screenwriting and in Native American Literature. She was awarded two Wig Foundation Distinguished Teaching Awards, the Draper Center Community Outreach Award, a Queer Allyship Award, a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship and was on the Fulbright Specialist Roster for five years. Dr. Val curated the first African Diaspora art exhibition and symposium at Pomona College, “Vertigo@Midnight: New Visual AfroFuturisms & Speculative Migrations,” featuring an array of international artists, films, performances, and lectures, installed at two galleries simultaneously, and organized the biannual collaborative symposium, “Healing Ways: Decolonizing Our Minds, Our Bodies, Ourselves — A Week of Healing.” In the early 2000s Prof. Thomas introduced meditation, mindfulness practices, and somatic pedagogy in English and Africana Studies courses Dr. Thomas' courses include AfroFuturisms, Literature of Incarceration, Introduction to African American Literature, Film and Literature of the African Diaspora, Toni Morrison, Contemporary Native American Literature, Native Women Writers, Exile/Nomadism/Diaspora, and Healing Narratives. She has consulted for the Getty Institute and The HERD Institute. She holds certifications from The Mindful Leaders Project and Innerlight Method. Dr. Thomas' work has appeared in Practicing Liberation: Transformative Strategies for Collective Healing and Systems Change, Dis...Miss Gender, Black Cool: 1001 Streams of Blackness, Jalada Africa, African American Review, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, TOPIA, Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling About Racism in Higher Education, International Journal of the Humanities, and Biography.