ABOUT
Dr. Val Thomas is a keynote speaker, writer, art exhibit curator, social justice advocate, animal advocate, and equine facilitated learning (EFL) facilitator.
In coaching and consulting Dr. Thomas' philosophy works playfully with the unfamilarity of disorientation and uncertainty as a state that yields insight.
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I work with organizations, professionals, artists, executives, students, teachers, academics, activists, and individuals going through changes or searching for self-awareness, growth, more compassion, more lightness.
I see my neurodivergence, decolonial orientation, and study of ancestral knowledge, as key to my work. I've been a meditator, yogi (bhakti, hatha), and energy practitioner since my twenties. I find that investigating ancestral and personal narratives brings more balance and insight to relationships and challenging situations.
ABOUT MY EFL WORK WITH HORSES
As an EFL and energy practitioner Dr. Valorie partners with horses while utilizing somatic healing techniques and inviting a sense of discovery and playfulness. Horses afford us opportunities to notice our habits of perception, belonging, connection, group dynamics, timing, and being present in the moment, while their ability to regulate their nervous system is beneficial to helping humans self-regulate as well.
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Contact me for a free 15 min. consultation.
Background
Professional Bio
Dr. Thomas holds 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 in the Pomona College English Dept (also core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliated with Gender & Women's Studies, American Studies, and Media Studies). She 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. Thomas 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.
"We have always been here. Our ancestors prepared and became the landscapes and world for the coming humans with order, knowledge, and gifts embedded in the landscape." Julia Bogany, Tongva Elder, Land Acknowledgment 2021
https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/tending-nature/you-will-not-b