Wise Chipmunk

Wise Chipmunk LLC offers coaching, design,

and thought partnership to guide you toward thriving.

About Wise Chipmunk

Wise Chipmunk LLC is a national, Black woman-owned education, research, and design firm based in California. Its mission is to support people and organizations in cultivating thriving mindsets and tools, and developing a principled approach to advancing flourishing for all.

—

Creating a thriving future requires bravely attuning to our inner voices. For individuals and organizations alike, Wise Chipmunk applies a healing-centered approach to designing lives and work aligned to who people are, who they want to be, and the world they want to build.

Let’s dig in.

Wise Chipmunk’s clients & partners have included The Acosta Institute, Bank Street College of Education, Brooklyn Friends School, the California Association of African-American Superintendents and Administrators, California State University-Bakersfield, California State University-Davis, Camp Fire, EnCorps, Fetch Rewards, Five Keys Schools and Programs, the National Black Justice Coalition, Share our Strength, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, Stanford New Schools, the Stanford Women’s Leadership Lab, The Steve Fund, WE Teachers, York University Faculty of Education, and others.

Dr. Kia DH (she/her)

Hi! I’m Dr. Kia

I am an educator, psychologist, researcher, and coach with a specific focus on thriving and human development. Throughout my career, I have supported an array of humans—from small children to college applicants to organizational leaders and their teams.

My first consulting gig—a side hustle roughly 20 years ago—required getting folks from the NYC Mayor’s Office and Teachers Union, along with the DOE Chancellor to collaborate on a politically charged “consensus” statement. Turns out I have a gift for helping people find the common ground required to pave a way forward.

But, I didn’t strike out on my own until 2021, when I could no longer deny that working in other people’s organizations wasn’t aligning to my purpose. I was meant to provide healing-centered education grounded in a critical thriving framework. I knew I had to cultivate this calling in my own garden.

So, I planted the seeds of being a chief operating officer and a teacher, a counselor and an academic, a person living at multiple margins, a freedom dreamer, an auntie, a “failure” and a “success,” and I used what grew to fuel people on their own journeys back to themselves—their values and spirit—and forward into flourishing.

Now, I get to work with individuals, schools, nonprofits, foundations, and firms to excavate dreams, and illuminate collaborative paths toward fulfillment. Wise Chipmunk LLC is how I do it.

Let’s dream defiantly together.

About the Bridge to Thriving Framework©

THRIVING FLOWER

Community Convo April '21: Thriving

Expertise & Offerings

I help you work toward a better present and a vibrant future using the Bridge to Thriving Framework© and wisdom from the fields of education, psychology, leadership, and critical studies.

Coaching

Dig deep into your core values and spirit to get unstuck, inspired, and energized in life, work, or both.

“Dr. Kia has a way of gently ushering people back into their spirits. She helps people reflect in real time in a way that empowers them and gets them in closer alignment to themselves. Her energy says, ‘this is something we’re going to build together.’”

- A.G.

Design

Learn how to apply the framework’s dimensions to creating thriving conditions for yourself and others.

“I attended a session Kia led about teachers thriving and adapted my doctoral research to use her Bridge to Thriving Framework as the basis of my asset based approach to Black female K-12 teacher longevity study. I am so excited and motivated by her work.”

- Dr. Carol Battle

Speaking

Thriving, The Power of Play, Critical Leadership, and other topics in the survival-to-thriving arena.

“Kia offers the unusual combination of being researcher, practitioner, and creator. She is deeply skilled and experienced. I have found her insightful, inventive, earnest, connected, and undaunted—full of the conviction that together we can build the world we deserve.”

- Dr. Eliza Byard