Who is Rosalie?

Rosalie was raised by artists in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies and brought up in a contemplative Yogic tradition that honored Hindu principles (Self-Realization Fellowship). Before she went on to be a recognized scholar, Rosalie was a mountain child, a tarot card reader by the age of ten, a teenage punk rocker, a musician, and a lifelong globetrotter. All of these lifestyles inform Rosalie’s work and scholarship: always cutting-edge, authentic, earth-honoring, and decolonizing.

Rosalie was also a first generation college student who eventually earned a PhD in cultural studies. She holds degrees in cultural mythology, psychology, philosophy, and political science. Her classical Western education is complemented by the ways of community she was fortunate to learn while living among the K’iche Maya in the Highlands of Guatemala, time spent learning on the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation, and education in the ways of the Yoruba of West Africa. She has been trained in ancestral healing and is a longtime practitioner of animism. Her worldview and teaching has also been deeply informed by more than a dozen trips backpacking throughout Europe, Central America, and Asia (starting at the ripe age of 16) and time living in Northern New Mexico, the Mississippi Delta, and Eastside Detroit.

Rosalie became known for her approach to “re-writing the narrative of community engagement” and later she coined the term “feral femininity” as a way to talk about social change led by diverse feminine-honoring worldviews. She has lectured widely on her innovative approach to breaking down supremacies and identifying narratives for deep social change. Her work has been featured on The Science Channel, National Geographic Channel Mexico. She is a popular lecturer and award-winning essayist. Her current work focuses on bringing meaningful narrative change to community and political organizations.