Valery Navarrete, Founder and Principal
Valery Navarrete is a consultant, facilitator, and coach who catalyzes people and organizations dedicated to social change to make better decisions, have greater impact, and co-create deeper connection.
Valery works at the intersection of the big and the small. She excels at big picture thinking, and supporting people to find clarity in complexity.
Valery also understands that relationships are critical. She helps people to embrace how even small shifts in our connection with ourselves and others can be leverage points for transformative change.
Valery is regularly called upon to consult with organizations that range in size from small, local service providers like the Pine Project, to growing national advocacy organizations like the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, to big foundations like the Toronto Foundation, and individuals and teams within the Government of Canada.
As a certified coach, Valery is passionate about connecting emerging and established women of colour leaders with the foundations they need to thrive. Whether that means securing their seat at the table, building their own tables, or leading from where they are as they embrace leadership as a way of being, and not a title.
Valery lives with her partner and daughter in Ottawa, which is located on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe People.
Anti-Oppression
Valery is a mixed-race, Latinx woman of colour, and a care partner to a family member with disabilities. Her roots are layered and include Afro-Indigenous lineage via Ecuador and white settler roots not fully known via Canada. Her personal experiences at the intersections of privilege and oppression are a driving force behind her efforts to work with others to build healthier, more inclusive organizations, communities, cities, and societies.
A practicing intersectional feminist, Valery is dedicated to learning, unlearning, and unraveling the systems and structures in our society that push too many people to the margins.
Core to all of Valery’s work is a passion for connection. She understands that positive personal, community, and social support networks and connections are critical. She believes we need to recentre interdepedence in order to thrive.
Woman-of-Colour-Owned Business
Learn about Valery’s ‘why’ as woman of colour leader and entrepreneur in this clip from an interview with Passion Coach Shilbee Dhalla-Kim.
“Relationships move at the speed of trust, but social change moves at the speed of relationships.”
Jennifer Bailey
Background
Inspired by a passion for understanding social change from various vantage points, Valery’s twenty-year career has spanned levels of government and crisscrossed the social impact sector.
CAMH, the YMCA of Greater Toronto, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Canadian Heritage, and Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Health Branch are some of the organizations where Valery held senior level strategy, planning, organizational development, and advocacy roles.
Her most recent executive position before founding her consulting practice in 2021 was as Director of Planning and Strategy at CAMH, Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital. There, she led the community-centred development of the organization’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan.
A self-identified multipotentialite, Valery holds a Master of Arts, Canadian Studies from Carleton University, with a focus on gender and diversity studies. She also holds a Bachelor of Journalism (Hons.) from the same alma mater. She is a certified coach. She is also one of a small number of consultants across Canada certified to lead Impact and Strategic Clarity projects with Innoweave (a MakeWay Foundation initiative.)
Valery is a passionate volunteer who has held front line and board leadership roles with organizations such as Free Geek Toronto, Distress Centres Toronto, and Reset.
As a community builder, she is most proud of her role in co-founding Clarens Commons, a coliving home in Toronto. It has been featured in the Toronto Star, CBC Tapestry, VICE, and other media outlets.
Stay In Touch With Valery
Valery’s newsletter provides a quick mix of updates on what she is up to and content you can use.