Hi, I’m Kaytee Ray-Riek.

Kaytee stands in a garden with her hands in her pockets. There is an out of focus plant in the foreground, and a house in the back.
 

My detailed story is below, but here’s a quick overview:

I started as a people and culture consultant in 2016 helping to support organizations working towards justice to proactively and purposefully build cultures that support everyone to thrive. In 2022, I created Tend Consulting to house that work. Before becoming a consultant, I was a senior leader in national and global campaigning organizations, working to challenge corporate power and fight global AIDS. Since becoming a consultant, I’ve worked with justice-oriented organizations to support them to grow their internal capacity around supporting their people to thrive.

Read some testimonials from clients here.

My story:

My journey towards noticing how group dynamics can challenge an organization’s ability to accomplish great things started nearly twenty years ago in a very personal way. I was asked by a group of BIPOC members of a volunteer activist group to take a break, because the way I was showing up was deeply challenging to them. It was painful, and a huge wakeup call.

Thanks to support, training, and compassion, I was able to learn some significant lessons about how white people like me show up in groups, and how that can impact others.

After a few months I was invited back in. It was, though we didn’t have this language at the time, transformative justice in action, and I remain grateful to the people who cared for the group, and for me, enough to push me to learn and grow. 

I've worked for organizations that have cultures that are challenging to work in, especially for those who experience societal oppression, and I’ve had the opportunity to help build a few that consciously sought to have inclusive, resilient cultures. 

At SumOfUs (a global corporate accountability campaigning org), I helped to build an international team of dozens that centered anti-oppression and racial justice as fundamental parts of our culture and campaigns. We did this because we knew that as an organization challenging corporate power, we would only succeed if we hired and retained a staff that had a wide range of experiences with the global economic system.

But with diversity came challenges. It's easy to work with people who are all like you, but it takes intentionality to build a multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-cultural, international team.

As a senior leader, I had to work to build trust and safety for staff to feel like they could speak up when frustrated, and had to show I was listening and changing based on the feedback. We did this through purposeful conversations about what wasn’t working, and constantly looking for ways to change things to support people better. I helped to build an equity analysis into hiring, on-boarding, evaluation, retreats, check-ins, and more.

When I left in late 2015, we weren't done (you can never be "done" creating a culture that works for all staff), but we'd opened up challenging conversations -- led by people of color and others who experienced marginalization, who were committed to staying and working together to shift the organization's culture and practices even further. 

Since then, I’ve been a consultant working with justice-oriented organizations on how we work together. I’ve helped groups get clear on their values, trained managers on how to build trust with their teams, coached leaders who want to disentangle themselves from white supremacy culture, facilitated staff retreats digging into knotty issues of communication and group dynamics, supported deep relationship building for remote teams, and project managed equitable hiring processes to bring great people into justice-oriented organizations.

Some of the organizations I’ve worked with in the 6+ years I’ve been a consultant include: MoveOn, Sierra Club, Be A Hero, Parents Together, Media Justice, Center for Popular Democracy, CREDO Action (RIP), B Lab, OPEN, and AIDS United, and locally in Philly: Bearded Ladies, Mural Arts, William Way Community Center, One PA, and Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. 

When I’m not consulting, you can find me doing climate justice direct action campaigning with Earth Quaker Action Team, raising puppies to be service dogs, baking (so much baking!), and tending to my garden with my partner at our home outside Philadelphia.