Toni Anderson is a southside Chicago native dedicated to fostering meaningful eco-social practice as a roadmap for personal and societal transformation.  Toni is a practitioner of wholeness, a healer, an urban ecologist, a spiritualist. Toni has planted freedoms through approaches rooted in cultural, eco-spiritual and generative, participatory design.

In 2008, after a life changing illness, Toni left a 22 year corporate career to activate a meaningful, purpose-driven life.  Believing our youth deserve to have an enriched, eco-social relationship with the natural and social environments, in 2012 she founded Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab, an organization dedicated to ‘planting freedom’’ by providing robust youth centered coursework spanning urban ecology, global travel/service leadership, space equity, conscious leadership and the arts.  Sacred Keepers intentionally examined the value systems and sacred earth keeping traditions of indigenous cultures and how they uniquely relate and are impacted by nature and climate change. 

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Toni uses the rich dynamics of natural and social environments to provide youth with the tools to be agents of proactive, mindful social change. She creates place-based youth development curricula rooted in a love of generational outdoor experiences.  As a parent, Toni understands the roles that mindfulness and nature play in freedom-making

Toni is a recognized expert and public speaker on the topics of serial displacement disorder, natural and emergent migration pathologies and public space activation as revolutionary praxis.  Across the globe she has spread the word about the importance of re-connecting our youth to the outdoors and the oppressive and emancipatory narratives that space holds within communities of color.  Toni’s words transcend and transmute the oppressive narratives that space holds within communities of color.

Toni is a recognized expert in ecology and space, dedicating herself to bringing planet consciousness to the communities she serves:

• She facilitates environmental workshops on the materials economy, ecology explorations, space pedagogy, sustainability and conservation and innovative leadership design. 

• She is a trainer for the University of Minnesota’s Monarch’s in the Classroom (MITC) curricula, Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project (MLMP) and is a member of the Monarch Flyways Connection. 

• She is a Chicago Conservation Corp Environmental Leader and a Core Member of the Chicago Sustainability Leadership Network (CSLN)  

• She is a Water Ambassador for the Illinois Delegation for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Midwest Environmental Justice Network, 

Toni is presently leaning fully into her role as a Humyn Emergence Practitioner, through multiple modalities: 

• She is actively facilitating participatory leadership design as MindfulRant: a consulting and performance coaching organization dedicated to culture cultivation and transformative leadership strategies for personal and organizational development. 

• She is a Conscious Leadership Coach(Conscious Leadership Institute),  

• Technology of Participation(ToP/Institute of Cultural Affairs) facilitator

• She has certifications in Advanced Youth Development ™(Youth Development Institute) and

• Circle Keeper(First Nations Building Power)