BD101™
WHOLE SYSTEM
TRANSFORMATION SERIES
When you mean to radically change the system: including you!
Watch the video below to hear from the 2025 cohort about their BD101 Whole System Transformation experience.
The world is crying out to remember and act!
Our society is in an absolute state of falling apart and yet we see beautiful expressions of human interconnection, resistance, imagination, and nurturance. While many work to hold in place a power based in separation and domination, many are committed to not only reject and de-structure those systems but to boldly create and sustain life-affirming communities that are organized around radical truth and love.
In November 2023, Niyonu offered BD101 WST for the first time excited to share from over 30 years as an organizational development and transformation practitioner. That 5-Day offering further convinced her that the time is right to invite a cohort of people who commit to learning and strengthening their skills together; to ferociously engage dynamic tools, reflective and somatic processes, spiritual ritual and creative arts.
“What is called for now is unearthing root assumptions, core beliefs and practices that are baked into the culture to separate, diminish or dominate. We must peel away assumed limitations and call in boundless possibilities through imagination, prayer, remembering and activating what our hearts are yearning for.”
— Niyonu Spann, Lead Facilitator
Cultivate understanding, dream new worlds, strengthen skills, and practice through application and feedback.
BD101™ WST provides mental, spiritual and somatic models and practices along with opportunities to apply methods and practices; to consciously hold and guide transformative processes.
This 4-Part series includes training and practice to:
Understand the difference between incremental change & whole systems transformation.
Work with the field of knowingness.
Engage Body, Mind and Spirit as essential.
Take action and build movements.
As the world based in domination
crumbles, bolster your capacity to see beyond, create the new, and BE Liberation
Create and tap into the mystical.
Unleash the gifts that flow from your unique blueprint
Design and facilitate for liberation.
Join a Cohort of Conscious Co-Creators Committed to Transformation.
WST Cohort members work and play together inviting and developing conscious ‘creator-ship’ (to know self as creator within communities of co-creators). Some are called to sit on councils that help community to run smoothly, others bring artistic expression, some are led to teach while others master plant medicines and other forms of healing. Regardless of the particular role or the medicine that you bring, making the jump from a culture of domination and separation to one that realizes interconnection and shared responsibility — I call this jump, whole system transformation — requires re-engaging the imagination, practice in skill-building, and courageous movement.
“If you seek to use all of who you are - unleashing liberatory energies - to respond to this call, join us! Think of this series as a “T for T” ... Training for Transformers. It is for facilitators, organization leaders, trainers, artists, healers, and others who are ready to unleash a tremendous love and who have signed on to co-create whole systems transformation.”
— Niyonu Spann, Lead Facilitator
BD101 WST 2025 Series Participants
Tap into decades of practice in organization development, transformative studies and spiritual discernment.
Learn more below about the Whole System Transformation Series lead facilitator and guest teachers.
Niyonu Spann
Lead Facilitator
Niyonu created Beyond Diversity 101™ in 1999. In November, 2023 she offered BD101™ WST for the first time, excited to share from over 30 years as an organization development and transformation practitioner. That 5-Day offering further convinced Niyonu that the time is right to invite a cohort of people who commit to learning and strengthening their skills together; to ferociously engage dynamic tools, reflective and somatic processes, spiritual ritual and creative arts. Niyonu will be joined by four amazing guest teachers, each of whom she has been blessed to study with.
Niyonu earned a master’s degree in Organization Development and is a PhD student at the California Institute for Integral Studies in Transformative Studies. She is currently writing a book titled, Whole System Transformation: When you mean to change the system, including you!
Guest teachers include:
Dr. Darya Funches
Dr. Darya Funches is an author, inspirational speaker, educator, consultant, coach and ceremonial leader who has dedicated her professional life to the evolution of humanity to reach its highest potentials to benefit current and future generations at work, home and in community. In different professional practices, she is a corporate consultant, executive advisor, transformational guide and teacher, as well as a spiritual scientist and intuitive.
Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Zhenevere Sophia Dao, a transgender woman, is a poet, novelist, playwright, and existential and cultural philosopher. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in Poetry and Literature, before leaving academia for the equestrian professions and to become an independent scholar. She is the founder of Mythosomatics, an original body of mythopoetic movement art, and the philosophies of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism.
Dr. Jamila Lyiscott
Jamila Lyiscott is an Associate Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is the founding co-director of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research. She also serves as a co-Editor-in-Chief of the highly reputed Equity & Excellence in Education Journal. Jamila is a community-engaged scholar, nationally renowned speaker, and the author of Black Appetite. White Food: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom.
A 4-part, cohort-based, holistic
learning laboratory
The WST Series takes place in 2027 over three, 5-day in-person sessions & one 4-day virtual session. In-person sessions will be held at Pendle Hill Retreat Center located on the homelands of the Lenni-Lenape people in what is now Southeastern Pennsylvania.
PART 1
Shaping the Vessel
March 18-22, 2027
Pendle Hill Retreat Center
Why is MIND essential?
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Building a culture of deep seeing, honest reflection, vulnerability, and mutual holding
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Ways of sensing, knowing, meaning-making, and expressing
(Introduction to Sense-Thinking—a new educational paradigm—with Aitabé) -
Understanding the difference between incremental change and transformational change—learning to work with imagination, creativity, emergence, and generative energy
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Polarity Thinking—moving beyond either/or toward both/and consciousness
PART 2
Clarifying what we are up to
With Guest Teacher Dr. Darya Funches
April 18-21, 2027
Online via Zoom
Why is SPIRIT essential?
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Practices for intentionally bringing Spirit into our organizing, teaching, healing, creating, and leadership
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Listening for the highest potential of this cohort:
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The essential qualities of liberatory practice across disciplines:
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Preparing for the practicum by aligning our inner work with our outer practice
PART 3
Workin' at the Roots
June 20-24, 2027
Pendle Hill Retreat Center
With Guest Teacher Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Why is BODY essential?
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Root-level change
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Working within the field of knowingness
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Our blueprint—remembering what we’ve signed on for
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Applying The Flower, Three Circles, and Eliminating Patterns of Oppression
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Learning and practicing in affinity spaces
PART 4
Focus and BE it!
August 11-15, 2027
Pendle Hill Retreat Center
With Guest Teacher Dr. Jamila Lyiscott
Why is ACTION essential?
Together we integrate the learning through:
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Liberatory ways of knowing, teaching, facilitating, and designing workshops, meetings, and community actions
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Creativity and tapping the mystical
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Remembering that this is HEARTWORK
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Remaining open-hearted while refusing harm
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Learning in mixed groups AND Learning in Affinity Spaces
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Clarifying what we are called to offer our home communities
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Closing ritual and celebration
Resonating? Ready to take the next step?
If your heart is resonating with the outline of the Whole System Transformation series we recommend you consider the following inquiries before applying.
To consider before applying:
Does this feel to be a strong leading? Does the idea keep coming back to you? Do you see/feel yourself in this learning circle?
It was apparent in the response to the November, 2023 offering of BD101-WST, that there is a strong, collective pull to this depth of co-learning and co-activating. Sit with what is calling you here...listen to what that calling is before considering the financial commitment, calendar, distance or anything else. Once you honor and investigate your interest, other considerations will be easier to reconcile.
Are you prepared to make the full commitment?
This is not an in-and-out kind of process. Each intensive weaves concepts and practices, deepening mind-body readiness. You will join a small group who will meet throughout each session and once a month in-between sessions.
Are you open to a level of intimacy that will invite stimulation and feedback on many levels: spiritual, academic, emotional, physical.....?
Do you want a “back-home” application?
The Practicum - applying your learning and practices in your community/ organization/family etc. The Practicum invites you to integrate key learnings and practices and design a specific intervention for/with your larger community. The intervention is an opportunity to create a space for shared learning and co-holding.
BD101 WST 2025 Series Participants
Application Process and Fees
Click on the button to start your application. After we receive your application, you will receive communication from BD101 staff to schedule a short (less than 30 minutes) phone call or video conference. If, at the close of the call, there seems to be a fit, you will be considered accepted
and invited to register.
The fee for the complete series which includes program fees, room and board for three
in-person, 5-Day Intensives and one virtual 4-Day workshop are:
Standard Rate = $5,200.
Sponsoring Rate = $6,600
Low-Income Rate = $3,800 (limited slots available)
Intern Rate = $4,200 (4 slots available. Open exclusively to past WST Series participants)
BD101 Whole System Transfromation is co-sponsored by Pendle Hill Quaker Study, Retreat and Conference Center, located in
Wallingford, PA, situated on unceded Lenni-Lanape territory
