The hardest barriers to change are not external; they exist within you. You know your mission in the world, but the obstacles seem insurmountable.
And you’re not alone in being stuck. Your peers tell you about their own fears, anxieties, sudden illness, and exhaustion. They share the same question as you: "What’s really holding me back?"
Four forces run all of us: emotions, values, lived experience, and conditioning. When the four forces align, the self stands on solid ground -- the impossible becomes the inevitable. You already know the symptoms of misalignment: burnout, conflict, and stalled change.
Join this 90-minute workshop to learn about aligning the four forces in your own life, so that you can serve the world with greater ease without abandoning your true self.
You’ll hear from participants who are committed to overcoming barriers in the way of their deepest work. You'll also have the chance to share your own story, if you wish to.
You'll leave our workshop knowing that there are many people like you who are building alignment in their own lives.
The Four Forces: A Framework to Diagnose What Holds You Back
Co-facilitator Aya Hijazi will discuss the four forces using her own life as an example: She founded a grassroots organization for street children in Egypt, survived three years in prison as a prisoner of conscience, and received a Democracy Award for resisting authoritarianism. Aya now helps people and organizations do their best work by overcoming barriers to change.
Co-facilitator Chris Musei-Sequeira will discuss the four forces using his experience as an environmental professional in the Imperial Core. In United States Federal Government and United Nations halls of power, he saw how status-quo environmental policy silenced the world's most vulnerable by design. Chris now helps practitioners create businesses that challenge oppression and build the future beyond colonialism.
This event is for you if: you are committed to serving the world's most vulnerable but can't seem to get out of your own way.
What we will do in the event: Co-facilitators Aya and Chris will support attendees in sharing and understanding how emotions, values, lived experience, and conditioning affect their lives.
What you’ll leave with: A framework that could help you understand your internal barriers and how you can overcome them.
This event will NOT be recorded, so that everyone can feel safer to speak freely.
– ABOUT OUR PRICE –
What are you paying for?
The unique multi-decade personal and professional experiences of Aya and Chris, shown in their biographies below
The time and energy invested by Aya and Chris to design and co-host this workshop
The financial cost of software tools and transaction fees associated with workshop execution
What price should you pay?
Our workshops draw people from around the world. We know that each person has a different ability to pay -- not only because of where they live, but because of their life circumstances.
Select the highest price if:
You can comfortably meet your basic needs
You have stable housing, transportation, and healthcare
You can afford big leisure expenses, such as vacations, whenever you like
You live in a high-GDP country
Select the lowest price if:
You're unsure about whether you'll be able pay your next round of bills
Your housing, transportation, and/or healthcare are precarious
You can rarely save money for anything other than essential needs
You live in a low-GDP country
Our sliding scale is inspired by "The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice (aka The Green Bottle Method)" by Alexis J. Cunningfolk, August 11, 2015.
Refund policy: No refunds.
– FACILITATOR BIOGRAPHIES –
Aya Hijazi, Founder of The Human Room and Director of Belady - An Island for Humanity
Aya has lived at the paradoxes of power and ethics. Sleeping next to a common thief in prison and shaking hands at the Oval Office. Sharing meals with children living on the streets and teaching Harvard midcareer students. Through her work, her education, and her life, she has stood at the extreme ends of these lines. That is what lets her reach what stays hidden and help bring it into understanding.
Aya was "the Egyptian charity worker and prisoner of conscience freed by Trump." But behind that headline is a woman who spent twenty years inside power, emotion, and human systems. She founded a grassroots organization for children living on the streets, survived three years in prison as a prisoner of conscience, and received a Democracy Award for resisting authoritarianism. She walked out with her method intact, and learned the truth her release proved: the deepest change begins from the inside.
Today Aya works on the interior conditions, the values, emotions, and identity, where real change takes place. She holds a Harvard MPA and degrees in law and international conflict analysis and resolution. She has been published in international outlets including the Washington Post and Just Security, and has been a keynote speaker at various events, including the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Chris Musei-Sequeira, Founder and Principal of CJSC, LLC
Chris built a career exploring some of the biggest challenges of our time: the challenges of global climate change and sustainability. He has held program manager, co-manager, and director roles for some of the most important environmental projects in the United States of America (USA) and internationally, overseeing tens of millions of US dollars in contract expenditure.
Chris was trained at MIT as an aeronautical engineer and environmental policy analyst, then later joined the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an environmental program manager. At the FAA, he helped create computer tools now used for aviation environmental modeling worldwide. He also helped produce nation-wide FAA guidance and policy for analyzing the noise and air emissions impacts of aviation. Furthermore, Chris participated in some of the first United Nations discussions to create a global carbon dioxide standard for aircraft, through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) Working Group 3.
After his career in government, Chris joined an environmental consulting firm and performed key environmental analysis roles for over two dozen airports, including some of the largest airports in the USA. Through his direct participation in policy-making and analysis, Chris witnessed first-hand how existing environmental processes systematically excluded the people most negatively impacted by aviation. This led him to the central questions that inform his work today: Who gets to decide the future? Whose voices matter, whose are ignored, and why?
Chris now focuses on supporting liberation-minded practitioners who are dismantling oppressive and exploitative systems across the world. He specializes in helping business owners, freelancers, and other independent workers find clients and build practices that maximize care rather than profit. His approach is informed by his years of managing highly-technical multi-stakeholder programs that affected the most powerful and the most vulnerable in society.
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My position
My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of enslaved Africans brought to the Caribbean during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.
My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18, until very recently. Now I live in Eastern Europe with my wife and our cat.
I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.