SERVICES
TRAININGS & WORKSHOPS
Providing a wide range of formats and LGBTQIA+ topics. All trainings are customized for each client.
Rapid / Intentional Response,
Policy Monitoring, & Advocacy ConsultinG
Helping your organization monitor policy, create intentional rapid responses, develop advocacy strategies, or build electoral and civic engagement campaigns.
Archival, Storytelling, & Movement Memory
Archival consulting, movement storytelling for advocacy campaigns, and/or documentation of organizational history.
LGBTQIA+ & Social Justice Event Programming Support
Programming and logistical support for your LGBTQIA+ or social justice oriented event (conferences, convenings, gatherings, etc).
SERVICES
TRAININGS & WORKSHOPS
LGBTQIA+ inclusivity is essential in every sphere: at work, in school, and in our personal lives. Creating welcoming, affirming environments benefits everyone, fostering stronger businesses, better educational outcomes, and greater emotional well-being for people of all ages.
With over 20 years in LGBTQIA+ and social justice movements and more than a decade as a trainer and educator, Jen LaBarbera brings deep subject-matter expertise to every session. They have worked with audiences ranging from adolescents to elders, and with clients as varied as large biotech firms, small therapist consultation groups, schools, service providers, and community agencies.
These trainings blend current best practices and research with lived experience, giving participants both a grounded understanding of key issues and concrete, actionable takeaways. Each training is fully customized—curriculum, structure, and pedagogy are tailored to the client’s specific needs and agreed-upon learning objectives.
All training types include both lecture and interactive activities in the curriculum. Trainings can be provided in-person or virtually via videoconferencing platforms. Fees for additional services (organizational assessments, professional speakers, and training of trainers) are available upon request.
Below, please find a list of standard trainings and workshops available. Additional subject matter may be available; please book a consultation to learn more!
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The basic 101 training provides an overview of basic terminology and concepts of gender and sexual orientation, pronouns, covers a brief history and current cultural landscape for LGBTQIA+ people, and closes with tangible tools for active allyship.
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Audiences that are newer to LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and/or are seeking to create a baseline of knowledge in their organization.
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This training type offers the chance to hear from a variety of voices from the LGBTQIA+ community. Our trainer will recruit, coordinate, and moderate a panel of up to 4 LGBTQIA+ experts and/or community members to offer expert and experiential education. Panels may be tailored to a specific subject or demographic.
(A portion of the overall fee will be provided to panelists in the form of honoraria.)THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Organizations or groups at any level of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, particularly if they are interested in diving deeper into one demographic, experience, or subject area within the LGBTQIA+ community. This may be booked as a standalone, or it may be included as a series with our LGBTQIA+ 101 training type.
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This training will help attendees move to the next level of active allyship, organizational chance, and/or deepen their understanding of intersectional LGBTQIA+ issues. This training is highly tailored to the client’s specific areas of interest.
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Organizations or groups who have recently completed a basic LGBTQIA+ 101 training, or for audiences that are ready for an advanced level training (as determined in an assessment / intake call).
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This training type focuses on a specific subject matter, typically related to or within the realm of LGBTQIA+ and/or social justice movement work. Examples of past subject-specific trainings are below; this is not an exhaustive list. Don’t see your specific subject listed? Contact us!
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Organizations within the LGBTQIA+ community, and organizations or groups that have an interest in doing a deep-dive on a specific topic or demographic area.
Examples of subject-specific trainings:
Racial Justice & LGBTQIA+ Community
LGBTQIA+ History
Trans-Inclusive Feminism
LGBTQIA+ Youth
LGBTQIA+ Elders / Seniors
Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender Nonconforming Identities
Sexual Violence & LGBTQIA+ Communities
Accessibility & Disability Justice in the LGBTQIA+ Community
Civic Engagement (Voting, Community Organizing) in the LGBTQIA+ Community
Mental Health & the LGBTQIA+ Community
Healthcare Access for LGBTQIA+ People
International LGBTQIA+ Rights and Equality
Criminal Justice and the LGBTQIA+ Community
LGBTQIA+ Inclusivity for Educators
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The Organizing For Change training type covers basic tenets of making social change, defines and identifies strategies vs tactics, and provides attendees with the tools to create action plans to achieve their organizing or social change goals. (Highly tailored to client’s experience level and specific area of interest.)
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Any level of organization or group with an interest in and willingness to create positive and progressive social change.
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This training is intended for organizers and activists at any experience level, and for organizations looking to level-up their intersectional work within their communities. Beginning with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, this training is tailored to the client’s specific goals, and will connect concepts and field-tested strategies and tactics for intersectional coalition-building to everyday skills and projects.
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Organizers and activists with at least a basic level of experience. This may also be appropriate as a second in a series after Organizing for Change.
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For organizations that would like to upskill current employees or members to provide trainings in-house. This 10-hour curriculum, spread over 5 sessions, will prepare trainees to research, develop, and deliver engaging and powerful workshops on LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and/or specific subject matter within this scope.
THIS TRAINING IS APPROPRIATE FOR: Organizations with clear, unwavering commitment to LGBTQIA+ equity within their organizations, who are ready to level-up their investment in their people and their allyship.
Rapid / Intentional Response, Policy Monitoring, & Advocacy ConsultinG
I have been an organizer and activist since at least 3rd grade, when I created my first organization (Save the Earth and Animals - it was the height of the 90s environmentalist phase), complete with membership cards laminated with scotch tape. In undergrad, I started carrying around a pocket Constitution (which I still have) and reading and highlighting Supreme Court cases - two semesters before I actually took a constitutional law class. In my first paid organizer job, I was given a copy of the Midwest Academy’s Organizing For Social Change manual, and have been voraciously collecting and testing out different organizing models, tactics, and strategies ever since. I’ve worked in two of the most contentious social justice fields for 20 years - abortion/repro justice and LGBTQIA+ rights and equality - and have lost count of how many rapid-response statements, mobilizations, & campaigns I have worked on or created with my respective teams.
All to say: I am a giant nerd when it comes to all things advocacy, and I would love to leverage that experience and deep understanding of organizing (of all kinds), policy, and intentional response (aka rapid response) to work with you to create meaningful change in your community and your work. I also have an incredible network of local (San Diego), statewide (California), national, and international experts on policy, advocacy, and communications; if I’m not the right fit, I would love to refer you to a colleague.
See below for explanations of what I can offer, and book a free 30-minute consultation to see if we might be a good match.
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TL;DR: Rapid response / intentional response planning and execution support (e.g. messaging, framing, restructuring)
Supreme Court Decision Days (aka: days when marginalized people find out whether their basic human rights are being upheld, often in June) start at about 6:30 AM on the West Coast. While I hate that we rely on this imperfect judicial body to safeguard our rights, it’s also true that my advocacy-work happy place is setting an early alarm, joining my fellow advocacy adrenaline-seekers online, quickly analyzing the decisions as they come out, tweaking the statements we carefully crafted as we planned our responses to various scenarios, and sending that messaging out into the world at the right time. (I am told this is something that most people do not enjoy.)
In my two decades working in two of the most contentious social justice spaces - reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ equality - I have gained experience and expertise on messaging, particularly in rapid response (intentional response) situations. Primarily, I have learned that a measured, intentional response will nearly always better serve an organization and a community than a fast response, which can miss clarity, a complete picture, and/or community buy-in.
We are living in a volatile, dangerous, and difficult political and social climate, especially for marginalized folks - especially for trans folks and immigrants. How can we better plan for what may come down the pike - whether from the Supreme Court, the federal or state or local government, from external groups, or from our own community? When we need to respond quickly - e.g. to an executive order, to a news story - how can we slow down and be clear on our messaging and responses when it feels urgent? How can we not burn ourselves and our people out when it feels like everything is urgent all the time?
I can help you prepare for, navigate, and plan for these situations, both proactively and as they come up. This service is available either as an hourly/daily rate or on a retainer model.
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TL;DR: Monitor, assess, and provide expert advice re: federal, state, and/or local policy/legislation
Federal, state, and local policies can have significant impact on our ability to continue to serve our communities, and, for nonprofit organizations serving targeted communities, can even threaten our ability to continue to exist as organizations. At the same time, we need to stay on top of policies that create opportunities for our organizations or businesses to better serve our communities - policies that may create additional access to resources for the people we serve, or that may create additional funding opportunities for our organizations.
For small teams without dedicated staff to monitor and evaluate policy, it can be difficult to stay on top of it all, whether your goal is to simply stay informed or to take a more active role in educating decisionmakers about the impacts of proposed policy or legislation.
Grounded Liberation is available to provide assessments of specific policies or legislation and/or to monitor a particular area of policy or legislation.
This service is available either as an hourly/daily rate or on a retainer model.
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TL;DR: Designing and planning advocacy and/or public education campaigns (c3 or c4)
My first foray into professional organizing came from the 2006 campaign against a ‘personhood’ amendment on the ballot in South Dakota that would have outlawed nearly all abortions. In November 2006, in that very conservative state, we defied the predictions and polls, and kept abortion legal in South Dakota. In the 20ish years since, my heart has remained in advocacy - specifically, the spaces where advocacy overlaps with relationship-building and creating consensus.
Our advocacy consulting services include electoral, year-round civic engagement, and coalition-based work. A sample, non-exhaustive list of services is below:
Ballot measure campaign management and planning
Targeted GOTV (get-out-the-vote) campaign planning
Civic engagement campaign planning (e.g. legislation/policy, public education, lobby days / legislative visit days, Census & redistricting)
Coalition-based advocacy planning
Policy & advocacy strategy design
For nonprofit organizations: I am experienced in managing allowable advocacy activities in multi-entity organizations, and am familiar with navigating limitations, rules, and compliance related to advocacy in 501c3 and 501c4 organizations. I will work with you to identify advocacy campaigns that are both within legal limitations and within your organization’s comfort level.
Archival, Storytelling, & Movement Memory
In 2012, I found myself in a mixture of burnt out and frustrated with our movements. I had been working in reproductive rights and reproductive justice advocacy for years, and though I saw us going backwards, I also thought our tactics and strategies were as good as they could be, and better than we’ve ever done: a combo of the hubris of youth and the right-now urgency of our advocacy. Imagine my surprise when, in talking to some of our older volunteers and activists, I learned that we were reinventing wheels they had already invented - and improved on - decades earlier. Our movements could be so much stronger and more effective if we knew, valued, and learned from our history.
And so I left my job as a paid organizer and went to grad school to get a Master’s in Library & Information Science with a focus on archives - specifically, LGBTQIA+ and women’s archives. My archival work has included university archives, women’s history collections, digital preservation projects, and LGBTQIA+ community archives. I have mostly returned to more traditional organizing and advocacy work, and my passion still lies in our movement’s histories: both the history that has been made by our elders and ancestors AND the history that we’re making right now.
In the words of so many Black queer and trans folks, especially in this current climate:
We’re not new to this, we’re true to this.
How can I help you ensure that you’re preserving and sharing your own history? How can we work together to weave historic narratives into your current work and storytelling?
See below for explanations of what I can offer, and book a free 30-minute consultation to see if we might be a good match.
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I’m available to work with community-based archives for a variety of consulting services. Areas of particular expertise involves accession and description practices - specifically, developing and implementing inclusive accession practices & policies, and modifying descriptive language for decolonization, inclusive language, and accessibility. Additionally, I am available to support community-based archives in grantwriting and grant reporting.
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Weaving stories from our movement’s or your community’s history can take a powerful narrative and kick it up a notch (or ten). This history can also create so much room for hope, in a world that feels hopeless and impossible to succeed. Whether the audience is internal to our own community or external to the general public, we can work together to tell powerful stories that are grounded in our history and plant seeds of hope and strength for our present and future.
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History is told by the victors…and is told through the documentation of those who think their history is worth preserving. Hint: That’s not typically LGBTQIA+ folks, or women, or undocumented folks, or communities of color.*
If we want our history to be documented and preserved, we probably need to document and preserve it ourselves.
How is your organization documenting its own history as you make it? How are your digital files being preserved and shared? Let’s work together to build a plan that works with your existing structures and capacities to ensure that your organization and your work will be preserved and remembered so that it can inspiration to future generations.
LGBTQIA+ & Social Justice Event Programming Support
In the past 7 years, I have led the programming and/or full execution of 20 conferences, convenings, and gatherings with regional, national, and international audiences and attendees. I have also been a Pride organizer with one of the largest Prides in the US for 7 years where I was responsible for the programming of the annual Spirit of Stonewall Rally, and regularly travel to support other Pride organizers at their events (most recently: WorldPride DC, San Francisco Pride, & Oakland Pride). These events have served ~3,000 people, and have ranged from smaller, 50+-people regional convenings with a single keynote speaker to moderate rallies with about 1,000 attendees and 10 speakers to large, multi-track 2,000+-attendee national and international conferences with over 200 workshops and multiple keynotes / featured speakers.
Two things I genuinely love about events: 1) the puzzle-piecing together of a meaningful, engaging, and powerful program that leaves attendees feeling stretched, inspired, and hopeful, and 2) the organized chaos / adrenaline of a large event day-of.
See below for explanations of what I can offer, and book a free 30-minute consultation to see if we might be a good match.
Note: Grounded Liberation is not a full-service event production company. I have a network of event production colleagues who work in San Diego and nationally, and I would be happy to refer folks who may also need full-service and/or day-of event support.
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Types of support available (not an exhaustive list):
Workshop Curation: RFPs, rubrics, vetting, selection
Program Development: idea generation sessions, drafting schedule outlines
Speaker Solicitation: identifying invited speakers, outreach, follow-up, contract, travel arrangements
Speaker Management: Supporting accepted speakers in the lead-up to and day-of convenings, conferences, and events.
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Logistical support is available primarily for the planning and preparation of your event, and may include:
Security & Safety Planning
Event Planning Documents (e.g. Asana project, color-coded spreadsheet, etc - we will work with the technology and products that your team is most comfortable with)