WHAT WE DO
We are a boutique social change consulting firm working to bring forward social, economic and environmental justice in organizational life. We help our clients tap into our collective intelligence and imagination to create new possibilities for justice and belonging to thrive.
We organize our work across three pillars
CULTURAL STRATEGY
We help you move from being passive to active participants in creating cultures that center justice in your teams, your leadership, and your organization as a whole.
LIVING SYSTEMS
We help you design your workplace structures to be dynamic and responsive to the pace and complexity of organizational equity.
SERVICE DESIGN
We help you reimagine what is possible when we center social, environmental and economic justice in your products and services.
YEAH, WE DO THAT
People sometimes ask us for a list of our services or what types of projects we work on. It's a common question so we'd like to offer a re-frame. Often, folks hear the word "equity" and assume we only do workshops or trainings. At Tusk, we use all the means necessary in organizational design to bring forth just and thriving systems. If it happens in the workplace, we're into it. Because all of those things play a role in shaping equitable organizational transformation.
Strategic planning? Yup, we do that.
Executive coaching? You betcha!
Offsite facilitation? Uh-huh.
Organizational assessments? Ab-so-lutely.
Systems + Service Mapping? Without a doubt.
Employee Experience + HR? For sure.
Custom workshops + trainings? Totally.
Hiring + onboarding design? Yes, those too!
Performance management? Definitely.
Product + service re-design? All day.
So our answer is: we do what it takes to bring your organization closer to justice. If you're not sure whether we do a thing, or if you are not sure what 'thing' you are even looking for - give us a call, we'd love to help.
WHO WE ARE
WE ARE LED BY A COLLECTIVE WITH DEEP EXPERTISE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS CHANGE, HUMAN RESOURCES, ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN, MOVEMENT BUILDING, PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH, SOMATIC LEARNING, & TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP.
Daesha Ramachandran, MHS PhD
CEO + Founder
Daesha (she/her) has made a life and a living shifting how racism, power, and oppression impact the health of individuals and communities. For the better part of 20 years Daesha has facilitated meaningful conversations and transformation on complex systems change and community engagement. She has worked with non-profits, government agencies, and companies around the world to center people on the margins of our systems to improve maternal and child health, early childhood, gender justice, violence prevention and access to basic healthcare services. Daesha is a frequent public speaker on ethical storytelling, decolonizing research & evaluation, and using human-centered design in systems change and community engagement strategies. Daesha identifies as a first generation South Asian queer cis-woman of color. She holds a PhD from Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University as well as a BSFS from the Edmund A. Walshe School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Heather Heater, MPH
Sr. Strategist + Executive Coach
Heather (she/her) earned her coaching chops while serving as a project manager for multiple complex racial equity and organizational change initiatives. Her 10+ years of experience hosting difficult conversations means she’s able to tread water in the deep end — modeling for other white people what it looks and feels like to stay engaged in anti-racism work. Heather is a queer, cisgender woman, mother, daughter and partner. She hails from a large, multigenerational, poor-working class family of settler colonialist ancestry.
Steph Akiko
Managing Director
Steph (she/her) is a queer Asian woman who believes traditional HR no longer serves businesses or the individual humans who make them up (and that it probably never did). Steph is an experienced Organizational Development leader recognized for helping companies, executives, and teams identify where they are today, define who they want to be, and take big strides to close the gap. She has worked as a coach, facilitator, and one-stop HR shop at tech companies, churches, non-profit theaters, medical device manufacturers, and more. Skilled in training and meeting facilitation, experiential program design, organizational design, talent mapping and equitable policy creation, Steph has spent a decade helping organizations dismantle the old, toss out what’s not working, double-down on what is, and build for the future of work.
Terry Li
Executive Coordinator
Terry (she/her) is an actor and makeup artist whose creative work is deeply rooted in social justice, transformative care, healing, and authenticity. She has worked for the last decade as a multidisciplinary artist, beauty coach, community-builder, and developer of creative spaces for BIPOC & queer artists and humans to thrive. She also specializes in digital branding & web design for creatives, independent businesses, and community organizations. In her personal and professional life, she is incredibly passionate about intimate moments of learning and self-realization, particularly in decolonization and radical dreaming. She holds BAs in Feminist Studies and English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is a proud child of immigrants.
OUR NAME
We often get asked how we got our name. Our name is an homage to our Founder’s love for living systems theory as an organizing principle in our work. Formerly the front teeth of many animal species, tusks are the physical manifestation of living beings’ ability to transform. They are a response to a shifting landscape that demanded something more from its inhabitants. Tusks are a talisman. A memory. A promise. At Tusk we believe that the world is asking something similar from us now and that we can and must grow into the next shape of our collective evolution.
OUR HOMEBASE
We work worldwide but are based in Portland, OR on the unceded, ancestral+ contemporary lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other Tribes who have made their homes along the Columbia River. We pay our respect to our elders, past and present, who have stewarded this land for generations.
WHAT WE STAND FOR
…inequity is not inevitable.
…the path to justice already exists in our collective wisdom.
…in the right of those at the margins to author change and that doing so requires shifting our attention.
…this work is adaptive and emergent because our world is complex and in motion.
…our work is about re-thinking boundaries to address the intersections.
…systems change and personal transformation are deeply intertwined.
…this work requires a hearty dose of curiosity and a healthy sense of adventure.
… abundance. We have enough and we are enough for this moment of change.
WE ENJOY SPEAKING UP
We love public speaking! Reach out if you’d like us to keynote or present at an upcoming event or sign up here to get notified when we’re speaking. Here are a few of our recent appearances.
2020
Big, Black and Brown in the Workplace, Ladies Night PDX, Feb 28, 2020
The Human Quotient: Designing for Emotional Security, Design Week Portland, August 4, 2020
2019
Building Narrative Power, The Design Museum, Dec 13, 2019
Boundaries for Business, Women’s Center for Leadership, Panelist Dec 10, 2019
DEI is not a checkbox, Peer 150 HR, Panelist, October 17, 2019
The Glass Cliff and Power in the Workplace, Superwoman Summit, Speaker, October 18, 2019
Stepping off the Glass Cliff, Stepping into our Power, Simple + Zapproved Speaking Series, Keynote speaker, September 11, 2019
Designing workplace policies that work for all working families, Clackamas Workforce Partnership Series, Keynote Speaker, September 10, 2019
2018
Understanding disability and the navigation of health care, Health Share of Oregon, Moderator December 2018
The Power of Digital Inclusion to Decrease Health Disparities, Digital Inclusion Summit, Panelist, August 2018
2017
Ethical Storytelling, Health Share of Oregon, Presenter, October, 2017
Using an equity lens for data-driven decision-making, Oregon Health Authority, Speaker, October 2017
