BREATHE
At Bright Ventures, we believe that when we learn to breathe together, we can walk and work together. We can create lasting change and build a strong business together. Our BREATHE sessions are the first step in that journey.
Origin
BREATHE began as a safe space for Black people within a company or community to process their emotions, grief, and experiences. In these sessions, we see that many of our Black colleagues question their belonging at work. They live in the exhausting reality of feeling overworked, undervalued and overlooked. Bright Ventures and its sister companies, KOKORO and Mimconnect, helped design the sessions together. We have maintained these sessions weekly for members of the Black community. BREATHE has also evolved to include an additional space for our entire community, one where we all process and heal together.
Methodology
We offer BREATHE for underrepresented groups in companies, such as Black employees. We also hold sessions for whole teams, where colleagues can acknowledge and release their collective pressures. To create an inclusive company we must advance the whole company and advance marginalized and underrepresented groups within it. This ensures everyone can participate in and benefit from the company’s development.
Breathing is a simple way to be together, and breathing is intimate in its simplicity. What does it mean to breathe together inside of a company? When we breathe as a collective, we build our capacity to be together. This is essential to building an inclusive company. Learning how to exist together through something as fundamental as breathing builds our capacity to continue to be together on an everyday basis. This means we are aligned in our meetings, united in our collective messaging, comfortable in the workplace, and able to meaningfully create together. Leaders can create a sense of belonging — bringing out and building on the best in every team member — by making space for processing to acknowledge our experiences and explore what’s next.
Rest and Choice
Our BREATHE sessions are unique in that they provide a deserved and necessary space for rest and facilitate attendees’ opportunity to choose new action. By breathing together, we practice bearing witness to one another. We create a designated non-work space for employees to release what they are holding to come together as a stronger collective.
Building Trust
BREATHE is designed to leave teams self-aware and deeply connected. We use external experts to create internal improvements. BREATHE facilitators are mental health experts who preserve confidentiality, appropriately address trauma, and create a safe space to process emotion. They create a pathway to move from emotion to action. They distill and anonymize insights that indicate a need for company change and communicate those insights to decision-makers. When leaders take action in response to BREATHE insights, it builds trust in the team.
Executive Support for Systems Change
When we introduce BREATHE to companies, we also engage the executive leadership of the company. We challenge and support leaders to create lasting change that benefits all groups in the company. As leaders, we can create meaningful and equitable opportunities for everyone in the company, including those who feel marginalized and those who feel as if they’re at the center. Our work with executive leaders ensures that we support marginalized groups and create systemic shifts toward inclusion.
Being in a space and breathing together is a vulnerable experience. When we lean into the discomfort of vulnerability, we can overcome the limitations of the past and build something better together.
Lenore Champagne Beirne
Lenore is the founder of Bright Ventures, and an expert in Inclusive Innovation. Under her leadership, the team at Bright Ventures invests in and coaches startup leaders, and cultivates equity and access in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Lenore is deeply committed to developing and partnering with leaders to build a future that represents the needs and interests of communities of color.
