Liberated Leadership Retreat 2023
Embodied Well-Being
The 2023 Liberated Leadership Retreat's focus on Embodied Well-Being supports our community of Asian American women as we discover, explore and embody rest and healing.
During our three-day weekend together, we will have a sampling of curated workshops with ample space for rest and community building. We'll share meals together (duh, we're Asian!) and enjoy the beautiful grounds and activities (yoga! tai chi! meditation! canoeing!) of the OMEGA Institute.
Why Embodied
Well-Being?
In the past three years, Asian women have faced constant attacks on our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Add to this that we've received lifelong messaging within our families, communities, and workplaces that we should not rest, and we have a recipe for bone-deep exhaustion.
This retreat carves the space and time to learn and re-learn what it means to embody our well-being. We will spend this time together grounding ourselves in the strength of our present-day and ancestral communities.
Our tailored workshops (descriptions below) will meet needs you didn’t know you had. You will leave with tools, resources, and connections that could transform the trajectory of your life, slowing you down so you can see yourself – in all your worthy being – with clear eyes.
What’s Included?
The Asian Boss Ladies Liberated Leadership Retreat is set along the Rhinebeck in upstate New York, located at the beautiful OMEGA Institute!
In addition to having full access to all the bespoke, Asian Boss Ladies Liberated Leadership Retreat workshops, you’ll be able to access all the activities on campus, including yoga, meditation, hiking, kayaking, and so much more!
Your ticket also includes nourishing, farm-to-fork meals served by the OMEGA Institute throughout the weekend and lodging.
Finally, your curated ABL Retreat Swag Bag will include Collective Voice makeup, Partake cookies, Fly by Jing hot sauce, and more!
Workshop* Descriptions
*Or should we say, rest-shop?
Feeling Into Freedom: Poetry and Dance for Embodying Safety and Wellness
by Neelam Patel
Whether we’re in the “messy middle” of finding our professional paths or healing from trauma, we need tools for coming home to our sense of safety and our authentic centers. Neelam Patel embraced tools of poetry and dance as she burned down her career as a high-tech executive to follow her passions. In this session, you’ll feel into the freedom to be exactly who you want, embracing the beautiful, difficult emotions that arise as fuel for change.
Negotiation Skills for Embodied WellBeing
by Carlyn Cowen
How do we create the conditions in our daily lives that allow us to be deeply well? Carlyn Cowen will introduce us to a negotiation framework that allows us to negotiate for the life we want from employers, friends, family, and our communities. As Asian women socialized to be respectful, have humility, and suffer for the wellbeing of others, we sometimes forget our own worth and power. This workshop will equip us with the means to create the life we want so that we can walk into the world and live as our fullest, authentic selves.
Whom We are Called into Becoming: Building on our Ancestral Gifts and Legacies (Virtual Tickets Available)
by Rita Louh
Finding our way to liberated leadership requires embodying our inherent worth and drawing from the deep well of our ancestral legacies. Rita Louh will guide us to connect with our ancestral gifts and areas in need of healing. We’ll draw strength from the stories that inform our ways of being in the world, connect with the power and agency we have in our relationships to our ancestral legacies, and learn how to manage our energy and energetic boundaries so that we may be more rested, grounded, and centered leaders.
Note: the workshop will also be offered virtually on Zoom. If you wish to attend and/or receive the recording, please purchase a virtual ticket here.
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Neelam Patel is the author of Burning it Down, Dancing in the Rubble, an Amazon bestselling poetry collection in two categories. She is a custom poet, dancer, actor, speechwriter, entrepreneur and playwright, invested in honestly exploring, and even celebrating the often uncomfortable layers of life’s imperfect “messy middle”. Neelam presented her keynote and workshop, "The Messy Middle Awakening" as an official SXSW 2023 speaker, encouraging her audience to avoid the trap of "before" and "after" thinking when in reality, we are all out here in the middle. She claims the light is not at the end of the tunnel, but in the rich, complex middle.
She gathers experience from her tech career which spanned from program management at Microsoft, and User Interface management at Network Solutions, to Customer Success and Sales leadership in the cyber security startup world. She writes custom poems and performances through her website Tailored Poetry, with the intention of creating an ambience of connection and openness, deepening the experience of important moments.
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Carlyn Cowen (they/she/siya) is an advocate, activist, and Filipinx-American dedicated to building social, racial, and economic justice through radical systemic change. As the Chief Policy and Public Affairs Officer of the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), the nation’s largest Asian-American social services organization, they oversee public policy, advocacy, government affairs, and community engagement. As part of this work, they launched a multi-lingual, multigenerational training series, a leadership development program for front line social services staff, and helped win New York State's first ever AAPI Equity Fund in 2021, which has grown to a $30 million fund in 2023 to support AAPI community based organizations. Previously, Carlyn worked at FPWA, an economic equity nonprofit, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, and consulted for the United Nations Development Programme and Oxfam International, among others. Carlyn was named to City and State's 40 under 40 NYC list in 2020, and to the LGBTQ+ Power 100 the last two years running.
The child of immigrants and raised in North Carolina, they moved to New York to earn their Master’s from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and fell in love with the city. Carlyn can also be found organizing with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), where they serve as a member of the steering committee of the Jewish Vote and a board member, doing mutual aid with Uptown Wagon, bartending on weekends, and baking and hiking with their dog Buko for fun.
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Rita Louh is a first-generation Chinese American immigrant woman, healer, mother, and leader (among other identities). Her worldview is a blend of influences from being born and growing up in a multi-generational household in the US and, for a few years as a child, in Taiwan. Her spiritual beliefs are informed by the Taoist and Buddhist beliefs embedded in these cultures. Rita has nearly 25 years of professional experience, including work with nonprofits, intermediaries, foundations and companies in strategy development, organizational development, program management, facilitation, leadership coaching, and supporting organizations with change. She is certified as a liberatory coach, through Coaching for Healing, Justice and Liberation. In her current professional life, she founded and leads Envision Change, through which she and others provide facilitation, advising, and coaching to support organizational and individual transformation.
Who We Are
Asian Boss Ladies ("ABL") is a culturally responsive community exploring, creating, and funding projects within our collective, based on current events impacting Asian American women.
We provide transformational personal and professional development experiences, centered on sisterhood, to nourish and fuel Asian American women leaders and accelerate their impact across sectors.
Quotes from Last Year’s Retreat Participants
There was an immediate sense of community and belonging. It was amazing to feel that with people I only just met or had seen a few times on a screen.
Workshop topics on point for what we are facing.
It was nice to have the time to tend to my body.
FAQs
Check out the menu to answer any outstanding questions you may have.
Feel free to reach out to ng.courtney@gmail.com with any questions!
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Our workshops will connect you to your ancestral legacies and how they inform how you move today in the world, as well introduce you to new modalities for healing and expression through poetry, movement, dance and breathwork. All of our workshops will tie back to our core theme of Embodied Wellbeing and how it can support us in being liberated leaders.
We promise not to overload you with content - we want you to have spacious time to get to know one another and enjoy OMEGA!
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No. It's a kinesthetic workshop series. This means you'll be learning about new concepts from industry experts while also learning new tools to take back with you into the real world via collaborative, fun, and dynamic activities such as drawing, theater techniques, and mindfulness practices.
It's also a great way to seamlessly meet other Asian American women leaders and make tight, genuine, and life-long bonds form quickly!
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Yes! You can purchase a ticket to gain Zoom access (including the recording if you can’t attend live) to Rita Louh’s workshop entitled “Whom We are Called into Becoming: Building on our Ancestral Gifts & Legacies” scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 19, 2023 from 9:30-10:45 AM EST. Once you purchase your ticket, you’ll receive a calendar invite, as well as Zoom link info the day before.
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You’ll have access to yoga classes, meditation, art classes, kayaking, hiking, learning about organic farming, to meet and discuss concepts and issues with other ABL members...even spend time reading in the library (it's beautiful!).
The OMEGA campus is a landscape and architectural dream, and offers so much for attendees! Best yet, all these offerings are included in your weekend ticket at no additional extra cost!
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Yes! The dorms are super nice. You get a small room to yourself that has a nightstand, chair, and rack to hang up your things. The bathroom is shared with eight other individuals and includes at least three toilets and two showers. You will need to bring your own linens. Item description
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OMEGA provides you with three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), all of which is included in the fee.
You'll be provided with multiple tasty vegan AND vegetarian options at each meal. There's plenty for seconds and you will never go hungry!
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Yes! You will be able to access WiFi across the OMEGA Campus. However, please keep in mind that you’ll be on a mountain. So reception will be better in some areas than in others.
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You have multiple options! Find a full list of ways to get to OMEGA on their website: https://www.eomega.org/
This list includes information for traveling via flights, trains, and cars.
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Yes! If you don't like to drive and live in NYC (or can get to NYC), the train is the best option.
You'll take an Amtrak to Rhinebeck, NY, and a call a cab from there!
We'll be providing details for cab services prior to the retreat.
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If you prefer to drive with others, I'll be helping support people looking to carpool!
Email ng.courtney@gmail.com with the subject: "Carpool Connect Request"
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For those who are interested but financially unable to pay for at-cost or regular priced tickets, or are looking for partial scholarships, please email ng.courtney@gmail.com for more information
Scholarships will be served in first requested, first-served order.
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Yes. All rooms are private and have air conditioning.
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Contact us!
We’re so excited to partner with like-minded Asian-owned businesses, corporations, and nonprofits.
Please reach out to ng.courtney@gmail.com for more information
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OMEGA no longer requires proof of vaccination. However, ABL and OMEGA recommend that you do not attend the retreat if you feel unwell (get some rest, girl).
Masks are optional but always recommended. If you test positive for COVID while at the retreat, we will help you arrange travel home. We also recommend letting us know if you test positive after returning home.
You can learn more about OMEGA’s COVID safety policy here:
https://bit.ly/3yAKZMR
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If by chance you still have more questions, reach out to ng.courtney@gmail.com.
Got Questions?
Email ng.courtney@gmail.com
ABL Book Club: Pachinko
Join your ABL’ers for a book club discussion about Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
ABL Book Club: Minor Feelings
One of our ABL members, Justine, is hosting our first-ever book club discussion about Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, which is described as, “A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness and the struggle to be human.” Email if you’d like to read along with us.
Shake It Up - An intoxicating fundraiser for State Representative Yuh-Line Niou!
ABL came together at our (now virtual) monthly dinner to discuss the issues we’ve faced as a community. Despite some of the troubling experiences we’ve shared, we came away recognizing that the ultimate sign of Asian American strength is not in our shared silence, but in sharing our collective voice. And there is no more powerful place for our voices to be heard than in the government.
We have decided to throw a fundraiser for Yuh-Line Niou who is the first ever Asian American woman State Representative in New York. She represents one of the heavily Asian populated districts in New York City whose restaurants and bars were disproportionately hit before and during the pandemic due to racism and prejudice (Chinatown and the Lower East Side). During the past two months, Yuh-Line has stopped all campaign fundraising to focus on delivering food and resources to those in need in Chinatown.
We’ll feature FOUR Asian-American womxn bartenders who will showcase themed drinks to our Zoom audience.
Platform: Zoom
Tickets: Suggested donation $100 (or option to donate other amount)
Confirmed Celebrity Bartenders:
Natasha David: Co-owner of Nitecap and You & Me Cocktails
Fanny Chu: Head Bartender at Donna Cocktail Club
Ranjini Bose: Former Bartender at Dear Irving
Karen Fu: Bar Matrix at Republique