Kahshanna Evans, Inspirational Speaker Motivational Speaker from New York City, NY

Kahshanna Evans brings her passion for trauma-informed transformation, uniting people through stories, and community building through communications strategy to her roles as a Trauma Informed Resilient Communities Consultant, a New York State Trauma Informed Network and Resources Center (TINRC) Advisory Council Member, and Senior Strategist at Kissing Lions Public Relations. Kahshanna has been a leading strategic thinker in various industries, including wellness, communications, nonprofit, and professional services. During her tenure at a nonprofit that educates the public and private sector on PACEs and resilience science, Kahshanna served as a subject matter expert, organizational spokesperson, and facilitator of trauma-informed (TI) training for various communities in the public and private sector. Engaging early on as on-camera talent with top brands in entertainment to include HBO, BET, ABC, NBC, and VH-1 sparked Kahshanna Evans’ interest in storytelling—her most memorable as associate producer of an award-winning independent film produced by Spoonmore Productions. After studying various modalities of wellness, Kahshanna founded an independent communications consultancy to support niche, purpose driven subject matter experts and nascent brands and organizations in culture, art, tech, and wellness with a compelling story to tell. As a lifetime student of human nature, interconnectivity, and play, Kahshanna maintains an evergreen affinity for human rights, the freedom of expression, and the regenerative power of transformation as a vehicle for a better world. Kahshanna has spoken about trauma-informed awareness and resilience as a guest presenter for the Hanna Summit, the Happy Summit, Resilient Yolo Summit. She has led digital educational experiences for Zintro and The EventPreneur Club. She has been a guest educator at LIM College and at CUNY/Murphy Institute for the National Women's Political Caucus NYC Chapter. She has been a guest panelist for Linkedin's TransformHER premier tech event and moderated a panel during the CUNY Women's Leadership Council alongside Andrea Shapiro Davis. Kahshanna has been quoted in Mashable, New York Times, and trade and business publications including InEvent, Event Industry News, and TNJ. Kahshanna's PACEs story: My interest in PACEs (positive and adverse childhood experiences) is inspired by witnessing a world without access to interventions, protection, and medical care during my early years. I would later learn my challenges were intersectional as a result of a deeply flawed system that trickles down to communities and families. It took what feels like a lifetime to process life-changing violence I witnessed and experienced as an adolescent at the hands of a law enforcement official and then caretaker. Later in life, after immersing myself in personal development work, I took Trauma-informed Outreach training through The Connection Coalition, a nonprofit organization that certifies volunteers, community members, and organizations to become trauma-informed to create connection and self regulation through mind / body practices. An alchemical process of sorts happened as I began to incorporate discoveries that I made during the training and related wellbeing methods I’ve studied and practiced over the years. This gave me a new language of sorts, and increased my capacity to deepen, sweeten, and expand my intuition, emotional intelligence, empathy, joy, discernment and integrity in work and life. Focusing on the role collective care plays in creating nurturing experiences that help buffer the impact of adverse experiences has inspired my work in the trauma-informed space including "Community Building Through Communications" strategy. To me, the acknowledgement of the wholeness and humanity of those who have witnessed or experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is a part of the cross generational healing process that's beneficial to everyone and also the planet.