About Awakening Grace
With 25+ years of experience in discrimination and equity, Amber Ontiveros created these courses to help employers and individuals to uncover their unconscious biases using a growth mindset, mindfulness, and breath work, as well as affirmations. These courses provide the tools for individuals and organizations to change false beliefs into positive ones so that they can become the best versions of themselves. In doing so, they can work to remove toxic workplace culture, creating community cohesion which in turn increases profitability and creates better outputs.
This is one of the best trauma-informed approaches because it teaches the individual techniques of self-soothing and when you're triggered, or in a state of trauma, it teaches you how to look at that scenario in a different way. These courses incorporate mindfulness, which allows you to sit in awareness of yourself and to non-judgmentally, love yourself, including your mistakes because mistakes are simply opportunities for growth, they're not failures. It's a practice of learning how to breathe through a conflict and to change negative beliefs into positive ones.
How It Works
My Background
My career began at TriMet, the transit agency for the greater Portland, Oregon region. There, I created a Diversity and Transit Equity Department and led outreach programs for women-owned and minority-owned firms in construction.
I spent the next decade working in the federal government, under both the Bush and Obama Administrations, where I transformed civil rights regulations at the US Department of Transportation.
Eager to return to the Pacific Northwest, I founded my own consulting firm in 2014—Ontiveros and Associates—and have guided many public agencies toward more equitable contracting, procurement, management and hiring practices at all levels of government.
Advocating for equity can shake even the most resilient professionals, but my practice has allowed me to overcome the negativities I encountered along the way, not just from the outside but inside too. It is my mission to share these techniques with others so we can build a peaceful, more prosperous world. I invite you to learn more about Awakening Grace, explore our resources and reach out to join the movement.
Amber Ontiveros, President
Discrimination and equity change management expert
Awakening:
Turning within to seek witness and be aware of dark false beliefs of judgment, loathing, projections of fear, competition, hierarchical division, dominance, and bias.
