P E O P L E

Laura Shmishkiss (she/her), founder of Regeneration, is a racial equity practitioner and herbalist committed to creating a world where everyone experiences freedom, wholeness, and belonging. Through her practice of advancing social and healing justice, she actively builds our collective capacity to resist systems of oppression and to cultivate lives rich in inspiration, purpose, and connection.

With over 25 years of experience as an executive leader, facilitator, coach, educator and activist, Laura, a white, Jewish woman, is guided by the belief that what harms one of us, harms all of us, and that liberation for one is not possible without liberation for all. Rooted in the natural world, her liberatory practices center on cultivating collective well-being, including aligning purpose to action, fostering vitality, accessing choice and agency and sharing power.

Since childhood, Laura has sought the refuge of nature as a source of peace and belonging. Through her herbalism practice, she finds allyship with plants to be foundational for reconnecting with our natural state of wholeness and interdependence–helping us access inner homeostasis, even in the face of great challenges. From this embodied place of balance, Laura believes we are better resourced to weave care into our efforts toward a just, equitable and liberated world.

Laura specializes in working with organizations engaged in social change, white-identified leaders committed to racial justice and those seeking communities of practice to strengthen their liberatory strategies. Through her coaching, facilitation and organizational culture building work, she brings an intersectional, healing-centered approach to attend to the impacts of oppression on the body, relationships and habits of individuals, communities and movements.

Laura has held several leadership roles in the nonprofit and education sectors, including Co-Executive Director at the Center for Racial Justice in Education and Director at Bronx Community High School. She began her career as a youth development practitioner and middle school teacher with a focus on youth civic engagement. Currently, Laura is a member of the consulting teams at Race Forward, ProInspire, True North EDI, Service Employees International Union and MPG Consulting, where she partners on equity work for client organizations. Additionally, she sits on the Board of Camp Kinderland, a 100-year-old summer camp committed to social and racial justice.

Laura earned a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Colby College. She holds an ACC coaching certification from Blooming Willow Coaching and completed a 3-year Herbalism Apprenticeship training with Karen Rose of Sacred Vibes Apothecary. She also studied somatic abolitionism with Resmaa Menakem, and somatics for equity and social justice with Dara Silverman. Residing in Brooklyn, New York, Laura nourishes her own practice through dance, meditation, running, gardening, cooking and long walks in nature.