Work with Us

StrivEquity offers coaching, consulting, and strategy rooted in equity-responsive leadership. We work with individuals and institutions committed to transformation, not just transactions.

Executive & Career Coaching

Mid-career leadership takes something out of you. Doing it while pushing for equity inside institutions that weren’t built for it takes more. Most coaching wasn’t designed for that combination. ERL coaching was.

David DeVaughn, ICF-PCC certified and trained through the Teleos Leadership Institute, works with mid-career executives and professionals through a seven-step Equity-Responsive Leadership (ERL) framework. The model is built around power, positioning, and social identity. Most coaching treats those as background. ERL treats them as the work itself.

ERL coaching is built for mid-career executives, nonprofit leaders, and professionals working at the intersection of racial equity and career decisions, including career breaks and sabbaticals you’re weighing or working through.

Book a Chemistry Call →

Investment-Level

Pricing is built around your goals, scope, and available resources. Start with a conversation.

Institutional Development & Leadership Development

Most institutions have made equity commitments. Fewer have built the internal conditions to sustain them. That gap tends to widen when the work is under-resourced, when senior leadership hasn’t followed through, or when the people carrying the work don’t have institutional protection.

StrivEquity works with leadership teams on what comes after the commitment. Using ERL principles as the foundation, we support teams through strategy development, facilitation, and the work of building the structures, norms, and accountabilities that equity work actually requires.

The work is grounded in your institution’s specific conditions: its power structures, its resource constraints, the identities and positions of the people doing the work. We build from where you are toward what you said you’d become.

Built for leadership teams with an equity commitment and a real gap between that commitment and current practice.

Start a Partnership Conversation →

Investment-Level

Pricing is built around your goals, scope, and available resources. Start with a conversation.

Strategic Advisory

Equity strategy is only as strong as the conditions it’s built for. A campaign that looks coherent on paper can fall apart when power isn’t distributed, when accountability is vague, or when the coalition includes the right organizations, but not the right decision rights.

StrivEquity brings cross-sector advisory experience across food justice, economic justice, public policy, criminal legal reform, and health equity. The work draws on direct experience in these spaces, not a generic consulting framework applied to equity work after the fact.

We work with institutions to sharpen strategy, pressure-test coalition structures, and build the accountability mechanisms that keep equity commitments from stalling between the strategy meeting and actual practice.

Built for institutions working at the intersection of equity and policy: campaigns, coalitions, or cross-sector collaborations that need strategy grounded in the real conditions of the work.

Explore Strategic Advisory Support → ,

Investment-Level

Pricing is built around your goals, scope, and available resources. Start with a conversation.

Speaking Services

David’s talks don’t start with frameworks. They start with what he’s lived: career breaks, power dynamics across lines of race and identity, and the specific cost of leading as a Black man inside predominantly white institutions.

Past talks include:

Taking a Professional Sabbatical: Risks, Rest, and Reentry
Manager-Subordinate Dynamics: Power at Work
Leading While Black in White-Majority Philanthropy and Nonprofit Spaces
Setting Boundaries and Recognizing Burnout in Mission-Driven Work

Right for conferences, leadership retreats, fellowship cohorts, and staff learning events where the room is ready for a real conversation.

Book David to Speak →

Investment-Level

StrivEquity works with each client to develop a pricing structure that aligns with your goals, scope, and available resources. Whether coaching, facilitation, or strategy support, we value clarity, transparency, and equitable partnership from the start.

Equity-Responsive Leadership

Why Equity-Responsive Leadership (ERL)?

ERL was developed to meet the unique leadership needs of Black and Brown professionals navigating calls for equity inside institutions that often fall short in commitment and capacity.

Since 2020, many leaders have faced a constant calculation—balancing personal well-being, professional ambition, institutional demands, and the risk of overexposure. Through conversations with peers, mentors, family, and my own Teleos training, it became clear: traditional leadership models weren’t enough.

ERL strengthens awareness, responsiveness, and self-reflection at all levels—body, mind, and spirit. It helps leaders create environments where feedback is possible, decisions are intentional, and leadership is grounded in clarity and care.

While it is especially resonant for those with marginalized identities, Equity-Responsive Leadership is not exclusive to them. All leaders benefit from integrating identity consciousness, equity orientation, and emotional wisdom into their work.

What are the Elements of Equity-Responsive Leaders?

ERLs courageously pursue their personal and professional goals amidst systemic barriers.
They are most successful when supported to heal and thrive, not just survive.
ERLs anchor their work in equity, inclusion, accountability, accessibility, and justice.
They require consistent inspiration, value alignment, and respect to sustain impact.
They understand how social identities shape power dynamics—interpersonally, in teams, and across institutions.

In David’s Own Words

As a cisgender Black man raised in the Northeastern U.S., I am deeply aware of how my upbringing shaped my early misunderstandings about race and power—especially the many ways anti-Blackness manifests across personal, institutional, and structural lines.

I stay in a mindset of learning and practicing through self-care, self-love, familial connection, and collaboration with those committed to Black liberation. My equity practice is fed by ancestral meditation, activism, writing, reading, and multiple therapeutic spaces. I share this not as an expert, but as someone walking the path with others committed to change.

The Career Break & Sabbatical

Demystifying the Benefits and Challenges

Are you seeking a meaningful pause beyond traditional vacation time? Juggling caregiving, finances, and burnout? A sabbatical might be your next leadership move.

Assess your personal and professional readiness
Recognize early warning signs of burnout or misalignment
Plan your time off to restore purpose and perspective
Leverage therapeutic, spiritual, and creative practices
Explore the top 10 challenges and opportunities in sabbatical life

Decoding Manager-Subordinate Dynamics

Recognizing Warning Signs

If something feels off in your relationship with your manager—but you can’t name it—this session is for you.

Use emotional intelligence to spot red flags
Set and hold healthy professional boundaries
Understand when growth is no longer possible under current leadership
Navigate peer dynamics that either support or block your advancement

Navigating White-Majority Charity Work as a Black Man

Being one of the only Black men in white-led nonprofit spaces brings unique tensions. This talk explores the cost, the opportunity, and the need for boundary clarity.

Evaluate whether your institution’s values align with yours
Understand the difference between being present and being empowered
Conduct a holistic self-inventory for clarity and care
Navigate how identity and social currency interact in nonprofit spaces