About Yolanda.

Child of Afrika.

Eldest of the longest river.

Daughter of the tallest Volcano.

Migration, Kilimanjaro

Miracles, Nile,

Mercy, Muse.

Dreamt into being by my grandmothers.

Guided by stories, symbols, silence and sensitivities.

A life that has unfolded across cultures, communities and 4 continents.

I come from a matrilineal line of Chagga healers — the people of Kilimanjaro itself. My grandmother began walking this path with me at age eight; over the more than twenty years since, it has deepened with each initiation — through loss, through growth, through maturity.

I am an initiated Medicine Woman standing within African-rooted lineages that hold entangled ecosystems — human, ancestral, and earthly — as sacred.

My work is anchored in Ubuntu: I am because we are.

“This is what we feel in your presence. You are the substance of which we are made of. We Africans. We who walk barefoot. We who are intimate with the soil. Who know the grooves and contours of her skin against our feet, our backs and buttocks as we sit on the ground, lay under trees in the heat of the day. We smell her breath when it rains. Her voice is in our very lungs from the first days we learnt how to run as toddlers and would be spurred on by the wind of her presence whistling in our ears telling us there is nothing we cannot do. You are her, whom we have always known. Every time you speak, we are assured we belong, we are safe. You are the voice of home.”

Fezile Mauncho

Alongside this inherited lineage, I trained as a global mystic under Andrew Harvey, Mirabai Starr, and other established guides through a one-year programme.

I have spent decades in leadership, governance, education, humanitarian, and social justice systems — recognised in 2003 as a Pioneer of the Nation in the Voluntary Sector by Queen Elizabeth II.

I have also sat in circles where other forms of knowing were honoured — where story, ritual, and deep listening carry as much authority as strategy and structure.

Bridges these worlds, without reducing either to the other.

Decolonial Thought Partner. Soul Companion. Word Alchemist.

Not three titles. Three ways of naming what happens when someone enters this work.

As a Decolonial Thought Partner, I support people to think differently about the dominant narratives, power, belonging, leadership, and cultures that shape — and often limit — their possibilities.

As a Soul Companion, I walk alongside people through the thresholds life asks us to cross: grief, initiation, transition, return.

As a Word Alchemist, I find the language that makes the unnamed nameable — the way "prior generosity" arrived, unbidden, to hold a moment that had none.

Through teaching, mentoring, consulting, and speaking, I create spaces where the invisible is honoured, and the visible is held.

Dismantling blame, shame, tame means reclaiming the parts of ourselves that were dormant, forgotten, silenced, or left behind — with tenderness and ceremony. New possibilities, and presence, in service of our collective liberation.

Creating conditions for:

• • Healing honesty

  • Deeper self-trust

  • Sacred relationship

  • Embodied discernment

  • Generous eldering

  • Becoming good Ancestors

  • Leadership rooted in radical care

“I remember Yolanda's power in my bones, in my tears, and in my chest's trembling response to her words to me one weekend on a bus in Switzerland. The words arrived gently, unassuming but memorable, like rain in the desert: 'You did good.' That's all. I wasn't seeking affirmation. But something about the way she said those words rang with the vibrancy of an elderly prestige, like she knew things ordinary ways of knowing couldn't appreciate. And none other than Yolanda herself offered a conceptual way to hold the moment when she spoke about a 'prior generosity.'

Yolanda knows the music that gave birth to music.

She is wise, and that is rare.”

Bayo Akomolafe

“There is a before and an after meeting Yolanda.

She expands your universe.”

Martin Calnan

I enjoy contemplative photography, art, radical collaboration, and courageous transformation.

Find Your Way

Kind Words‍ ‍Work With Me‍ ‍Contact Me

A Few Sacred Threads:

• Mother

• BSc Sociology +  MBA

• AMI Montessori Diploma

• Human Design Manifestor

• Gemini Rising

• Taurus Sun

• Sagittarius Moon

• Water Ox

• Enneagram Type 8 wing 9

• ENTJ

  We do this together.