Yashna Maya Padamsee is a first generation south asian immigrant queer femme raised in and by the US South. Yashna has spent 20+ years supporting social movements through creating innovative infrastructure and sharing liberatory healing practices. She uses systems thinking, organizing, art making, somatics, faith and yoga for healing and transformation at the intersections of immigration, labor, gender + sexuality and bodily autonomy.

During Yashna’s 7+ years on staff with The National Domestic Workers Alliance, she created containers of care through foundational systems that continue to be built upon at and beyond the organization today. She has also been an Adult Literacy program coordinator in Durham, NC, a faith-based immigrant rights organizer at the Bay Area IAF, moderated a Community Care discussion on OrganizingUpgrade (now Convergence Magazine), the lead of a Disability Justice committee at generative somatics and the Gatherer of the Lineages of Change Tarot.

Alongside Felicia Martinez, Tara Shaui Ellison, and Mae Singerman, Yashna is a co-founder and moderator of RadOps, a justice based online network for operations workers in movement organizations. She is Co-Director of Sanctuary Embodied, which brings transformative practice and embodied skill building for Left movement leaders and formations to build collective power and develop compelling cultures that can sustain for the long haul.

Yashna enjoys watching good (and not so good) TV shows, eating dumplings or dal with her partner Ang, and taking their sweet dog Monkey on a walk at sunset at the Eno River.