A Live J9 Collective Experience
THe Collective: Leading with Wellness
September 15, 2025
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Seven Principles. Infinite Possibilities.
Seven Principles. Infinite Possibilities.
You Know What To Do.
That probably isn't the problem.
You know you need boundaries.
You know you need rest.
You know stress is taking a toll.
You know you should drink the water, take the walk, schedule the appointment, protect your peace, ask for help, make the decision, and stop carrying things that were never yours to carry in the first place.
Black women are not suffering from a lack of information.
And we certainly aren't suffering from a lack of vision.
We have plans. Ideas. Dreams. Strategies. Books highlighted from cover to cover. Notes in our phones. Saved posts we fully intend to come back to.
And still, too much of what we know has not made its way into how we actually live.
End this section with an oversized statement:
THAT IS THE WORK OF THE COLLECTIVE.
WE DON'T STRUGGLE WITH VISION. WE DON'T STRUGGLE WITH KNOWLEDGE. WE STRUGGLE WITH INTEGRATION.
There is often an enormous distance between knowing what is good for us and creating a life that makes room for it.
Especially for Black women.
Our wellness doesn't exist in a vacuum.
It is affected by the work environments we navigate. The people who depend on us. The communities we care for. The money we earn and how far it has to stretch. The systems we lead inside of. The expectations we carry. The futures we are trying to build.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we are supposed to be well.
Not look well.
Not perform wellness.
Not squeeze self-care into the fifteen minutes nobody else claimed.
BE WELL.
Whole woman. Whole life.
That's a different conversation.
And we're going to have it together.
LET'S ADDRESS WHAT OFTEN GETS LEFT UNFINISHED.
The Collective: Leading with Wellness is a live experience created for Black women who are ready to examine the barriers, patterns, systems, and limitations affecting our total wellness and begin integrating practices that allow us to live and lead differently. Not wellness as another item on the to-do list. Wellness as infrastructure. Because I don't want us building beautiful careers while our bodies are begging us to stop. I don't want us creating businesses that require us to abandon ourselves to keep them alive. I don't want us becoming indispensable at work and unavailable to our own lives. And I don't want another generation of Black women believing exhaustion is simply the price of being exceptional. We can build differently. But first, we have to practice differently.
WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE.
Register Now
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Register Now ・
“THERE IS NO VERSION OF LEADERSHIP THAT REQUIRES YOU TO SACRIFICE THE WOMAN IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THE LEADER.”
-- Chanda Branch, Transition Strategist & CEO
J9 Collective
Meet your Guide for the Collective
Chanda is a leadership strategist, educator, and cultural architect building spaces where Black women lead with clarity, conviction, and cultural power.
With nearly two decades of experience in the classroom, she has taught, directed, and designed learning experiences across multiple subjects areas—shaping not only curriculum, but confidence, voice, and vision.
She is an artist and performer, trained in discipline and expression, and a former national titleholder of the Ms. Black USA pageant crown. She carries that same presence into her work as a speaker, facilitator, and strategist leading women through life and career transitions.
Her leadership spans the arts, education, and nonprofit sectors, where she has served on and led boards, developed programming, and contributed to the cultural fabric of her community.
She is the author of Your Guide to a Modern Kwanzaa Celebration and the founder of Living Kwanzaa 365, where she translates cultural principles into modern leadership practice.
She is also a wife, a mother, and a proud descendant of the Gullah Geechee people—bringing lineage, lived experience, and intention into everything she builds.
Her work is rooted in one belief: when Black women lead with intention, everything changes.
We Are Healing the Whole Woman
Physical wellness.
Emotional wellness.
Financial wellness.
Intellectual wellness.
Spiritual wellness.
Relational wellness.
Professional wellness.
Joy.
Safety.
Capacity.
Possibility.
YOU ARE A LEADER.
AND YOU DESERVE TO BE WELL.
Because how you care for yourself affects how you make decisions.
How you manage resources affects what you can build.
How much space you have to think affects your creativity.
Your boundaries affect your relationships.
Your financial wellness affects your choices.
Your physical and emotional capacity affect your ability to sustain what you create.
And when your current environment continually makes wellness impossible, leadership may require something else entirely:
REPOSITIONING YOURSELF INSIDE THE SYSTEM.
OR DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC PLAN TO LEAVE IT.
AND YES, WE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT LEADERSHIP.
September 15, 2026
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Come ready to tell the truth about what isn't working.
Come ready to examine what wellness actually requires from you.
Come ready to practice something different.
And come as you are.
We are doing this together.
THE COLLECTIVE:
Leading with Wellness
A Live J9 Collective Experience
You're coming to practice.
Together, we will:
Identify the barriers and limitations currently compromising your total wellness.
Examine the habits, expectations, relationships, resources, and systems underneath them.
Apply Shared Resource Prosperity, Creative Excellence, and Strategic Intent as practical decision-making frameworks.
Develop principle-based practices you can integrate into your actual life.
Reflect, talk, laugh, question, practice, and learn in community with other Black women.
Leave with clearer decisions about what needs to stay, what needs to change, and what you need to build next.
Inside The Collective
You are accomplished, capable, and very good at taking care of business, but you're beginning to question what all of that competence is costing you.
Maybe your work is no longer aligned with the woman you're becoming.
Maybe you are carrying responsibilities that should have been redistributed years ago.
Maybe you need to make more money.
Maybe you need more support.
Maybe you're contemplating a career change, a leadership transition, entrepreneurship, or an exit from a workplace that no longer deserves your brilliance.
Maybe nothing is dramatically “wrong,” but something in you knows that wellness cannot keep being the thing you get to after everything else is handled.
MAYBE YOU'VE BEEN FEELING IT.
COME.
You do not have to have the answer yet.
That's part of why we gather.
I help Black women do both.
The goal isn't simply to feel better enough to tolerate what is harming you.
The goal is to become well enough, clear enough, and resourced enough to choose what happens next.
IMAGINE WHAT WE COULD BUILD IF WE WERE WELL.
〰️
IMAGINE WHAT WE COULD BUILD IF WE WERE WELL. 〰️
Not just successful.
Not just productive.
Not just resilient enough to survive another quarter.
WELL.
Imagine Black women with enough resources to make decisions from possibility instead of panic.
Enough rest to hear ourselves think.
Enough support to stop doing everything alone.
Enough freedom to create.
Enough clarity to know what deserves our yes.
Enough peace to give a clean no.
Enough strategy to recognize when it is time to reposition.
And enough courage to know when it is time to go.
That is the woman I want building what comes next.
And I suspect she is already in you.
LET'S GIVE HER SOME ROOM.