About
Brigette Rouson, J.D., M.A., (she/li/ella) is principal of Rouson Associates, a consulting practice that she first formed to support policy advocacy, before a pivot to strengthening organizations and people that transform society. She brings 30 years’ experience accompanying changemakers who are intentional about healing and liberation. Brigette is a member of the RoadMap (www.roadmapconsulting.org) network of social justice consultants and coaches, serving on its leadership teams for over 4 years. She is deeply committed to supporting movement folks through organizational change and leadership development, facilitation, training, action research, and public speaking.
Brigette has designed, led and played a key role in many initiatives to transform groups, community and society — planning and facilitating hundreds of sessions, providing individual and group coaching, and resource organizing. Her work centers racial justice and intersectionality. She has worked with more than 250 groups on board development, staff development, strategic planning, resource mobilization, advocacy and organizing. She has consulted independently and with colleagues, including staff positions at Management Assistance Group (now Change Elemental), Mosaica: The Center for Nonprofit Development and Pluralism, Maryland Nonprofits – and its national Standards for Excellence Institute. She was engaged to help run sessions in an innovative Black women’s cohort of a premier changemaker coaching certification program, Blooming Willow.
With her coaching, Black women soar by connecting self and social transformation, banishing imposter syndrome, and living their best lives.
Formerly, as national program director of Alliance for Nonprofit Management, Brigette co-founded a capacity builders of color network that sparked the Cultural Competency Initiative to bring equity and justice to the fore – and served as a speaker, session leader, book co-author and project manager, and in a pivotal staff role to create professional standards and tell stories moving the field forward. Brigette has worked in philanthropy to support increased power-sharing across racial/ethnic, generational, LGBTQ and other cultural identities. At Ms. Foundation for Women, she directed a $4 million multi-year grantmaking and capacity-building collaborative for girls’ and young women’s leadership, supporting 14 community groups rooted in African (Black), Indigenous, Latina, Asian and Appalachian (White) ancestry and culture.
Brigette is a proud graduate of Howard University (B.A. in Journalism), Georgetown University (J.D.), and University of Pennsylvania (M.A. and completion of all coursework toward a Ph.D. in communications and culture). She is a DC Bar member. Her community leadership includes serving as a co-founder and board of instigators member for Diverse City Fund – a grassroots grantmaker for social justice work by global majority people in DC – which she has represented in Resourcing Radical Justice, a funder collective with the principle of Black liberation as the key to a thriving national capital region. Brigette is an elected board of social action member for her faith congregation, which she represents in activities such as a coalition seeking reparations for DC Black residents, and is actively involved in other liberation work including formation of a worker cooperative.
Brigette is dedicated to learning and thought leadership, co-authoring RoadMap’s Practicing Liberation report (2024), serving as keynote speaker and session leader for local regional and national conferences.
