Today we’d like to introduce you to Kahshanna Evans
Hi Kahshanna, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’d say my story is one of polarity. Growing up in Southern California, It was clear early on that my normal wasn’t everyone else’s. As the daughter of an assault survivor I’d developed a sense of empathy—and fury—beyond my years.
I retreated into my inner world, something no one else could govern. I loved cartoons like Transformers and Tom & Jerry cartoons, and television shows like Mork and Mindy, Dukes of Hazzard, What’s Happening, Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, and The Love Boat. I made clothes for my Barbies, some of which were off-brands that we could afford or that were given as gifts by older relatives that couldn’t tell the difference. One of my favorite off-brand Barbies had a short afro and a broken hand. I made her clothes with old sheets and scraps and patched up her hand with my Girl Scout first aid kit. I was especially obsessed with the teenie-weenie briefcase accessory, convinced I would be a business woman one day. Talk about telling.
Although caretakers who were in underresourced communities within a dominant cast supremacy culture often shaped the narrative in a way that hides troubled times, in an effort to reassure their children, nothing could change the sometimes grim reality that we were a family in crisis. I witnessed and experienced life-changing violence at the hands of a law enforcement official and then caretaker with unchecked rage—the kind that leaves marks. This marked a time I noticeably lost a sibling years before they passed who was a ghost of herself.
With some of my tuition covered with scholarships, grants, loans, and a promise to work on campus and take on a job, I got a taste of my first true autonomy at Brooks College of Fashion Design in Long Beach. The thrill gave way to the complexities of navigating campus bullies who looked like me who were convinced I thought I was better than everyone—a then prevalent narrative rooted in generational and historical trauma amplified by popular movies, television shows, and videos that played on lightness because of its proximity to European beauty standards. As if they could solve our 500 years of history by imagining who I thought I was, the mobbing worsened before it got better, with two suspended and one expelled. I never returned for the second year of my program. Anywhere but home and here, I thought.
Every devastation felt like an ending, but, looking back, tough times always eventually gave way to seasons of new discoveries. The wounds were there, but were my dreams. After being introduced to a talent agent, I got my start in the high fashion, film, television and entertainment industries. In stark contrast to a complicated early start, new, exciting opportunities introduced extensive travel and exposure to iconic creatives in arts and entertainment on film and television sets. For the first time in my life, I earned a good living on my own which I used to eventually take a performing arts conservatory program at William Esper Studios.
After burnout typical of those industries took a toll, I studied various modalities of wellbeing. Shamanism, Reiki, and Voice Dialogue which were incredibly restorative and healing. I launched Kissing Lions Public Relations, my own independent communications consultancy which I maintained while employed at a startup, a tech company, and a nonprofit. Thank goodness I did!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I wouldn’t describe my journey as smooth, but I’ve reflected on the adversities and atrocities I’ve experienced for perspective, understanding, and continued healing. The environments I was in as a young person and woman of African descent promoted conflicting narratives that had a compounding effect on my life.
When I was in grade school, I attended a private religious school for a few years—not a religion of my own ancestory or one that instilled pride in my identity, but one with origins to European religious interpretations and practices. The priests, nuns, and monsignors looked nothing like me. By then, I suspect that the painful secrets I carried were misconstrued for any number of tropes assumed of people of African descent. Rather than being seen as sad, struggling, or having experienced trauma, I seemed to be a threat at times. I didn’t have words for that until years later. It takes that long to understand dominant caste supremacy culture, or, at least, to begin to understand.
As I excitedly headed to college, I somehow thought I was leaving behind a nightmare I’d never have to experience again—harmers with unchecked rage that could harm others with impunity. As I was forced to deal with bullies during my first year, instead of crushes I had on surfer boys and volleyball players, I learned the hard way that an oppressive societal system where entire cultural groups are intentionally and strategically marginalized, deprived of opportunities, and lack resources and access results in generational and historical trauma. The mobbing, exacerbated by popular media trends that worsened colorism and played a divisive role within families, communities, and social groups, was a symptom. I learned of the ugly pattern that being targeted by bullies wasn’t some sort of personal manifestation because I wasn’t positive enough or didn’t hope, pray, or meditate the right way and it wasn’t because I deserved it. That it was intentional at the time made me heartsick, but later on I understood that, by design, the bullies were repeating what society had done to people of African descent who are the descendents of the transatlantic slave trade—acting out, mobing, judging, stalking, threatening, undermining, betraying, and harming because with no higher authority, you could.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As I transitioned out of entertainment and immersion into studies focused on transformation, I took a public relations program with the remaining available amount on my credit card at the time. It seemed that everything I’d learned in various industries was connected through storytelling. Once I completed the one-year program, I was ready to incorporate what I’d learned for my own independent venture. I founded Kissing Lions Public Relations, an independent consultancy that offers brand, marketing communication, and public relations strategies to niche brands and emerging subject matter experts in culture, the arts, design, and wellness.
After the pandemic, I had an awakening of sorts to hear a low murmur that turned into a legible chant, “Black lives matter!” I stood on my deck looking down on Madison as troves of human rights advocates marched in solidarity. For the first time in my life, I got that they were talking about me, too. By that time, my sadly estranged sister, who suffered a great deal in her life, had been gone for years. She’d passed away after she slipped and hit her head during a seizure and went into a coma. We mattered. This movement, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, was for people like us. It spurred a renewed interest to continue transformational healing work I’d immersed myself in over the span of a decade.
I became the Director of Creating Resilient Communities at PACEs Connection, a nonprofit organization that educates on the short and long term health outcomes of positive and adverse childhood experiences—also known as PACEs and resilience science. I spearheaded Creating Resilient Communities (CRC), a 16-hour grant funded accelerator program that unpacked toxic stress caused by ACEs and PCEs—Adverse Childhood Experiences, Adverse Community Experiences, Adverse Climate Events, Atrocious Cultural Events, Positive Childhood Experiences, and Positive Community Events.
I developed a fellowship for graduates of the CRC and played a major role in overhauling our program structure and materials. I also spearheaded “Reparatory Justice and Education for Children of African Descent: A Whole Person and Society Approach,” an official side event for the United Nations Permant Forum of People of African Descent to discuss education for kids of African descent. Due to lack of funding, we wrapped up the nonprofit altogether, officially handing it back over to the fiscal sponsor.
Just before I left, I received word that I was nominated for the New York State Trauma Informed Network and Resource Center (TINRC) Advisory Council member. A month, or so, later, I was officially welcomed as a TINRC Advisory Council member. I secretly marveled that throughout my life, my wounds were so frequently a perplexing “downer,” that I took to masking them until I was a shell of myself to the extend I thought my torch didn’t matter because it couldn’t be seen or embraced in a place of belonging and solidarity, and when I least expected it, the torch I carry for human rights was celebrated.
What began in my independent consultancy as conventional marketing-communications has now evolved to “Community Building Through Communications” strategy that aims to support the acknowledgement of appropriate cultural storylines in place of harmful media narratives centered in dominant caste supremacy culture narratives we see across the media that exclude the context of historical and generational trauma. This approach to community organizing, leadership development, movement making, and media strategy incorporates what I’ve learned about transformational indigenous traditions throughout my studies at The Four Winds Society, ancestral practices, social justice issues, anti-blackness racism, and trauma-informed resilience and positive community experiences. I can’t stop being excited about it!
Career highlights I’m proud of include co-facilitating “Reparatory Justice and Education for Children of African Descent: A Whole Person and Society Approach”, an official side event for the Third session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD). Thereafter, had the pleasure of joining high-level human rights leaders to recommend interventions focused on reparatory justice at the 35th session of the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD). I’ve become a partner in “Equity in Practice: Anti-pathology Approaches to Mental Health Care for People of Color” with Cockhren Consulting. I’m now celebrating being the newest member of the Consciousness Leaders speaking agency founded by Kelly L. Campbell, author of “Heal to Lead: Revolutionizing Leadership through Trauma Healing”. I’m grateful I’ve found the right places to talk about resilience, trauma-Informed transformation, “good grief”, and “what happened to us?” grounded in the evidence of PACEs and resilience science.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
The best way people can work with me or support me is to start a dialogue with me on Linkedin or message me through kissinglions.com. Learn more about Equity in Practice by visiting https://equityinpractice.splashthat.com/. Learn more about my approach to consciousness leadership by visiting https://consciousnessleaders.com/expert/kahshanna-evans/. Learn more about the TINRC Advisory Council at traumainformedny.org. The best way people can support me is to continue to support the expansion of trauma informed education and reparatory justice for people of African and Indigenous descent on a personal, social, local, policy, organizational, city, state, federal, global level.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kissinglions.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kissinglions/
- Twitter: https://x.com/kahshanna
- Other: https://mailchi.mp/9f48ea3f9bd3/tinrc_advisory_council_member_kahshanna_evans
Image Credits
kjamaalphoto.com, D-Nice, Czars, ColorComm, Tarrice Love