PAUSE Panel & Alica Forneret

Grief in the Workplace

Examining identity, support needs, and community in culturally-relevant ways in the workplace

A special presentation for Hospice Professionals, Clergy, Law Enforcement, First Responders, Victim’s Advocates, Therapists/Counselors, Volunteers, Companions, Death Doulas, Death Care Professionals, including Administrative and Leadership Professionals in these settings.

In this presentation for professionals, PAUSE will cover how workplaces can better support their employees who are People of Color navigating death, dying, and grief. Together, we will explore how race and culture can influence the type of support workplaces can offer to their employees. Attendees should be prepared to engage in individual exercises to examine their own identity and how it’s impacted their personal grief experience in the workplace, as well as small group work and large group discussions to center storytelling and resourcing from community. Attendees will walk away with practical ideas for expanding their approach to making culturally-relevant referrals outside of the typical bereavement response, as well as a customized list of grief and end-of-life resources by and for People of Color.

Topics covered:
• How grief shows up in the workplace
• Ways to expand an existing bereavement response beyond making policy updates
• “Whole person care” and the constellation of existing grief and end-of-life support within POC communities
• Grief and other lived experiences tied to identity/race (cultural bereavement, collective grief, etc.)
• Seeking out and making culturally-relevant referrals to honor your personal limits as a manager or leader

Date: Tuesday, August 20

Time: 8-10am (PT)/ 9-11am (MST)/ 10-12pm (CT)/ 11-1pm (EST)

location: Zoom

Registration Required. Certificate of Completion provided upon request to professionals in attendance.  

How Who We Are Impacts How We Grieve

A panel discussion exploring the intersection of grief and identity

In this 1.5-hour panel discussion, attendees will meet Charlene Lam (The Grief Gallery), Dr. Julie Shaw (Hello I’m Grieving), and Mangda Sengvanhpheng (BACII) – three grief-focused professionals who bring unique approaches to their work serving grieving folks. In this conversation, they’ll share about their individual journeys, discuss the connections between culture, identity, and creativity, and talk about why it can be important to look outside of traditional grief support containers to receive more expansive and holistic care. Our time together will include a Q&A with the panelists.

Date: Tuesday, August 20

Time: 3-4:30pm (PT)/ 4-5:30pm (MST)/ 5-6:30pm (CT)/ 6-7:30pm (EST)

location: Zoom

A program for anyone in the community who has experienced a loss or is supporting a griever personally or professionally.

Registration Required. Certificate of Completion provided upon request to professionals in attendance.  

About the Presenters:

Alica Forneret, Founder and Executive Director of PAUSE

Alica Forneret (she/her) is an educator, speaker, and consultant dedicated to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving. She is the Founder and Executive Director of PAUSE, a nonprofit focused on supporting Communities of Color through grief and end of life.

Alica consults on product development and systems change to help companies create resources and tools for grieving communities. She facilitates sessions focused on inclusive bereavement responses and how to address grief at work for companies including Google, Culture Amp, Nielsen, and The California Department of Education. And she has partnered on international events and projects with the likes of The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Columbia University, and Lululemon. 

Alica is the founder of Forneret Co.’s annual “Motherless Mother’s Day” event, the Program Lead and Content Strategist for School Crisis Recovery & Renewal’s “Pedagogy of Grief” project, Expert Contributor with Grief Coach, and host of EOL’s “Griever’s Guide to” and “Grief Support” event series. She proudly held a seat as an associate board member for Our House and is an inaugural member of the BC Women’s Health Foundation Young Women’s Council.

Alica’s writing and work about grief, work, and race have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, GQ, and has been translated into Spanish, French, Tagalog, Polish, and Hmong.

 More about the PAUSE organization is on their website here: https://www.timetopause.org/

Dr. Julie Shaw

​​Dr. Julie Shaw (she/her) is a certified grief educator, grief coach, speaker and experienced griever. Dr. Shaw is committed to building an inclusive community of grievers who are curious, ready to explore and moved to find ways they can integrate grief into their lives and continue to thrive. She is the founder of Hello I‘m Grieving, a community where grievers can find support and motivation through innovative, thought-provoking events. As a former professional basketball player and collegiate coach, Dr. Shaw adds to her grief work a specialty in coaching high performers on their grief journey to help them reimagine success as they navigate their grief. Dr. Shaw has her doctorate in Leadership and is the co-founder of Lead Different Consulting where she works with global leaders in diverse industries and facilitates training on leadership development, DEI, and grief education. As a grief expert, Dr. Shaw has spoken on panels alongside David Kessler, contributed to the Empathy.com Cost of Dying Report, serves as a guest expert for HelpTexts, and her story is featured in the grief documentary Meet Me Where I Am. Dr. Shaw is also the host of the Hello I’m Grieving podcast.

Charlene Lam 

Charlene Lam is a certified grief coach, curator and the founder of The Grief Gallery. After her mother died suddenly in 2013, Charlene leaned into her creativity and instincts as a curator to guide herself through grief. Charlene believes we are ALL curators, and developed her Curating Grief coaching framework to help people process grief in a creative, accessible way. In addition to working individually with grief coaching clients, as curator of The Grief Gallery®, Charlene presents international exhibitions featuring the belongings of loved ones, including installations and events in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto and London. She’s the star of the new short film Curating Grief: Loss and Objects. Originally from NYC, she’s currently based in Lisbon, Portugal.

 More about Charlene and her work is on her website here: https://www.charlenelam.com/

Mangda Sengvanhpheng 

Mangda Sengvanhpheng is an artist, contemplative care practitioner, and the Founder of BACII. She is devoted to creating a deeper culture of care and expanding our experiences through the wisdom of impermanence. Mangda offers supportive services, regenerative programming, and intentional products for individuals, communities, and organizations alike. Her life and death work is guided by her Lao last name, which means “the light of the full moon.”

BACII is inspired by all of her experiences with loss and life, and specifically the loss of her mother. This life-changing experience of helping her mother through the dying process included being with her in the final moments, washing and dressing her body, arranging a funeral service, and managing a household of tasks that come with death. This experience revealed to her how difficult and isolating grief and loss can be. This led her to reimagine our society’s relationship to the end-of-life as a healthier and more supportive experience. 

Driven by these experiences, Mangda became a certified death doula through Going with Grace and an end-of-life volunteer. She then launched BACII as a platform to integrate death into our lives so that we can better support ourselves and those we love.

More about Mangda and her work can be found here: https://bacii.co/