From the Diary of Kashara Johnson

What a seven-step framework, built from ten years of trial and error, asks of Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color who want to clear a path of their own, and what happened when one cohort member tried it in Spain.

For a long time, Kashara Johnson thought her unconventionality was a glitch. “I searched for a well-paved road, only to find myself standing at the edge of a forest with a machete,” as she puts it on her profile. “And that’s when I realized I wasn’t meant to find a path. I was meant to clear one of my own.”

The search took her through a few years in corporate marketing and facilities roles, “trying to force myself into a mold that didn’t fit,” and then into nonprofit work, which “helped, but it still wasn’t the right answer.” What came out the other side, in 2025, was Reverb & Root. In her own one-sentence version, it “supports Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color in clearing and honoring their own paths through a living archive of our conversations, a decolonial Pathmaker Framework, and a global community building collective power.”

In practice it has four parts, and she models the whole thing on a Redwood forest. The roots are the Archive: more than thirty recorded conversations with Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color, a collection she has been building for nearly ten years. The tree is the Pathmaker Cohort: an eight-week program of five live virtual sessions, every one recorded, with worksheets, a private community platform, office hours and co-working sessions, capped at 15 people, with access to the materials for six months after it ends. The canopy is the Collective, the community cohort alumni join afterward for continued support, accountability, and momentum on their paths. In what she describes as a future initiative, 20% of all membership funds will be used as nutrients directed to the Reverb & Root Fund, a way of circulating wealth toward startups and organizations created by Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color within the community.

The fund is there for a reason. In 2024, US startups with a Black founder or co-founder raised around $730 million, about 0.4 percent of all US startup funding and the lowest share in years, according to Crunchbase. Kashara says she created the ecosystem of Reverb & Root “specifically to not need outside funding precisely because of that stat. My philosophy is that real change happens from the bottom up, not the top down. I’m not interested in pitching and appealing to venture capitalists when it’s very clear to me that Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color have the power to build and fund ourselves.”

The problem all of it answers is one she has been writing about, in public, for months.

Leader in spotlight: Read BabaJide Feature in Executives Diary

Everything Was First Imagined

Kashara doesn’t think the problem is that work aimed at this demographic falls short. “I think the issue is that, globally, this demographic has historically been ignored, underestimated, underserved, and under-supported,” she says. “Colonialism and the patriarchy have had devastating effects on billions of us who are part of the Global Majority.”

Her argument starts further back than money.

“I tell people all the time that everything we interact with in this world came from someone’s imagination. The cars we drive. The bikes we ride. The buildings we live and work inside of. The cities and towns that we navigate in and around. Oppressive systems, too. Everything was first imagined, then designed for us to exist within.”

Kashara Johnson, Founder, Reverb & Root

The ability to imagine, design and build a new path “is actual power,” she says. “For centuries, many of us haven’t been afforded that kind of power until now.” She’s direct about where the world still points that power. It “still caters to men, and yes, specifically white men, while pushing this false narrative that they are, by default, the best at solving the world’s issues.” Her own view: “I believe those most capable and equipped to solve these issues and to usher in a healthier future for all are those closest to the problems we face, which oftentimes are Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color.”

The instability she sees globally doesn’t read to her as a reason for despair. “It’s a sign to have even more hope and resilience, and that the downfall of colonialism and the patriarchy is happening in real time. No, we may not see them fully dismantled in our lifetime. Still, it is happening, and this is the time for Black, Indigenous, Women, + Femmes of Color globally to begin creating new paths and building community in support of that near-future.”

The pattern she notices in conversations, she has written, is that people already know what they would do if no barriers existed. “The issue is the how.”

Name the Path First

When someone joins the Pathmaker Cohort, Kashara tells them that clearing a path, personal or professional, “is inside-outside-together work.” The framework behind it came out of ten years of trial and error, and she says she wouldn’t teach it any other way: “I don’t believe in holding up a guiding light for people to clear their paths if I didn’t first hold it up for myself to clear my own.”

The first thing a cohort member does is name the path they want to clear. “For some, it might mean finally leaving their corporate job and starting their own consulting company. For others, it might mean clearing a path of discovering who they are when they finally stop trying to live up to other people’s expectations and start living for themselves.” Both, she says, need a real grounding in self-worth and alignment between beliefs, values and the path, which the framework calls “aligning your inner compass.”

The seven steps, as she has set them out, are these:

Name the path you actually want, not the one you’re supposed to want.
Calibrate your inner compass so you don’t get lost in the forest.
Face internal blocks like fear, unworthiness and shame.
Face external blocks with community support.
Map out a sustainable, true-to-you action plan so you don’t burn yourself out.
Take action with clarity to build the momentum to keep going.
Know when to end or evolve a path.

They group into three parts, worked through together over the eight weeks. The first is internal: “building up self-worth, facing internal blocks that live in our nervous system, like limiting beliefs, fear, shame, and more that manifest as self-sabotage, false starts, etc. Many people like to skip this part, but in the cohort, we build a safe environment for everyone to unpack these things.” The second is external: “facing the external blocks that live in our circumstances (time, money, access, support),” and mapping the path with what Reverb & Root calls its 12-Week Sustainable Method, “so people have the structure and support to clear paths without getting burned out or falling into toxic hustle-culture mindsets.”

The third part is community.

“This is really where the magic happens because while a person could go through the framework alone (like I did), it’s so much less lonely, and more nourishing when you go through it with others who are on a similar journey of clearing a new path.”

Kashara, Founder, Reverb & Root

One member of the current cohort is clearing hers in Spain.

Three Hundred Square Meters in Spain

In the Fall cohort, one member’s path is a neurodivergent-friendly hostel farmstead in Spain that doubles as a learning environment for community, agriculture and culture. She has only recently moved there, and her hurdle, in Kashara’s telling, was “feeling stuck on where to even begin, given the language and resource barrier.” Since the cohort started, she has found a home to rent that comes with roughly 300 square meters of farmable land, which the landlords have told her she is welcome to use. She is officially renting the home now.

That is what Kashara calls a Minimum Viable Path. “Often, people stand at the edge of the forest and never move because they’re trying to make their full vision a reality right NOW, when the best approach is to ask, ‘What is the smallest version of my path that I or others could actually experience?'” It is, she says, “an exercise in shrinking the path, not the full vision, so you can remove the intimidation and scarcity around moving forward. And inevitably, as you clear your path and plant, it will grow and expand because that’s what healthy, living things do!”

She has seen the same thing in her own life. “When you name and begin following your path, the universe has a way of rallying you along the way.”

Her own path went through eight weeks of bed rest first.

Renting Safety

Alongside the corporate and nonprofit years, Kashara has worked as a freelance creative strategist and designer since 2017, and for a stretch as a freelance prop stylist for lifestyle publications. She holds two degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in graphic design and in art history. None of it, she says, was the right fit until her body made the decision for her.

“Then in 2024, I found out I had a major health condition requiring surgery and eight weeks of bed rest,” she says. “That time period was life-changing. I don’t believe I would’ve gotten here without that experience. Up to that point, I’d built so much of my identity around working and living in Atlanta. I feel like my body had to break down from the stress of everything (including shrinking myself) so that I would be forced to stop and finally give myself permission to follow my path.”

“Working inside a traditional company teaches you to rent your safety rather than own it. I used to think corporations were where real safety resided. Now I’ve learned that clearing your own path instead of waiting for permission or all the right answers is where you find true safety and liberation.”

Kashara, Founder, Reverb & Root

What changes, she says, is the definition of success. “Your sense of enoughness and self-worth is no longer tied to metrics, end-of-year reviews, or whether you’re given a raise.” She is careful not to discard the years, either. “Corporate training taught me how to build systems, create processes, and design structures that scale. I’m proud that what I once used as a tool to support shareholder extraction is now repurposed to support Black, Indigenous, Women, + Femmes of Color around the world.”

The early days of Reverb & Root, before it had a name, included a false start. “When my first community landed with zero engagement after a few months, I shut it down and rebuilt around what I actually enjoy: activating people to take themselves and their ambitions seriously.” The way she works now, she credits in part to Dr. Rocio Rosales Meza, who “shaped how I work by showing me a decolonial path forward that helped me stop burning myself out with the capitalist, extractive way of working we’re accustomed to, and move toward one that’s more aligned.”

Where Kashara Is Now

The Pathmaker Fall 2026 Cohort began on September 2. She has also released a free Priority Calculator Worksheet, built, she wrote, for people like her, “easily anxious and overwhelmed, sometimes to the point where you find yourself in freeze mode.”

Asked what’s next, she puts it this way: “What’s next is expanding Reverb & Root’s impact through more cohorts, workshops, and international partnerships that support Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color in clearing their own paths to liberation.”

Wherever she goes, a colleague would say, she can be spotted with her journal, her fountain pen and a book. And she carries a tote bag she made a few years ago that says, “Rest is not a reward. It’s a necessity.” It is there, she says, as a reminder “that my work is not my whole life, but a single part of it, and an important part of honoring it is by resting and making room for the other parts of my life that I love.”

“Following my path by founding Reverb & Root has made me feel more integrated and whole,” she says. “And that’s exactly what I hope the Pathmaker Cohort can help other Black, Indigenous, Women + Femmes of Color experience as well.” The first swing, as she has written, is the hard part. “But trust that taking that first swing will clear your path just enough to reveal your next step.”

Five Lines from Kashara’s Diary

“Every path you clear for yourself and your community is a step toward a more liberated future.”

“Working inside a traditional company teaches you to rent your safety rather than own it.”

“Some of our most profound messages come in the form of still, small voices.”

“Trust that you’re safe enough to show up imperfectly.”

“Rest is not a reward. It’s a necessity.”