Cyra Perry Dougherty

Cyra Perry Dougherty is a space holder for spiritual growth and healing for 21st century leaders.

 

She began her career fighting for justice-rooted service programs in the public sector, made her way to Partners In Health, a global social justice organization. As a single mother, building her career in the social justice sector, she overextended herself and burnt out following her work in response to the earthquake that ravaged Haiti in 2010. In the years that followed, she found herself building Still Harbor, an organization committed to spiritually accompanying those engaged in social justice work, and in seminary where she was ordained an Interspiritual Minister. In seminary, she discovered the practical tools to sustain herself and others in justice work. She carries a deep respect for and understanding of the practices that can connect us to our most authentic selves, to others, and to the unknown that is greater than all of us. The majority of her work is in secular spaces where people are seeking to connect across differences, tap into a sense of personal or shared purpose, and co-create meaning that stimulates radical social transformation.

 

Perry is the founder and CEO of Rootwise Leadership, Senior Partner at Still Harbor, and an Instructor of Leadership Programming at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

 

Perry lives and works outside of Boston, MA where she considers being a mother to her three children, ages 14, 9, and 1, the greatest leadership opportunity of all.

Little known facts about Perry include: 

• She dreams of living in a treehouse on the beach.
• She manages not feeling able to live out that dream by occasionally relying on the unhealthy coping mechanism of reality television marathons.
• She has always wanted the superpower of being able to sing beautifully but has tried and really truly cannot learn to sing, so she accepted her shortcomings and married a musician. 

Perry is editing a new anthology called The Anatomy of Silence. The book presents 26 essays from survivors and allies about all the shit that gets in the way of talking about sexual violence.