About

Hi, I'm Shana.

I'm a quiet, introverted soul with a deep interest in creating spaces for belonging. All my life I've been shy, socially anxious, and challenged to connect in the ways that most of the world expects.

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My work has largely focused on education, community engagement, and partnership building. Incredible experiences, full of impactful collaborations, and I absolutely love it. But the side of me people often didn't see was me sneaking out the back door to get some air,  battling nerves and social anxiety before presentations and meetings, or exiting events altogether, to sit in my car for ten minutes of quiet before driving home. Can you relate?

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Not because anything had gone wrong. Just because my social and sensory battery was depleted.

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For a long time I considered this sensitivity a flaw. Everyone else seemed to be energized and at ease in socially charged spaces. I'd be quietly counting the minutes until I could be alone, then feeling guilty about it.

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Eventually I stopped treating my quiet as something to fix and started treating it as information. I'm not antisocial. I just need connection that moves slower and feels more intentional. Once I stopped apologizing for that, I finally started loving the quiet person I am. 

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Dreaming up this vision for a space where quiet people can exist together is something that feels so meaningful to me, a place where quiet folks like us can just be and belong. No name tags. No mandatory participation. No pressure to be interesting, or up, or on. Just spaces of comfort, built for quiet folks like us.