Introduction

My name is Florentina Ramirez Staigers, and I am a mixed El Salvadoran and white Latinx, I am a social justice attorney, community healer, and writer. I am the sole owner and operator of Insight-Out Development, L3C. My life purpose is to cultivate peace, compassion, and justice in the world and I do this by connecting healing and justice work.

My focus is policy, community healing, and writing. I help people understand, challenge, and change systems; guide equity and anti-oppression workshops and healing practices; and leverage the power of writing as a transformative practice.

My Story

In 2008, I underwent a major life shift that changed the way I work in policy and activism. During that time, which was a challenging time in my personal life, I began a search for a more balanced life.  I began attending therapy, reading spiritual teachings, and practicing meditation and yoga. This is when I began to see that in order to make the world a better place, I truly needed to invest in healing myself.

I quit my job, closed my accounts, gave away all my possessions, and said goodbye to my loved ones. I moved to Cameroon, Africa, where I lived for two years while I established a women’s rights organization and taught life skills to incarcerated women. I also focused on my other passion—writing. After my contract was over, I then traveled solo for almost a year across the world, through Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Along this journey, I experienced a kind of freedom I had never known was possible, and made a commitment to myself – not only would I never give up my freedom, but I would continue to help others find theirs too.

Experience

My background is in policy and law, advocacy, and organizational development. For nearly two decades, I have worked as a social justice attorney in immigrants’ rights, women’s rights and civil rights. I studied race theory under jon powell in law school and have gone through and developed several race and equity trainings. I am also a writer, focused on non-fiction and poetry, and have been published on ebony.com as well as in online journals and blogs.

My path has been centered on meditation and “engaged Buddhism,” a phrase describing the intersection of social justice and Buddhism. I practice in the tradition of Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I have also found healing through connecting with my ancestral roots, Mayan spirituality, Catholicism, yoga, and the natural world of plants, animals, minerals, and the Mother Earth. I completed a donation-based yoga teacher training in 2016 and continue to offer donation-based yoga.