Roan Coughtry (they/them) is a writer, healing artist, coach, and facilitator hailing from Atlanta and the rural farmlands of New York. They’ve lived in many different corners of the world, fostering a background in psychology, creative arts, social justice organizing, somatic and holistic healing practices, and radical sex positivity along the way.
Their work weaves together ancestral healing, embodied practice, and the liberatory power of desire. For 16 years Roan has facilitated healing spaces on mental health, sexual liberation, and collective healing and transformation. As a queer and trans sex educator, they center the importance of pleasure, desire, and reclamation of the body as essential practices toward healing and liberation.
After receiving their Bachelors in Psychology and Fine Arts Photography from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, they served as a Coordinator for Outpatient Programs at a mental health hospital near Boston from 2006 to 2009. Two years later they received their Masters in Clinical Social Work from Smith College. Since 2011, they have worked as a community organizer, facilitator, sex educator, trainer, personal coach, and freelance writer/editor, focusing on personal, relational and collective transformation and healing.
For over a decade they served as a consultant for the UN, specializing in violence prevention, gender and LGBTQI issues. In 2013 they co-founded the Sexual Liberation Collective, a group of sex educators, sex workers, and sexual healers committed to providing education to communities and bringing conversations about sexual liberation into broader social justice movements. Over the years Roan has helped produce conferences such as Facing Race, Sex Down South and Money for Our Movements. They served on the advisory board of Project AFFIRM, an organization researching transgender resilience, and were a contributor to the annual Southern Fried Queer Pride festival in Atlanta. They’ve partnered with grassroots LGBTQI organizations around the country and world, including in Uganda, Kenya, and Malta.
In 2017 they joined a beloved team to serve as a lead facilitator for global YES! Jams, week-long transformative learning spaces among diverse changemakers that focus on personal, interpersonal and systemic transformation. They’re a consultant writer/editor for VOICE, a cutting-edge feminist organization working to end violence against women and girls around the world, and a member of the Decolonize Race Project, an Indigenous-led effort to align humanity toward sacred connection.
In addition to facilitating workshops and healing spaces, Roan works individually with clients as a coach and mentor, weaving together their experience in somatics, mental health, spirituality, and the impacts of societal systems on individual lives. Among other things, they specialize in working with white folks in the U.S. around ancestral healing and co-creating white anti-racist culture and practices.
Roan is a forever nerd and is currently studying herbalism, Scottish Gaelic, linguistics, and Celtic mythology and folklore.