DAO | Regenerative Leadership and Inner Wellbeing in Guatemala
DAO

Inner sustainability for regenerative impact

Inner care as the infrastructure of change.

We support women leaders, entrepreneurs, corporate teams and changemakers across Latin America in transforming the way they lead and live.

DAO team and LAB participants in Guatemala

01

Who we are

Two facilitators guiding a somatic exercise during a DAO LAB

Leading change should not cost you your health. And yet it almost always does.

DAO is a wellbeing and regenerative leadership initiative. We bring together neuroscience, somatics, art, biomimicry, technology and systems thinking so that the people holding processes of change can do so from a place of care, with clarity, resilience and long-term action.

We create immersive experiences, communities of practice and accessible resources that turn inner wellbeing into the infrastructure of impact.

Why we exist

Research by our ally The Wellbeing Project, based on more than 300 changemakers, shows that sustained exhaustion is the norm rather than the exception among those leading change — and that it affects women disproportionately.

The gap we close

Regeneration happens inward and outward, and both dimensions carry equal weight when designing a new world. Integrating the inner dimension — care as a right for everyone — is what grounds sustainable, transformative leadership. Integrating the outer dimension, that of service, is what creates new patterns of thinking and action that care for life on this planet. Inner care is not a privilege: it is a right for all of us.

02

What we do

Four lines of work that hold one another up: the person, the organization, technology and community.

Participants in deep rest during a LAB

Dao Lab

Immersive experiences — the LABs — for practising concrete ways of regulating the nervous system, in self-regulation and co-regulation, and working the inner dimension as the ground of regeneration.

Working session around a table

Dao Consulting

We support companies, small businesses and organizations in their transition toward cultures of regenerative leadership, where inner coherence is the basis of prosperity and impact. From that inner work we develop new skills to envision and create a regenerated world.

Treetops above the garden where the LABs take place

Dao Ethical AI

We facilitate processes of experimentation with empathetic, ethical AI technologies that support leaders in living with greater wellbeing, coherence and interrelation with the planet.

Circle of women holding hands in a garden

DAO Community

A new kind of leadership cannot be sustained alone: it needs a critical mass practising it. A cross-sector community of practice, in person and online, where we share exercises, workshops, longer trainings, talks and gatherings for living the new leadership.

Why these four and not others

GROUND

Because outer change cannot hold without inner work.

Hence the LABs: the soil where everything else can grow.

DESIGN

Because change is thought, co-created and enacted better from inner coherence.

Hence the work inside organizations: we facilitate embodied, coherent leadership that, from that place, takes up the tools of systemic design to create and run programmes of impact.

TOOLS

Because technology is already here and we cannot ignore it.

Hence ethical AI: using it with discernment, in service of life and not against it.

CRITICAL MASS

Because one regulated person does not change a system.

Hence community: only collectively does a new narrative and a new practice of conscious leadership appear.

And community feeds back into the ground: each collective practice nourishes the inner work again. A cycle, not a ladder.

03

Who we have worked with

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Strategic allies

The Wellbeing Project

We share methodologies that strengthen the link between inner change and outer impact, reflecting on how regeneration and care mean different things in each region, each territory and each people. We are part of their Ecological Belonging network.

University for Peace

The United Nations university for peace, with whom we develop methods for conscious, ethical leadership in the age of AI.

Hitos

A consulting firm working on new forms of cooperativism in Central America.

04

DAO’s impact

+300

women and men transforming their leadership into a regenerative one

+15

LABs held across the region

8

countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, southern Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize

Participants in conversation in the garden during a LAB

We have had the privilege of working with an emphasis on women, because we know that care — inner and collective — is a right. We work with women leading Indigenous networks, national development policy, health initiatives, businesses and impact investment across the region.

05

Our methodology

For DAO, sowing the future begins with fertile ground. First we tend the inner soil; then we plant the seeds of regenerative leadership.

Two chairs facing a tree trunk in the garden where the LABs take place

Phase one — Inner soil

Inner and nervous system regulation

We begin with inner wellbeing and nervous system regulation as the basis of conscious, responsible action. Our LABs go deeper session by session into retraining the nervous system, through a methodology of DAO’s own that integrates proven approaches from our strategic allies. We combine neuroscience, somatic tools, group work, art therapy and biomimicry, including practices of co-regulation with the earth — trees and nature — and with other beings — horses, whales — to create immersive experiences that bring people into new states of coherence and inner peace, the ground from which a different kind of leadership can hold.

Brushstrokes on paper during a collective activity

Phase two — New seeds

Regenerative leadership skills

Inner work cannot stay in the individual sphere. We believe wellbeing and care must be built as a collective right, not an isolated privilege, and that calls for a new, coherent leadership that puts regeneration into action. So through our consulting and ethical AI processes we work with organizations of every kind to explore what regenerative leadership means in their specific context, to develop those skills within their teams, and to put them into practice in something concrete: a project, a programme or another initiative the organization can sustain over time. Below are some of the regenerative skills we work on with teams.

SOME REGENERATIVE SKILLS

Liderazgo "embodied"
Systemic awareness and design
Open, real communication
Ethical use of AI
Building societies based on care
Iterative, adaptive experimentation
Inhabiting uncertainty and navigating polarities
Integrating knowledges and intergenerational continuity
Cyclical thinking and non-linear time
Which one would you add?

Would you like to know more about our services and what we have done with our allies?

See the services

Services

Four paths, one shared ground.

Each line can begin on its own or be linked into a progressive process. We design every proposal to fit the organization, taking into account its needs, what it can pay and its institutional context.

Dao Lab Dao Consulting Dao Ethical AI DAO Community
Cushions and mats laid out in the garden for a LAB session

INNER DIMENSION — INNER SOIL

Dao Lab

Immersive experiences — the LABs — for practising concrete ways of regulating the nervous system, in self-regulation and co-regulation, and working the inner dimension as the ground of regeneration.

We offer different LABs exploring key themes of regulation. Some examples:

  • 01 Retraining the nervous system through neuroscience and somatic movement
  • 02 Financial security and the nervous system
  • 03 Holistic nutrition
  • 04 Co-regulation through ecological experiences (nature, animals)

A LAB is a one- to three-day gathering, in a small group and in contact with nature, where you do not listen to a talk: you practise. Each LAB approaches care and inner regulation from a different angle — the body, security, food, the bond with other people — and combines several tools so that each participant finds the ones that work best for her and can keep using them afterwards.

Join a LAB For women who want to experience inner regulation in community.
Group working around a long wooden table

OUTER DIMENSION — NEW SEEDS OF IMPACT

Dao Consulting

We support corporations, companies and organizations in their transition toward cultures of regenerative leadership, where inner coherence is the basis of prosperity and impact.

Change is thought, co-created and enacted better from there: we facilitate embodied, coherent leadership that, from that place of inner balance, takes up the tools of systemic design to create and run programmes of impact. Below are some of the regenerative skills we develop with teams.

Before proposing anything, we listen. We want to know what kind of support your team needs, because every proposal is designed to fit your context, your needs and your capacity. Write to us and let’s talk.

For corporations, companies, social organizations and public institutions.

Book a consultation

The skills we work on in DAO Consulting

Nine skills. Open each one to see how we work on it and who we have put it into practice with.

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Treetops above the garden where the LABs take place

OUTER DIMENSION — NEW SEEDS OF IMPACT

Dao Ethical AI

We facilitate processes of experimentation with empathetic, ethical AI technologies that support leaders in living with greater wellbeing, coherence and interrelation with the planet.

Technology is already here and we cannot ignore it: the question is how to use it with discernment, in service of life and not against it. That also means telling apart where AI genuinely helps and which decisions should not be delegated, because they come from what makes us intrinsically human.

Developed at the University for Peace, the United Nations university for peace.

Learn about DAO Ethical AI
Participants in a circle holding hands

Community of practice

DAO Community

A new kind of leadership cannot be sustained alone: it needs a critical mass practising it.

Anyone who goes through a LAB, a Consulting process or Dao Ethical AI becomes part of the community. There we share open resources and materials to go deeper, and together we hold the path toward regenerative leadership as a new narrative.

A community of practice, in person and online, where we share gatherings, workshops, talks and practices to build together the regenerative leadership the planet needs.

Explore DAO Community

The team

The people who hold the space.

A team specialized in regeneration, leadership, systemic impact and psychology. Our inner-work methodology has been reviewed and experienced by psychiatrists and by a group of women advisors leading in neuroscience and nervous system regulation.

DAO team

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LinkedIn

Advisory Council

  • María Elena Cabané

    PhD in Psychology — Associate Director of the Student Health and Wellbeing office at Berklee College of Music

  • Kyung Mi Kim

    MBA, University of Oxford — Founder and CEO of NEXORA

  • Ana Sofía Rivera

    Public Policy, École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), France — National Coordinator of the public programme for the reduction of poverty and malnutrition in Guatemala

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Work with DAO

We are looking for facilitators, therapists, systems-thinking designers and allies who share this way of working. If that is you, write to us and tell us what moves you and what practice you hold.

Write to DAO

Community

No one regulates alone.

DAO Community brings together leaders from across the region in a shared space of practice: regulation practices, workshops, trainings, talks and gatherings, in person and online.

Anyone who goes through a LAB, a Consulting process or Dao Ethical AI is already part of the community. You can also join without having done any process: just write to us.

Participants embracing during a co-regulation exercise

Free access

Open resources

Free materials to begin today, with no need to sign up for anything.

  • A short guide to nervous system regulation resource coming soon
  • Ethical AI in your leadership: a checklist resource coming soon
  • Podcast with The Wellbeing Project: Toward regenerative leadership Listen →

With your account

Enter DAO Community

Logging in gives you access to what sustains the long path:

  • —Online courses to go deeper
  • —Regulation tools and practices
  • —Community challenges

Thank you. We will write to the address you left us.

Don’t have an account yet? Write to us and we will set one up.

Scholarship fund

Care is a right, but not everyone has access to it.

We created a scholarship fund so that leaders who hold their communities from the margins — with no institutional budget and no access to this kind of process — can take part in our LABs and in the community.

If you would like to contribute to the fund, your donation is more than welcome. You can also sponsor the place of a specific woman leader.

Support the scholarship fund

Let’s keep talking.

Tell us about your team, your organization or the process you want to begin. We reply within a few business days.

Thank you for writing. Irene will reply soon.

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