Organizational trauma is real. Secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, institutional harm, and a culture of chronic urgency can quietly erode even the most mission-driven team. And when an organization’s internal culture doesn’t reflect its trauma-informed values, it creates a painful disconnect, one that drives burnout, turnover, compassion fatigue, and ultimately, a diminished capacity to serve.
Trauma-Informed Organizational Development applies the core principles of trauma-informed care —safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural humility—to how an organization operates from the inside out. This means examining your policies, practices, leadership culture, and board governance through a trauma-informed lens at every level of your organization or partnership/coalition.
This work is informed by more than two decades of applied experience, including a significant collaboration with the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health (NCDVTMH), where I gained invaluable knowledge and hands-on implementation of NCDCTMH’s Accessible, Culturally Responsive, and Trauma-Informed (ACRTI) approach to domestic and sexual violence services and organizations. NCDVTMH’s Director Dr. Carole Warshaw and Senior Training Consultant Cathy Cave developed the approach along with other experts that have been so central to the development of various responses to the gender-based violence movement.
That work drew on a wide range of perspectives, survivor and advocate voices, insights from social and political movements, and both qualitative and quantitative research to develop a healing-centered framework that is as practical as it is principled. It doesn’t start with a model and fit organizations into it. It starts with people, like those with lived experiences.
Picture this: Your organization serves trauma survivors beautifully, but internally, staff are burning out, turnover is high, and there’s a quiet, painful gap between the values you espouse externally and how your own team is treated.
Organizations in high-stress, trauma-adjacent fields like domestic violence, safeguarding, child welfare, housing, mental health, disaster response, as well as any organization navigating the aftermath of leadership upheaval, staff conflict, or institutional harm, and ready to do the internal work to heal and realign.
Also, a strong fit for organizations that haven’t experienced a crisis but are proactively committed to becoming a truly trauma-informed workplace…from the inside out! Doing this deep work before a crisis can help your organization thrive through transitions, rather than be derailed and delayed in transition.
