Shenandoah Chefalo, is an award-winning author, sought-after speaker, and trauma-informed coach and consultant who penned the book, “Garbage Bag Suitcase” about her young life in the foster care system, as well as an e-book entitled “Setting Your Vision and Defining Your Goals”. Her upcoming book “Hiking for Stillness” lays out a plan to overcome and address personal trauma by using and exploring the methods that she developed for herself.
She travels internationally helping transform organizations by teaching them how they can improve their workplace, performance, and overall enjoyment. Her tested and proven style of trauma-informed coaching includes a focus on resilience which she feels is a necessary skill for all to learn.
She is passionate about serving her clients, family, and community. She does so by helping organizations improve their workplaces and performance by teaching sustainable, trauma-informed methods, and by telling her story and educating the public about the grim realities of a life that she had always tried to hide.
Shenandoah experienced a dysfunctional childhood with neglectful, drug and alcohol-addicted parents. This eventually landed her in the foster system where she endured numerous moves in the middle of the night with just minutes to pack, multiple changes in schools, hunger, cruelty, and loneliness.
As an adult, she learned to overcome her past and graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies of Social Sciences, Owner and President of Chefalo Consulting, a member of Foster Leaders Movement, and a co-founder of the #4600AndCounting, a grass-roots movement to find missing youth from foster care.
As a professional adult, the same issues she encountered as a child kept circling back around, reminding her that so many others could benefit from her experiences and knowledge. For twenty years she worked as a Law Office Administrator, which was a constant reminder of the revolving door that is the criminal justice system. Too many of these offenders came straight out of the foster-care system.
After some research, she discovered that there were nearly 400,000 children in the foster care system each day in the United States. Out of those children, nearly 61% would age out of the system without having a place to live, 50% would end up incarcerated within 2 years of aging out, and almost 80% of people on death row are former foster alumni.
In addition to the incredible resilience she has shown and taught to organizations internationally, she has dedicated much of her time to spreading awareness about the foster care system, and teaching individuals the same methods she uses for her clients to help overcome personal challenges and start LIVING their lives instead of just surviving.
