About Wider Roots

How can our social movement spaces create more opportunities for our internal transformation while we work for external change?

Hosted by leadership coach Jeremy Blanchard, Wider Roots brings together wisdom teachers, coaches, and leaders who are wrestling with questions about how to bridge personal and systemic transformation.

This show is for coaches, facilitators, and healers who want to explore approaches to personal growth that focus more on the well-being of the collective, instead of just the individual. It’s also for movement leaders who want to infuse the power of inner work into their changemaking.

Our work for climate justice, racial justice, equity, and collective liberation calls on us to bring our best qualities forward. Join us as we explore how we can embody a more compassionate, resilient, and spiritually grounded way of making change.

Reviews

Apple Podcasts
Reigniting My Passion For Coaching

I just listened to episode 7, and I’m feeling paradigms shifting in how I approach my work with clients. Bringing my client’s heartbreak for the world into the coaching journey and exploring how this awareness supports decolonization and fractures individualism now feels essential. I got goosebumps with Jess’s statemen...

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DecolonizingTheBody April 26, 2024
Apple Podcasts
Filling a gap

I am just getting into coaching and have talked to many other coaches and mentors about the need for more community and guidance around politicized coaching, or coaching that is connected to larger movement work. Thank you so much to Jeremy for your labor of love around this topic!

TEPLLC March 28, 2024
Apple Podcasts
Here for all of it!

Tuning into this podcast as a healthcare provider who also has my foot in political organizing spaces, I have been surprised by the ways I've found the conversations here to bridge the gaps between these two worlds! Many sighs of relief and awe as I hear my own internal rumbling questions spoken into existence and disc...

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LC Fix March 28, 2024
Apple Podcasts
We’ve been waiting for this!

The themes of inquiry in this podcast have been so needed! Thank you for already digging deep into the hard questions in the first few episodes. As someone who has benefited from coaching over the years, I am looking forward to seeing where this journey goes and what perspective shifts may come from listening.

J K Brink March 21, 2024
Apple Podcasts
Asking the right questions

I am so excited about this new podcast! I feel like everyone who does social movement work OR personal transformation work with integrity inevitably bumps into the kind of questions Jeremy is asking with his guests. So rare to find such a well produced podcast engaging questions around professional ethics and political...

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Thmfrommn March 07, 2024
Apple Podcasts
Sweet Relief

This podcast helped me see more possibilities for how my coaching work contributes to a larger movement of change. This has always been in the backdrop in my work, and after listening, I see more ways I can make that much more apparent - and that feels really really good, needed and energizing!

HilarySparks February 26, 2024

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Jeremy Blanchard

Host & Leadership Coach for Changemakers

Jeremy Blanchard (he/him) is a leadership coach who has spent over a decade supporting changemakers, activists, and movement leaders who are reshaping our world. He’s worked with leaders in movements for climate, racial, social, and economic justice—including Avaaz, Greenfaith, Center for Biological Diversity, and The Sunrise Project.

Originally getting his start in the youth climate movement, he discovered the power of personal transformation work when he started working with a leadership coach after college. He saw how the deep commitments we hold to transform the world can quickly turn into the cause of our exhaustion and suffering.

Jeremy has been wrestling with questions about how to bridge personal and systemic transformation since he started as a coach. He was never satisfied with the way the coaching world lacked a social justice analysis or lens on the crises facing humanity and the planet. This spurred his decade-long inquiry into methodologies and frameworks for coaching that help us cultivate compassion and centered action while we work for systemic change.

In his free time, he’s usually jamming to 90’s rock ballads on piano with friends, rock climbing, reading visionary fiction, and geeking out on communal living. He lives in Chochenyo Ohlone land in Oakland, California (I’m glad to pay Shuumi).

If you’d like to connect with him about leadership coaching, check out his coaching website here.

Recent Episodes

Credits & Gratitude

🎶 Theme Music: A huge thanks to Wildchoir for the theme music for the show. They're an Oakland-based social justice choir. You'll hear their song Remember Me (YouTube, Spotify) at the beginning and end of every episode. It's about being reunited (re-membered) with the earth ("Mama"). They're one of my favorite sources of inspiration and spiritual grounding amidst my work for change, and I'm honored to have their music be the groundwork for the show!

🖼 Cover Art: Thanks to Molly McLeod for the beautiful cover art.

🙏🏻 Gratitude: Huge gratitude to Jess Serrante and Josh Van Vliet for supporting this project to come to life and being amazing purpose partners. Thanks to Mazin Jamal for the encouragement that sparked the idea for this show.