JULIANA WILLARS

Juliana is a neurodiverse, Indigiqueer person in the final year of a Master’s in mental health counseling program. In prior vocational incarnations, she has also been a journalist, harm reduction educator, massage therapist, overdose prevention trainer, crisis interventionist, event manager, and sex worker. Activism has long been part of Juliana’s community-building and healing engagement, informed by their own lived experiences with multiple marginalized identities. As a recovering anthropologist, she incorporates decolonial principles and culture-centeredness into counseling, rather than a universalist Western approach that expects people to adapt to harmful systems like capitalism, racism, and heteronormativity. In their limited free time, they enjoy camping, music festivals, traveling, and tending to their livestock (2 cats and a puppy). She believes that understanding and disrupting cycles of intergenerational trauma is foundational to holistic healing.