Work with the trauma stewardship expert

Consulting

Partner with Laura to help you and those around you navigate burnout, trauma, systemic overwhelm, and structural challenges—whether you’re facing acute stress or building long-term change.

Explore working together
Laura sits informally, smiling with water and hills in the background.

Strategic Support for Systems Facing Overwhelm, Trauma, and Structural Strain

Whether you’re responding to a crisis or proactively investing in a healthier workplace or community culture, working with Laura provides space to pause, reflect, and take intentional next steps. With decades of cross-sector experience, she helps you confront the impact of vicarious trauma, decision fatigue/cognitive overload, and the broader effects of systemic oppression and structural supremacy.

You can engage Laura to support you—no matter the size or structure of your group. From grassroots nonprofits and government agencies to large institutions and private companies. From small neighborhoods to entire regions. Laura offers practical, relational, and sustainable strategies tailored to your specific context.

Consulting engagements have included:

  • Organizational assessments focused on both primary and vicarious trauma exposure
  • Strategic advising on workplace dynamics, communication, emotional contagion, and systemic stressors
  • Staff-wide conversations on mission drift, overwhelm, and leadership breakdown
  • Ongoing coaching with leadership teams and HR to support retention and culture
  • Recovery and resilience planning following high-impact internal or external events

Why Organizations Turn to Laura

1

Experience across sectors and systems

From healthcare to the judicial system, education to tech/AI—you benefit from guidance shaped by real-world complexity and broad, cross-disciplinary work.

2

Grounded in trauma stewardship

Consulting is rooted in the principles of trauma stewardship, supporting both immediate challenges and long-term transformation.

3

Flexible, responsive partnership

You can engage for a single session or a sustained collaboration—always tailored to your needs, culture, and capacity.

Person in black sweater with name tag looking intently out of frame
Large group of workshop attendees listening and watching presentation

Who We Work With

Laura has consulted with a wide array of organizations navigating overwhelm, burnout, transitions, and structural challenges.

Ocean Conservancy
U.S. Army
The Y
Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education
International Association of Forensic Nurses
Who we work with

Praise

Organizations consistently describe this work as clarifying, motivational, and profoundly impactful.

Take equal parts courage and humility, expertise and curiosity, vision and hard-won wisdom, add an unshakable commitment to all aspects of health, a no-nonsense, let’s-get-down-to-brass-tacks style of communicating—as well as a very generous helping of humor—and you have the huge gift that is Laura van Dernoot Lipsky.

She walks her path and blazes her trail with a grace infused with respect, devotion, and deep compassion for her fellow travelers. We are so lucky to call her our colleague, and even luckier to call her our friend.

Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann
Actor, advocate, president and founder of the Joyful Heart Foundation; Actor, writer, advocate

As an obstetrician-gynecologist with nearly 30 years of experience in sexual and reproductive healthcare, I have witnessed firsthand how trauma affects my patients, colleagues, and our families—as well as myself. In this demanding field, understanding vicarious trauma has become more critical than ever. Laura has been an invaluable support, providing practical tools and guidance that have helped me develop personalized strategies. These approaches enable me to sustain myself professionally, support my colleagues effectively, and continue showing up fully for my patients every day.

Deborah Nucatola
Chief Medical Officer, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai`i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky

We’d love to hear from you.

Work with Laura

Whether for a single consultation or an ongoing engagement, we’ll help shape an approach that meets you where you are.

Get in touch