My name is:

April Aviva Baskin.

My stomping ground is:

Dakar, Senegal. I’m originally from the West Coast (Cali), now living on the westernmost point of the African continent! It’s generally blissful to have a four-hour head start with my East Coast clients!

I’m known for being: 

A trauma-informed life coach who supports her clients in more powerfully advancing toward their dreams, while also cultivating more joy and holistic well-being in their lives.

I'm talking about: 

Well-being and advancing liberation and the collective good going hand-in-hand. Both are more sustainable and even enjoyable. Embodying joyously just lifestyle and leadership models by rejecting the false binary between advancing justice and living a joyful, fulfilling life. To help leaders and individuals access this, I’m currently offering 1:1 coaching packages and two group coaching experiences that support them in: 

• Tapping into the magic of micro-movements to easefully facilitate massive shift  (Shift Your Life in 60 Days), and 
• Mindfully, yet efficiently, deepening resilience and strategic social justice analysis, especially in the face of adversity—personal or professional (Grounded & Growing)

You can find it at:

joyousjustice.com.

Before I started this work, I was:

An awarding-winning social justice leader serving as a vice president at the Union for Reform Judaism.

My interest was sparked when:

I noticed my systemic solutions weren’t effective if people didn’t have adequate resources and support in their personal sphere. In spiritual and social justice spaces, I saw and continue to see people chronically under-resourcing themselves. And wellness spaces often lack deeper trauma-consciousness, let alone meaningful accountability and analysis about what’s happening in society. 

I started working with clients when:  

I founded my social justice company, Joyous Justice, in 2019, shortly before I moved from NYC to Senegal. While I wanted to be brave and launch my individual and group coaching services, it was initially easier for me to continue to ride the wave of the demand for my diversity, equity and inclusion expertise and travel back and forth between the two countries (accruing those Delta SkyMiles!). But on Sunday, March 8th, 2020, just days before another flight from Senegal to New York, I learned that JFK had grounded all flights due to concerns over COVID-19. Almost immediately, I interpreted this as a clear sign that I was meant to go all in and launch my coaching practice. By May, I was fully-booked with 1:1 clients. And then, as I jokingly like to call it, “The Great White Awakening of Summer 2020” happened, and demand for my expertise skyrocketed. We quickly rolled out group racial DEI coaching programs. Now, I’m re-centering and prioritizing working with courageous clients who are eager to take the plunge and fully pursue their dreams and highest ambitions.

The idea behind it is: 

Life is highly complex and nuanced, but living and leading within it doesn’t have to be when you have the right practices, tools and insights. I coach my clients using frameworks that help them more easefully and confidently access clarity and take aligned action, especially through highly complex and daunting terrain.

What makes it different is: 

The multi-dimensional and comprehensive nature of the principles and practices I offer my coaching clients that enable adaptive, yet consistent application.

My favorite lesser-known detail is:

A recurring theme and statement from my individual and group coaching clients is their shock and relief about how seamless my team and I integrate rigorous analysis and discipline consistently with profound compassion and unconditional love. I’m so over tired, binary either/or frames! 

I hope my clients walk away feeling:

Anchored in their truth and confident that they have the core tools and insights necessary to effectively navigate any personal or professional challenge they may encounter, with increasing skill and clarity. 

Having support and guidance is so important because:

As humans, we were never meant to navigate this journey alone. We need support from others in reliable relationships. And given that our world—and social and professional circles—are filled with people with unhealed trauma and immense diversity, this often ends up being more complicated to access. It is essential that you know you can always identify and access qualified support from life coaches, who can help you see beyond your and your environments’ current limitations to strategically shift your trajectory and make progress in the direction of your highest ambitions.

A coach who really helped me personally was:

Oh wow, there are many! Most recently, Stephanie Spinelli helped me deepen and own my evolving sense of self, and supported me in pivoting elements of my business and coaching practice to more spiritually align with the coach and spiritual leader I’m becoming.

My words to live by are:

If we choose for it to be, all sh*t can be fuel or fertilizer. And classic wisdom from Lauryn Hill, “How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?”