Creating new worlds requires writing radical new stories.
I help create them.
auburn rutledge (she/they) is a creative people leader, coach, and program designer whose work weaves together frameworks of liberatory leadership, storytelling, and inclusive systems design. With more than twelve years of experience building high-performing teams and designing human-centered operational frameworks, she pairs deep strategic expertise with the ongoing study of imagination, emergent strategy, and culture change.
auburn's practice centers on bringing rigorous systems thinking and a worldbuilding orientation to every engagement, whether that's a one-on-one coaching relationship or an organizational transformation effort.
As a queer, Black, mixed, and AuDHD person, she brings perspectives from the margin that consistently generate new ways of solving old problems. This is the foundation of her work.
How we build our communities & organizations must center belonging. This begins with the stories we tell.
My work as a creative leader, coach, and consultant weaves together liberatory leadership, storytelling, and inclusive systems design.
In my coaching, I work with:
Women, femmes, and nonbinary folks who are seeking to reimagine their personal or professional life, and design something that aligns with their vision and values.
Underrepresented women, femme, and nonbinary leaders across organizational, corporate, and community spaces who want to lead in a way that honors who they are.
Neurodivergent women, femmes, and nonbinary folks who are stressed, exhausted, or burnt out and ready to understand, reenvision, and redesign their lives to meet their unique needs.
In organizational spaces, I work with teams and leaders who:
Are ready to build systems, spaces, and programs for deep connection and belonging and authentic self-expression.
Are looking to uplevel the creative capabilities of their organization, and facilitate imaginative problem-solving and innovation.
Want to redesign their strategy to be more emergent, flexible, and capable of withstanding and evolving through change.
AREAS OF PRACTICE
• Liberatory leadership design
• Emergent strategy & worldbuilding
• Inclusive systems & spacemaking
• Identity & narrative reclamation
• Organizational culture change
• Creativity as survival technology
FORMATIONS
• MA Creative Leadership, Minneapolis College of Art & Design (2025)
• ICF Level II Coach Training, Lumia (2025-2026)
• Future Front, Executive Board Secretary (2026-)
• MS Creativity & Change, SUNY Buffalo (2026-2028)
• BFA Film & Television, NYU Tisch
The way I work matters as much as what we build.
Every engagement I take on is rooted in the same set of commitments.
These are the operating principles I hold myself to in every room where I lead, facilitate, or participate.
LIBERATORY LEADERSHIP
Leadership as shared agency and collective ownership. Power-with, not power-over.
RADICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Relationships are infrastructure. Systems built with care hold people rather than extract from them.
EMERGENT STRATEGY
Worldbuilding and creative systems thinking as real tools for organizational and personal change.
WHOLENESS
No success that requires fragmentation. Belonging must be the foundation, inclusion must be woven into every framework.
CREATIVITY AS SURVIVAL TECHNOLOGY
We learn, grow, change, make through our creativity: whether at an individual, community, organizational, or systemic level.
Three ways into the work.
I
Individual & group coaching
For people navigating identity, leadership, transition, and the work of building a life that is honest, sustainable, and fully your own. Grounded in empathy, truth-telling, and narrative design.
II
Consulting & strategy
For organizations ready to build (or rebuild) their structures, programs, operations, and people systems using a defined set of values that align their beliefs to their work. My work with teams and organizations is centered in emergent strategy, radical infrastructure, and systems designed for belonging.
HOW WE CAN BEGIN
III
Facilitation & workshops
For groups ready to move through change together. This includes leadership development, storytelling, design thinking, creative problem-solving. I design sessions centered in being real and honest in our shared container, and creating that container to last beyond our engagement.