WHY WE EXIST // OUR MISSION
Our mission is to elevate the physical and mental well-being of the community through yoga, leadership development, and education.
HOW WE OPERATE // OUR VALUES
Beloved Community: We believe that by intentionally bringing people together, a critical mass of empathy is formed and there is no social issue or division that we cannot work towards solving.
Partnership: We believe in the benefit of collaborative relationships with individuals and organizations that serve the common good.
Radical Hospitality: We embody the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and access for all. Everyone is welcome.
Responsibility: We believe that everyone can be a leader because anyone can lead themselves. Leadership requires each of us to be both responsible and accountable for our thoughts, words, and actions. We are each responsible for the welfare of our fellows.
Stewardship: We believe in living with integrity and reciprocity. We acknowledge that we cannot solve the world's suffering and yet, that does not release us from contributing to social healing in all the ways in which we are able, while we are able.
HOW WE CAME TO BE // OUR STORY
The Leadership Studio model was a concept roughly generated by urban education veteran, Kathy Whitmore, upon completing her own yoga teacher training in 2014. With a heart for service and a vision of hope… Kathy sought to bring the practice of yoga and the power of togetherness to the city she served for over four decades. The following winter, we set up shop in partnership with a local community center and by the time summer rolled around in 2015, a volunteer team of Grace & Glory Yoga teachers were providing yoga classes in all six wards of Atlantic City. The vision was simple: give people places to practice yoga. What was to happen next, was beyond anyone’s expectations: People came, people kept coming, people brought their friends and family, and people lovingly demanded more opportunities to practice. . The Leadership Studio as it stands today, was an answer to a consistent request for a yoga studio, a place to come together, in the heart of Atlantic City.
Whitmore and Grace & Glory Yoga Founder, Alexandra Nunzi, partnered to answer this call and bring the request to life. In 2017, The Leadership Studio opened as a brick-and-mortar yoga studio as a part of the Tennessee Avenue Renaissance project, inside of the newly deemed Orange Loop district. One of the country’s only non-profit model yoga studios, in partnership with various other community organizations, we are also able to provide wrap around services that cultivate social, emotional, and physical health and healing in Atlantic City.
Atlantic City, one of the most diverse cities in the United States, is a microcosm of the greater whole. If we can do this work here, bringing people together in powerful and transformative ways, if can be done everywhere. We believe it’s entirely possible to live in a world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Today our administrative staff, yoga teaching team, and Executive Board represent the amazing community we serve. We strive to be continually thoughtful and sensitive about how and why we serve the community through our own genuine learning and listening. All programming is created around expressed and explicit community need. We make no assumptions or presumptions.