Tamara S. Hamilton

Tamara Smiley Hamilton MA, is a professional speaker dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless. She is the CEO of Audacious Coaching LLC and facilitates workplace conversations on conflict, race and implicit bias.

Tamara has taught courses in race relations at Loyola Marymount University and served as assistant dean of students at Occidental College. From 1985-91, she lived with her family in the Rhineland Phalz region of Germany to experience life as an immigrant. That experience helped shape her as a citizen of the world, a dream her father espoused since the day she was born in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.

A lifelong learner, she is a graduate of Scripps College, Howard University and the University of Southern California. In 2017, she returned to higher education to study race, conflict and peace at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. She is the 2017 recipient of the James H. Laue Scholarship Endowment in recognition of her contributions to human and civil rights.

Her coming of age story, Diary of a Watts Princess: A Memoir of Hopes and Dreams, is published in Kosmos Journal.

Tamara S. Hamilton in Kosmos

Forgive: The new practice and mantra for Black Men

At the fragile age of 12, Ulysses Slaughter listened as his mother Clarice was shot to death by his father Ulysses Grant Slaughter Sr. Emerging from his bedroom, he watched as life flowed out of his mother. Stepping over her body that day was the first act in his amazing odyssey toward forgiveness.

Published in Volume 18 Issue 1

Diary of a Watts Princess: A Memoir of Hopes and Dreams

As I watch the news today, old feelings of fear and hopelessness engulf me once again. As a thirteen-year-old girl, I saw my neighborhood, Watts, burn. Then I wondered what would happen to my home, to my life, as embers from the fire floated in front of my face. I wondered who I would be if I lived through the chaos of urban anger and despair. That night, I wondered what my purpose in life would be.

Published in Fall | Winter 2017, Volume 17 Issue 2

Coming Soon

The Village Way

Practices for Belonging in a Fragmented World

For thousands of years, we lived according to the principles of village life. Then, around the 14th Century, our lives were reorganized by rulers around growth and accumulation – often at the cost of community, equity, and the living Earth. What would it mean to return to simplicity, and mutual care?

Join us for a 9-month inquiry into this question, exploring how we participate together in a time that calls us back to community, resilience, and shared life,