Hi! I’m QUETZAL FRANCOIS. I am an educator, mentor, and activist. I work with young people and adults, in groups and individually, all over the Bay Area.

I offer mentorship and guidance to teen girls and LGBTQ youth with a focus on adolescence, belonging, sexuality and gender. My primary mission is to create spaces for them to freely and safely engage with topics that are often taboo and carry shame in our culture.

I am committed to help youth coming of age develop tools to be fully expressed, deeply connected to themselves, and empowered to move through the world with boldness, vulnerability, and confidence.

How did I get here?

I was drawn to this path at an early age because of my own experiences as a teen girl trying to learn how to relate to others and how to navigate a fast moving and often unsafe world all around me. I was one of the lucky few with incredible mentors on my side (who are still in my life to this day). They were a fundamental guiding presence to my well being as I transitioned into adulthood. Thanks to these mentors, I’m inspired to be a guide for young people as they navigate the turbulent seas of adolescence.

Experience:

Quetzal Francois brings 10 years of experience designing curriculum and facilitating groups for teens and people who work with teens. Her focus is on social and emotional intelligence, communication skills, intimacy, gender, empowered sexual health education, self harm, developing self confidence, building healthy and nurturing relationships (romantic and platonic), and LGBTQ matters.

She has taught sexual health education and social and emotional learning programs all over the Bay Area - including Oakland Unified Middle Schools and High Schools through her work with Girls Inc, as well as in San Francisco Unified Schools and City Colleges campuses. She also spent 5 years directing and overseeing Girls On The Go and Monkey Business Camp programs and staff.

Over the years, she has presented at multiple conferences, including Gender Spectrum and Catalyst Con, where she educates others professionals in the field how to teach sexual health education in an inclusive way and ways to create curriculum that includes more than just the current dominant narrative. She has also been a speaker for San Francisco State University’s “Health and Sexuality” undergraduate course.

She is a mentor to a group of middle school girls with Stepping Stones Project, which offers long term mentoring and contemporary rites of passage to middle school youth and their families. She is also a mentor for Spirit Rock’s yearly Teen Meditation Retreats.

Finding herself limited in what she could offer youth while working inside of the school system, she found her home with LOVE YOUR NATURE. She couldn’t be happier to be combining forces with Emily Frost to support a movement devoted to girls and women awakening to their inherent wisdom, power, and purpose.

Education:

• Marriage and Family Therapy Master's - California State University, East Bay - Expected graduation May 2021
• Undergraduate Degree - Legal Studies emphasis on Social Justice, Immigration Rights, and Prison Industrial Complex - Honors, UC Berkeley
• Marriage and Family Therapy Trainee with Family Paths ​
• Certified Sex Educator with San Francisco Sex Information and worked their switchboard for 2 years
• Certifications in Sexual Health Education and HIV/STIs Outreach
• End of Trauma Organic Intelligence training with Steve Hoskinson 
• Yoga & Social Justice Teacher Certification with Namaste Yoga Studio
• Practitioner for the past 8 years of a counseling modality which centers intergenerational healing of harm that is rooted in systemic oppression

Fun Facts:

• When I'm not spending my time with teens, I can be found doing Acroyoga, spending time with my beloved friends and family, helping non-profits raise funds, and traveling to new places.
  
• I moved from Paris to the mountains of New Mexico when I was 12 and then again to the Bay Area when I was 19. My heart always feels split between these 3 magical places. 
• In high school, I helped start an anonymous questions jar for students to ask questions about... anything. Most of the questions were about sex. That’s when the seed that led me to do the work I do today was planted.
• In another life, I would have either been a immigration lawyer or a trapeze artist.