Rebecca Subar

Rebecca Subar taught Peace and Conflict Studies at West Chester University from 2005 to 2019. She is a senior partner at Dragonfly, where a multiracial band of consultants supports organizations that make social change. She has coached leaders of political advocacy groups large and small on their race consciousness, their organization’s growth, and their strategy for changing the world.

Rebecca is a strategist and practitioner who supports leaders at all levels of organizational life to make strategic and relationship choices with integrity in a racist world. She has given advice and support to political actors and activists on change, challenge and conflict for over thirty years, with attention to power relations and human relationships at the center of her work.

Rebecca brings her flawed authentic self to the task of coaching a client toward their own authentic best. She is as eager to apply political principles to a group’s theory of change as she is to draw flow charts to represent it. She brings a sense of humor, creativity to imagine what is possible, analytical tools to help assess what is reasonable, and enthusiasm for helping a client tell a new story of change.

Rebecca coaches white social movement leaders in small groups inside their organizations to do the intellectual, emotional, and action-oriented work needed to unlearn the racism we all wind up embodying regardless of our racial or ethnic heritage.

For fourteen years Rebecca taught in the peace and conflict studies program at West Chester University. Her book, When to Talk and When to Fight: The Strategic Choice Between Dialogue and Resistance (PM Press 2021, graphics and charts by Rosi Greenberg) echoes Dragonfly’s approach to changemaking.

Rebecca is a white, non-binary, middle class, able-bodied queer secular Jew. They have a Master in Public Administration with a concentration in conflict management from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in writing and politics from Barnard College. Besides solving problems related to social change, Rebecca enjoys solving mechanical problems with wood, rope, turnbuckles and pulleys.