Gizelle Clemens

02/11/2026

My TEDx talk has quietly become a gathering place.

Not in the loud or viral way people usually mean when they talk about impact, but in the human way. It moves from person to person. Someone sends it to a friend late at night. A teacher plays it for a class. A team shares it during a meeting. Friends and families sit, gather, and press play. People are seeing themselves and each other through it.

Because of that, I am offering something simple.

If you gather people (formally or informally) and you watch my TEDx talk, We Are The Wells, I will join you afterward for a VIRTUAL or LIVE conversation.

This is not a keynote and it is not a performance. It is a real dialogue.

The themes in the talk are not abstract. They live in bodies, relationships, and daily life. They show up in exhaustion, in quiet grief, in disability, in adaptation, and in the ongoing effort to care for one another inside systems that were never designed to hold us.

When we gather, we can talk honestly about:

- burnout and depletion
- grief that does not yet have language
- interdependence
- belonging beyond buzzwords
- what it actually means to sustain each other in real life

We can explore how we learn to tend the wells around us rather than settle for survival.

Some gatherings are organizations. Some are classrooms. Some are simply friends and family who love each other and want to stay connected.

All of it counts.

This offering is for teachers, facilitators, team leads, and community organizers. It is also for people without formal titles who know how to gather others, who feel responsible for the emotional temperature of a room, and who step in when connection begins to thin.

It is for anyone who understands that connection and care aren’t backup plans. They are infrastructure.

If that sounds like you, I would love to sit with you and your people.

Send me a message.

Let us be wells for each other. Let us tend what sustains us.

www.wearethewells.org to watch my TEDx and gather your people.

Image Description: Gizelle Clemens smiles while speaking onstage at TEDxWilmette 2025, wearing a purple dress and a patterned blue jacket under stage lights.

01/07/2026

Five years ago, a benign tumor embedded itself in my spinal cord and quietly rearranged my life.
Just two weeks later, one of my closest friends, AnnaRose King, lost her battle with malignant tumors of her own.

Back then, life felt unbearably unfair and maybe it was. I had already buried my mother, Heather Clemens, in City of Newark, NJ - City Hall eleven years earlier, suddenly and violently, long before I was ready. Add the ordinary heartbreaks of loving, losing, hoping, becoming, and it would have been reasonable to believe I had already endured enough. But grief, it seems, does not consult our capacity to endure more.

Still, just as God did in 2009, God met me again. In the stillness of Northwestern Medicine and Shirley Ryan Abilitylab hospital rooms and in the loneliness of home. In the slow, often unseen work of picking up the fragments of a life and learning how to live inside a body and a future that would never return to what it once was.

I hesitate to call what followed “new.” It felt more like a remembering and a reaching inward toward something deeper, older, and already present.

Five years later, I am deeply proud of who I am becoming. There are moments when I ache over all I have had to carry and then I pause, and I see it differently: look at what I survived, at what held, and what grew.

People may celebrate the accolades, the milestones, the visible wins. (LinkedIn has the highlight reel.) But my quiet triumph has been learning to loosen my grip on internalized ableism, to stop measuring my worth by endurance, speed, or productivity.

I always resisted hustle culture, especially the version that asks Black women to disappear inside effort and call it excellence. But the disability community gave me language. It gave me permission. It gave me a deeper understanding of care, not as weakness, but as wisdom.

Five years later, I am still here. Changed, yes, but more myself than ever.

Image Description: A Black woman stands in tall green grass on a sunny day, wearing a strapless black dress and gold jewelry. She looks calmly at the camera while holding a colorful butterfly cane, with a leg brace visible on one leg.

📸:

01/01/2026

Expecting God to show me how good it can get for me, my family and my friends! Cheers to a blessed and beautiful new year everyone!

10/26/2025

Wrapped up this year’s birthday celebrations surrounded by some of my favorite people.

I still can’t believe this is the 8th birthday I have celebrated in The Chi. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

This year, I will continue to “settle for more” like says and let God lead me to whatever opportunities he sees fit.

Even on days when I temporarily forget, I am always reminded that I am such a blessed woman!

09/28/2025

Grief disguised as depression is so annoying. It's been difficult for me to prepare and to get excited for my TEDxWilmette talk this weekend because the one person I would want to be there, won't be. Every great moment I experience is tinged with missing my mother.

09/01/2025

The support for my TEDx talk has been overwhelming! I’m so grateful for friends and family who are traveling near and far to attend TEDxWilmette.

What I did not expect when I said “yes” to this opportunity was how exposed I would feel in the process. Writing a TEDx talk is not like journaling in the safety of my own thoughts. It is not even like speaking at a conference where the audience might forget my words by the next morning. This is an idea I am choosing to put in the world with permanence, one that will live online for years, maybe decades, long after I have moved on to other work.

Every word I have chosen has been tested against my own values, my own fears, my own desire to say something that matters. I have had to remind myself that this talk is not just about connection, it is an act of connection. It is me standing on a stage and saying: This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is what I have learned the hard way and the holy way. That is both thrilling and terrifying. It is an open invitation for people to see me, and in turn, for me to see them.

📸

Image Description: A confident brown skinned Black woman smiles in front of tall green grass. She wears a black blazer over a white top, blue jeans with a gold chain belt, hoop earrings, and holds a colorful cane.

08/20/2025

This October, I step onto the stage to share the most personal and urgent idea of my life: “We Are The Wells: How Connection Truly Sustains Us.”

This isn’t just a talk — it’s an offering. It’s about the ways care, belonging, and relationship aren’t extras, but the infrastructure that holds us up and holds us together.

I’m bringing not just my story, but a vision: that connection is how we survive, how we heal, and how we transform what feels impossible.

To everyone who has poured into me — you are the well I’ll be drawing from that day. 💧

Tickets are now open if you’d like to be in the room: https://lnkd.in/gWFbb668



Photo Credit: Brian Fraser

Image Description: A portrait of a brown skinned woman smiling warmly against a lush green backdrop of tall grass and plants. She is wearing a sleeveless white top and large gold hoop earrings. Her brown straight hair is cut in a sleek bob with bangs.

🌟 Speaker Spotlight on Gizelle Clemens 🌟

We’re excited to welcome Gizelle to the 2025 event! Her talk, “We Are The Wells: How Connection Truly Sustains Us,” will explore how mutual care and deep relationships can transform our systems and communities.

Gizelle is a strategist and storyteller whose work centers equity, belonging, and care as critical infrastructure. She draws on lived experience and philanthropic leadership to advance initiatives that support deliberately marginalized communities.

To attend Gizelle's talk, purchase tickets to our event here: https://ticketbud.com/events/c505ab9c-6734-11f0-a207-42010a7170c5

Thank you to our sponsors Central Station Coffee & Tea and Chalet Nursery for supporting TEDxWilmette!

02/24/2025

I’m beyond proud of how my journey continues to unfold! I’ve always believed in using my story as a catalyst for systemic change, and that passion will never fade. I invite you to dive into my experiences and perhaps find a reflection of your own journey within them.

I recently submitted this to ’s Limelight Video Contest, and I would be thrilled if you could take a moment to vote for me for the Viewer’s Choice award!

Type in Gizelle C. In search bar. While you’re there, check out the incredible stories from others who are truly rocking their paths. https://m.shortstack.page/CxWFJk

If my story resonates with you and you think it could empower others, please feel free to share it! Your support means the world to me!

12/25/2024

Wishing everyone all the love and joy this time of year brings!

11/06/2024

For many of us, the outcome of this election feels like a fracture—a break that has impacted not only our hopes but also our sense of safety, belonging, and worth. This isn’t just about policies or political outcomes; it’s about the profound ways this moment touches our emotional, mental, and even physical lives. Many of us are carrying the weight of histories, traumas, and systemic harms that have resurfaced through this loss. It’s natural to feel the urge to react quickly, strategize, or jump right back into the fight, but maybe this moment asks us to pause and grieve the layers of impact that words and plans alone cannot address.

I want to offer a different path rooted in deep, communal rest and healing. This isn’t about turning away from the struggle but reclaiming our right to restore ourselves in a society that seldom allows us that grace. We need spaces where we don’t have to push aside our pain or “hold it together” and where we can come together with others who understand the toll this takes on our hearts, our minds, and our bodies.

Imagine a community that gathers not for the next battle but for the deliberate and necessary work of healing, a community that holds space for each other to grieve, to be vulnerable, and to find strength in each other. This is an invitation to lay a foundation that will sustain us, allowing us to engage in the work of change without becoming casualties of it. Let’s create a space where we can breathe, recover, and build our strength in a way that doesn’t ask us to sacrifice ourselves in the process.

Please complete this brief contact form if you feel called to join others across the country in this restoration journey. https://form.jotform.com/243105424976155

Please share with your networks!

Below are pictures of the communities I have cultivated for myself to prioritize my healing.

ID Pic 1: A group of multicultural South Side Giving Circle of Chicago Foundation for Women Chicago Foundation for Women and recipients of the grants given to further work of organizations and leaders. This was taken at our grantee celebration!

Picture Two: A group of mostly white people walking down a street holding up a banner that reads, “Disability Lead Power. Influence. Change.” This was taken at the Disability Pride Parade!

Picture Three: A group of intergenerational and multicultural women and one handsome gentleman in front of a wall with Top’s Diner. There are birthday balloons because it was a birthday celebration.

Picture Four: a group of multicultural women, mostly white, holding a 20th reunion sign. Miss Porter's Schooltes from Miss Porter's School

06/11/2024

I have almost 15 years of being unable to physically celebrate Heather Clemens’ birthday with her, but I am grateful for the ones I had.

In honor of her birthday, I wish you all the warm embrace of a loved one, a call from someone you'd love to hear from, a token of love or appreciation for who you are and who you have been from someone special, or any other gesture that would make you feel seen, celebrated and love!

Double blessings if you do this for others today, too ❤️