Soley Consulting

Inclusion recognizes our common humanity

About Us

Inclusion is good for our well-being because it recognizes our common humanity. This recognition can transform a company’s culture to help it further its mission. Soley is a Haitian Creole word that equates to  "Sun” in  English. The sun symbolically represents life, energy, new hope and beginning, spiritual awakening, joy and love. 

At Soley Consulting, we work with clients in business, education, entertainment, sustainability, technology, and other fields to help them find their light and to create environments that are open and inclusive, where all employees and clients feel like they belong.

We welcome all types of companies—for profit and non-profit, small and large. Our goal is to help individuals and team members to create equitable leadership through a caring environment that is socially just, antiracist, diverse, and inclusive.

We want to help everyone at all levels of the organizations with which we partner to understand that the work of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), IDEA (Inclusion Diversity Equity and Access), or JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity Inclusion) is a journey and not a destination. Our goal is to assist individuals and organizations as they create environments that reflect and embody the values and practices of their strategic vision for DEI/IDEA/JEDI.

​We take an intersectional approach to our work. Intersectionality refers to the ways in which the different facets of our identities and oppressions intersect and allow us to have privileges (advantages) or become subject to oppressions (disadvantages). Our identities may refer to our ability, class, gender, national origin, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

​Attorney and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw states, “It’s basically a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.”

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Testimonials

"Dr. Cécile Accilien has worked as a primary consultant assisting Hines-Gaither Consulting, LLC, a full-service diversity, equity and inclusion firm that works with educational institutions, non-profits, businesses and religious institutions throughout the United States, with DEI workshops, training, focus group interviews and comprehensive evaluations and assessments. Her keen insights and thoughtful engagement have been an asset to our company. I highly recommend Dr. Accilien's services through Soley Consulting."

— Dr. Krishauna Hines-Gaither, Hines-Gaither Consulting, LLC

"Dr. Accilien provided our team excellent support as we prepared the manuscript for our book. Not only did she carefully read our manuscript for general sensitivity concerns and scholarly quality, but she also read through specific lenses of Francophone and Afro-Caribbean identity. I appreciate that she was available to collaborate via document sharing and also by phone and video. Her contributions were very formative and essential to our work. I strongly recommend collaborating with Dr. Accilien!"

— Kristi Lentz, with the Staying in Our Lanes Project

"Cécile Accilien is a skilled facilitator with decades of experience creating safe and open conversations in which participants can hold their assumptions up to the light and emerge with new insights and the courage to keep asking questions. Cécile brings nuance, kindness, and intellectual vigor to her cultural and sensitivity coaching. As a non-fiction writer seeking to portray Haitian history and culture with respect and authenticity, I am deeply grateful for Cécile's generous, organized and intuitive leadership. It is a rare gift to be in the presence of someone who can move so skillfully between bracing honesty and kind laughter, and invite others into self-reflection and growth."

— Apricot Irving, author of The Gospel of Trees

  • Dr. Cécile Accilien

    Dr. Cécile Accilien (she/her) is based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies specializing in Caribbean and African Studies. She is the author, co-author, and/or co-editor of books including Rethinking Marriage in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures (2008); Revolutionary Freedoms: A History of Survival, Strength and Imagination in Haiti (2006); Just Below South: Intercultural Performance in the Caribbean and the U.S. South (2007); English-Haitian Creole Phrasebook (2010); Francophone Cultures Through Film (2013); Kreyòl Modèn (2020); and Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives (2021). Her essays have appeared in the Journal of Haitian Studies; Women, Gender and Families of Color, Revue française, Southern Quarterly, and Diaspora in Caribbean Art. She has also contributed to Truthout and Latin American Advisor. She is chair of the Editorial Board of the journal Women, Gender and Families of Color and a board member of the Haitian Studies Association. Cécile has worked as a consultant for organizations including Hines-Gaither Consulting, Educational Testing Services, and Culture Shift Agency. Her book The Antiracist World Language Classroom, co-written with Dr. Krishauna Hines Gaither, is forthcoming from Routledge. She is originally from Haiti and has lived in Burkina Faso, France, Senegal, Spain, and Belgium. Elle parle français. Li pale kreyòl.

  • Dr. Jessica Adams

    Dr. Jessica Adams (she/her) is a humanities professor who has taught in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She is currently completing a JD at the University of Puerto Rico’s Escuela de Derecho, where she is also becoming certified as a mediator. She is the author of Wounds of Returning: Race, Memory and Property on the Post-Slavery Plantation (2007) and coeditor of Revolutionary Freedoms: A History of Survival, Strength, and Imagination in Haiti (2006); Just Below South: Intercultural Performance in the Caribbean and the U.S. South (2007); and Guantánamo and American Empire: The Humanities Respond (2017). Her essays and short stories have appeared in a variety of journals. Ella habla español.