About Rissi

Rissi D’Gouso grew up in a small forest village of the Odenwald as one of five daughters who were born at home, raised by the Spirit of the trees. With her father being the towns’ local chimney sweeper, the door to their home often was unlocked for neighbors to enter. Her family prioritized hand-making their belongings, collected mushrooms from the forest and hosted regular community gatherings to celebrate natures cycles.

With roots of Native American/Cherokee and German ancestry, Rissi’s mother and father prioritized peace-making as a central element in their upbringing. With close-knit loyalty to their sisterhood and family values, Rissi’s sisters brought these principles into their work becoming a civil-rights judge, a doctor of neuroscience for cannabis medicines, a teacher for children with special needs and a social worker for the organization Creative Change.

Rissi became Peace.Rise.Bloom Spirit Dancer of Sokamba, founded together with her peers - furthering the mission to foster roots of unity through the inclusive Spirit of the arts.

Throughout her childhood, Rissi achieved Exceptional Distinction under the Royal Academy of Dance and became the South-German track team champion.

In her teenage years, Rissi’s Mother encouraged her to leave her village and family in order to expand her energies by deepening her connection to the Native Motherland.

As her Mother became a teacher at their village school, she was able to support Rissi in traveling to join her pen-pal living in New York City, where she was accepted into the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, honored with the Father Fame award for Excellence in Academics & Dance and graduated with an Advanced Regents Diploma in Math and Science.

After being recruited and awarded the POSSE Full Tuition Leadership Scholarship to complete her studies at the University of Southern California, she co-founded Sokamba and engaged her work in social responsive education programs. As a program coordinator in higher education, Rissi guided the USC Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program with the mission to diversify faculty ranks and give voice to historically underrepresented fields of research. She served as a committee member in creating the annual USC First-Generation College Student Summit, launching the USC Food Pantry, supporting the USC Trojan Guardian Scholars Program for current and former foster youth and consulted the USC Joint Educational Project on culturally competent training methods and program structures.

She collaborated on creative projects with James Taylor, the UN World-Peace-Day video Secret Weapon, Opera Virtutum, Summit Series LA and taught master classes at Pepperdine University and LAUSD classrooms.

As a facilitator, Rissi worked with Fulcrum Adventures, leading youth and professional programs for social-emotional development, and served as an academic coach for students with severe learning disabilities at Davinci School of Communications. Rissi is the former lead-organizer of the Imagining America SoCal Cluster with the intention to foster just and liberatory community-based learning in higher education institutions. She co-authored a chapter about the work of the IA SoCal cluster in Dr. Maria Avila’s book Building Collective Leadership for Culture Change: Stories of Relational Organizing on Campus and Beyond (Publicly Engaged Scholars: Identities, Purposes, Practices). In extension of the relational work through the cluster, Rissi presented her research in collaboration with Western Washington University “Integrating Permaculture Principles in Learning Communities” - A Learning Together Training.

Rissi provided guidance for the healing of veterans and cancer patients. When her Mother transcended, she deepened her meditation journey and expanded her conscious sphere. With the intention of purifying energy fields for the healing of life source vibration, Rissi began engaging practices to sustain balanced frequencies of life force exchange and started guiding meditations. To maintain balance of honor across a whole-system of interwoven life she developed Peace.Rise.Bloom.

Her further journey evolved through the interweaving of energies with Daansekou, Joko International / Fode Sissoko, United for Peace World Inc, Pape’s Little Village and Peace Yoga.

Her current focus is rooted in Peace.Rise.Bloom: Mother Earth Prayer with Sokamba x Joko.