Kanson Fè Got Us Here. Trauma-Informed Leadership Will Take Us Further.
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
May 17, 2026 | Written By: Dr. Erlange Elisme
Kanson Fè. The iron pants. The strength our grandparents wore to survive, migrate, and start over with almost nothing. Our community has turned that strength into something remarkable, and it shows up everywhere you look in Georgia. Haitians are leading in healthcare as nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians. We are attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, and real estate brokers. We are educators, engineers, pastors, social workers, and government employees. We are clinic owners, firm partners, restaurateurs, trucking and logistics owners, nonprofit founders, and consultants. The popular picture of who we are is far smaller than the truth. Three decades of work in behavioral health, school systems, and organizational consulting has taught me something I want to offer my fellow professionals plainly: Kanson Fè gets us through degrees, licensure, the bar exam, and the early years of building. Trauma-informed leadership is what keeps the work sustainable, the team intact, and our own bodies healthy enough to lead for the long haul.
The weight your team is already carrying
Picture a scene from one of our clinics, and translate it to whatever setting you lead in. A medical assistant who has been with the practice for two years has gotten short with patients lately. Her charting is still solid. She still shows up. But the warmth is gone, and twice this week she has snapped at the front desk. The easy read is attitude. The harder read, and the more accurate one in many of our workplaces, is that she is moving through something. A child struggling at school. A husband working two jobs. A mother in Haiti she cannot reach because the network is down again. The body that was already on alert before she clocked in.
The same scene plays out in different uniforms across our community. The paralegal whose work has stayed sharp but whose tone has tightened. The teacher who has stopped speaking up in staff meetings. The associate at the accounting firm who is suddenly missing details she never used to miss. The deacon who runs a small business and has not slept a full night in weeks. Many of the people we employ, and many of the patients, students, and clients we serve, carry stressors that do not show up on an intake form, a personnel file, or a performance review. The complexities of the immigrant experience. The collective weight of our country's history. The daily friction of navigating American systems in a language that is not your first.
And there is something else we need to name plainly, because your team is carrying it whether or not anyone says so out loud. Every Haitian in this country carries discrimination, and the climate of the past few years has made the weight heavier. Our people have been spoken about on national stages in ways no professional should have to absorb on their way to work. Children hear it on the bus. Parents hear it from neighbors. Clinicians hear it whispered by patients who do not know their accent yet. Attorneys hear it in courtrooms where their credentials are questioned twice. This is not in your team's imagination, and it is not in yours. It is a real and continuous load, and the body keeps a record of it.
When a team member becomes harder to work with, or a patient or client reacts with sharper tension than the moment warrants, we often label it as attitude, non-compliance, or poor fit. Through my doctoral-level specialization in Advanced Trauma-Informed Leadership and Practice from Barry University, I have come to read these moments differently. They are often survival responses, layered on top of a nervous system that has been on guard for a long time. When leaders understand what trauma actually does to the brain and body, they stop managing behaviors and start leading people.
This is what the I.C.E.B.E.R.G.™ Method, one of our proprietary frameworks at Elisme Consulting Services LLC, was built to address. Behavior is the tip. Underneath it sits a whole story.
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Why this is a business decision, not a soft skill
Leading with a trauma-informed lens is not a kindness add-on. It is a high-level leadership strategy with measurable returns. For Haitian professionals running teams, owning practices, or holding senior roles across sectors, three advantages stand out.
The first is professional and staff retention. Replacing a credentialed nurse, a licensed associate, an experienced teacher, or a senior accountant is expensive and disruptive, and the professionals you most want to keep are the ones with the most options elsewhere. Staff stay where they feel safe, respected, and led with intention. A trauma-informed environment lowers burnout, reduces moral injury, and protects the people who carry your operation.
The second is decision quality. A nervous system stuck in fight, flight, or freeze cannot think clearly. It cannot catch the subtle finding on a chart, the small clause buried in a contract, the gap in a financial model, or the student who has gone quiet in the back row. It cannot hold a long meeting with focus or navigate a difficult conversation without leaking stress into the room. When leaders create psychological safety, your team can operate from the parts of the brain that handle judgment, recall, and empathy. The work gets better because the people are not bracing.
The third is cultural alignment. Our community values onè ak respè. Trauma-informed leadership is not a foreign concept dressed in clinical language. It is a modern professional expression of the dignity our culture has always insisted on. It lets us run practices, firms, schools, and organizations that meet the highest professional standards without losing what makes our work ours.
A word for the leader carrying the work
Many of you are not only running teams or seeing patients and clients. You are also the family member others call first. The deacon, the elder sibling, the one the community leans on. You are carrying staff, family, congregation, referral networks, and often a parent or sibling back home. You are also carrying what is being said about our people, in headlines and in rooms you walk into. That weight does not stop at the title on your office door. Trauma-informed leadership is not only about how you lead others. It is also about whether your own nervous system is being asked to hold more than any one body can hold. Nothing about you is asking too much by needing rest. The work you are doing is real, the climate around it is real, and so is the cost of doing it without support.
Moving from surviving to leading by design
At Elisme Consulting Services LLC, we equip leaders and clinicians across sectors to translate these insights into specific practices. The work is practical. It looks like training a manager to ask one different question before a hard conversation. It looks like rewriting an attendance or engagement policy so it accounts for human reality without lowering the standard. It looks like building a workplace where Kombit, our tradition of collective care, is structural rather than sentimental.
As we strengthen the Haitian professional footprint in Georgia, in every sector we already occupy, my hope for our community is this. Let us lead with our credentials and our hard work, and also with an informed understanding of the journey we and our people are still walking, including the parts of it the country would rather not name. The next chapter of Haitian professional life in this state does not require us to abandon Kanson Fè. It asks us to put something underneath it that can hold its weight.
About the Author
Dr. Erlange Elisme is a trauma-informed care leadership and practice specialist with over 30 years of experience as a school social worker. As Founder and CEO of Elisme Consulting Services LLC, she provides training and consulting to organizations committed to healing-centered practices. Dr. Elisme holds certification in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard Medical School, and has completed advanced continuing education in Trauma-Informed Care, Immigrant Mental Health, and Motivational Interviewing. She is a published author, host of the "Resilient Voices" podcast (available in English and Haitian Creole), and a 2025 Gwinnett Chamber Business Excellence Awards finalist. Fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole, Dr. Elisme brings both clinical expertise and cultural wisdom to her work of restoring resilience in individuals and communities.
Dr.Erlange Elisme, DSW
CEO / Owner & Author
Website:https://elismeconsultingservices.com
Phone number:678-595-6446
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