Dona Geagea is a Lebanese-Canadian senior facilitator and researcher with a decade of experience in the water sector, specialising in stakeholder engagement. Her journey has taken her from Lebanon, where she grew up in the aftermath of civil war, to Canada, where she quickly learned the value of resilience and adaptability.
Having facilitated over 100 workshops across community and corporate contexts globally, Dona has recently returned to academia. She is doing postdoctoral research in groundwater drought governance and water risk governance at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Dona is one of our Aura Fellows, having completed our holistic nine-module programme designed to nurture and empower female leaders. In this Aura Spotlight interview, we delve into Dona's experience.
How long have you been part of Aura?
Since it began in 2020 — I knew Renata from Warriors Without Weapons at the Elos Institute. When she invited me to join, I jumped on board without knowing what it was or where it would lead… I just trusted her. Four years later, wow, I have no regrets!
What does your day-to-day work look like?
I'm currently doing postdoctoral research in a Public Administration & Policy department at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, focusing on two water governance projects. One explores droughts, groundwater, and their impacts, with collaboration across global academic and policy groups. The other focuses on risk governance in water. A lot of my journey has been about water and governance — myself and Flavia Ramos in our Aura group are known as the “water women" to our fellows in the community!
I just submitted my PhD dissertation on ‘recommoning water’, exploring how social movements can reshape local water governance by reclaiming water as a commons. That’s been the last four years of my life!
A key piece of my story often overlooked in my professional work was the year I took a sabbatical to co-create “Circulo de Soñadoras” — circle of women dreamers — with a dear friend of mine.
We travelled to South America, collaborating with women from the Warriors Without Weapons network to design intergenerational workshops. These workshops invited women to reflect on their dreams, the barriers they face, and the support they need, building a local network to help women achieve their goals.
That experience laid the groundwork and inner strength for my professional path. Afterwards, I returned back to my life and my work, and started hosting monthly women's circles. Thanks to the Aura fellowship, I’ve been able to revive this practice in my new context (in a different country) where I’m trying to find my community.
How has Aura changed your perspective on activism?
I never really saw myself as an activist — more of an advocate. I worked within organisations, focusing on workshops and processes, rather than being on the front lines or rallying for policy change (although I did this when it was necessary).
Aura shifted my perspective, showing me that activism is something that you do on a day-to-day basis. It’s not just picketing on the streets; it’s something you can incorporate as a daily practice — the small actions we take every day.
This shift helped me see activism in the choices I make and every little thing I engage with.
It connects to the subtleties of the feminine. We’ve had deep internal conversations about facilitating the feminine — you can have a feminine approach to your leadership, but a feminist ethic to your work. How do you bring care in? How do you lead from behind, rather than stand in front and tell people what to do? How do you enable spaces for others to step into their leadership? These are questions we’ve been unpacking.
One experience from your Aura journey that felt transformative?
Two moments come to mind.
The first was the Aura retreat in South Africa in 2022. Before that, everything had been virtual because of Covid — then suddenly, it was all so real! Meeting these incredible women in person…I could feel them, they were real! It felt like we’d known each other forever. Witnessing them, sharing space, collectively reflecting and sense making.
I left feeling enriched, energised, full — definitely transformed — with deeper layers to unpack. I felt refuelled to find purpose in my research and to complete my PhD.
The second transformative experience was in the fellowship’s first year when we had support from mentors. Many of us were in crisis at the time with Covid and personal transitions.
I had quit a decade-long career to go into academia and become a student again, moved countries, survived the Beirut port explosion in 2020, and married — all just before starting Aura.
I hadn’t realised the impact all this had on me until I received support from the mentors. Through their guidance I unpacked trauma and stress, being reminded of other outlets of processing through the body and heart — rather than just the mind.
By the following year, I was telling everyone: “I’ve found myself again!” It felt like I’d recovered the Dona that I know I am but had lost through trying times and traumatic experiences. Coming back to myself in moments of crisis and reconnecting with my essence was truly transformative — the mentors helped me do that.
Something that you now know to be true, which you didn't know before Aura?
Before, I didn’t have as much confidence in recognising and owning feminine principles, or in being able to speak about them. It’s something you might experience personally, but feel uncomfortable bringing out in spaces that may not understand or welcome them. Aura has helped me stand strong in these principles — bringing them into spaces that truly need them, including my own research and work.
Maybe that’s the truth: there’s a growing need for feminine principles in our workplaces and personal relationships; working with the invisible and subtle.
Something Eve Annecke, one of our Aura midwives shared once, that forever stuck with me, is the idea of noticing the “glitches” in the system. Working with and reflecting on those glitches. Now I speak of it as working with the cracks in the system. Staying aware of those inconsistencies and asking: “How can I add some light here?”
In a past blog contribution, I acknowledged the war of Russia on Ukraine stating that “we continue to experience the remnants of a legacy of misdirected masculinity, where our leaders still compare their power to the size of their ego, the strength of their weapons, and the impact of damage they cause".
This holds even truer today, where the very same systems of destruction have me witnessing my own home country, Lebanon, being under attack from a neighbouring state, Israel (after its year-long aggression on Gaza). Aggressions that escalate violence instead of reducing it are not solutions for attaining peace, and should not be tolerated, nevermind funded and supported. Those making the calls for aggression are leading us to a world of chaos and stronger desires for control – an approach which destroys everything it touches.
I hate to accept the idea that we are living in a world that has lost moral leadership. What we need is a revolution that builds life-giving systems, ones that create and nourish life (not death) and that limit aggression, exploitation, colonisation and harm, allowing living systems (people and nature) to thrive – this to me is what feminine leadership is about. This is a world we can co-create, even if the only way to start this revolution is in small circles in our living rooms or workspaces. It is an act of daily activism that is not ascribed to be the care work of women only; all genders can (and should) participate.
One piece of advice you’d give to a woman starting her Aura journey?
I would definitely say, although it's cliche, “trust the process” — but always be in a reflective mode. Don't just trust and let go completely; engage actively and reflect about the process. There's always room for improvement, something to be shared or to learn. Instead of just receiving, be actively engaged in giving back. It's a reciprocal process.
Those were the moments I learnt the most: when some of the women pushed the edge even further within our circles.
Challenging us to go deeper, stretch further, read black feminist scholars’ work, question colonial premises in our own process, recognise what diversity means and how to ensure equitable, just and transformative processes do no unintentional harm to others.
These deep inquiries are part of the daily activism we engage with to create systemic shifts where there are cracks in the system. Sometimes they are subtle, and start in small circles.