Welcome to My Sacred Storytelling Portal

Rev. Janet Davenport

Ordained Minister | Pastor

Organizational & Leadership Development Coach

KEEPER OF ANCESTRAL MEMORY

Where Story Became Home

I grew up as the daughter of a career military officer, moving frequently through different regions of a racially divided America and Post WWII Europe during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s.

In those nomadic years of constant transition and feelings of never quite belonging, ancestral stories gave me a sense of home.

They reminded me that I came from somewhere bigger than myself. That I was standing on the shoulders of lives, struggles, faith, wisdom, and visions.

Those stories became an anchor through the identity questions and seasons of not belonging that followed me well into adulthood. So did books.

Reading, Black history, writing, and storytelling became pathways toward understanding, healing, and ultimately, spiritual awareness and growth.

Finding My Voice

Writing became both vocation and provision. During seasons of divorce, single motherhood, back-to-back losses, especially the tragic death of my older brother, the written word sustained me emotionally and spiritually.

Stringing words together quite literally helped put food on the table. Over and over again, I experienced what I can only describe as divine provision: doors opened into spaces where few people who looked like me had been invited to lead.

For nearly two decades, I worked in journalism as a reporter, editor, and opinion writer. I eventually broke a significant barrier at my hometown newspaper, becoming its first African American and first Black woman editorial page editor. The National Association of Black Journalists, on whose board I served as the director of the New England states, recognized my pioneering contributions to the field.

I served on the editorial boards of newspapers in Massachusetts and Connecticut, working as both an editorial page editor and editorial writer. But my two decades in journalism was never simply a career for me. It was part of my formation as a witness, storyteller, truth-teller, and advocate.

I came to understand my work as a calling to use my voice on behalf of people and communities too often unheard.

From Witness to Change Agent

When that season came to an end, I carried my pen, and the tools I had gathered along the way into leadership roles in nonprofit organizations and philanthropy.

I began working alongside leaders and organizations not only navigating change, but serving as catalysts for it—through public policy reform, equity and social justice movements, organizational development, and community building.

All the while building capacity, strengthening communities, and seeking greater alignment between their values and their work.

In 2014, I founded Davenport Coaching Solutions to support leaders and organizations seeking to deepen their impact and fulfill their missions with greater clarity, courage, and intention.

Divine Calling: Woven Whole

Today, my work brings together the many strands of my calling: storytelling, leadership, organizational development and branding, spiritual formation, pastoral care, and sacred community.

As an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and senior pastor, I bring a pastoral lens to the work of leadership and organizational life. Through boutique consulting, sacred circle facilitation, pastoral advisement, strategic communications, public speaking, and guest preaching, I create spaces where people can listen deeply, discern wisely, tell the truth, and move toward what is possible.

Still Listening

I believe stories have the power to restore what has been fragmented, leadership can be an expression of service, and communities become stronger when we make room for wisdom, memory, truth, and spirit.

I am still a keeper of ancestral memory. And I am listening for the next set of marching orders from the Divine.