Atlas Charles

Atlas Charles (they/them) lives in Kingsport, Tennessee, and is a Partner at Rural Support Partners. Atlas provides one-of-a-kind coaching, thought partnership, and consulting as they show up as a partner to clients as they dream, plan, and co-create regenerative communities and economies that cultivate community wealth and well-being. Atlas also directs RSP’s New School of Participatory Change, which equips participatory changemakers to create self-sustaining, equitable change. With over 11 years of experience as a participatory changemaker, Atlas supports other changemakers to build more just, regenerative, and democratic communities in their local places.

Extensive professional and educational experiences, spanning global rural regions and sectors, inform Atlas’ work. But it is their life experiences and the wisdom they learned in community that construct the foundation for Atlas’ work in Appalachia. Atlas grew up as a part of a holler community tucked into the Cumberland Mountains of Southwest Virginia and Southwestern West Virginia: a place full of natural wonder and full, too, of down-to-earth folks. Their family, like most locals, are farmers and miner folk who taught Atlas to care for gardens and animals; cook good mountain food; and most of all be with (and) in the holler, in community. There Atlas navigated the many complexities of living as queer, non-binary, and autistic in a small town; never quite fitting in, yet deeply connected to the land and people‌. Living in a sacrifice zone deepened the complexity: the same thing that put food on Atlas’ table—their dad’s logging and mining jobs, their mom’s service jobs—exploit(ed) the community’s wealth, ultimately harming local people, their community, the land, and the water. That’s why in all of their work, Atlas honors the complexity of co-creating thriving communities that balance economic growth, current livelihoods, and collective well-being.

Out of their experiences grew a “home-grown” systems thinking, which allowed Atlas to see and understand degenerative systems and the potential for abundance in rural areas. That home-grown thinking is the basis of their work in service to community health, justice, and well-being. Because of both the beauty and the struggle of life in Central Appalachia, Atlas learned to live (mostly) unapologetically and joyfully themself—Appalachian to the core, queer as hell, and deeply committed to co-creating futures where kids (like them, in towns like theirs) live joyful, full, authentic lives.

Click here to schedule a 30-minute call with Atlas to explore coaching or work.