The Slipstream

Adelaide Lancaster is a social entrepreneur, community builder, innovator, and advocate for transformation. She excels as identifying possibilities, seeing patterns, reframing challenges, mobilizing people, and inspiring behavior change. She is animated by the intersection of what is and what could be, self and system, the known and unknown.

Most recently she co-founded We Stories, a St. Louis-based non-profit organization that engages White families to change the conversation about and build momentum towards racial justice and equity. In 5 short years We Stories directly engaged 1500 families, helping them to start and strengthen conversations about race and racism and increase their capacity for civic engagement and advocacy.

Prior to that she co-founded In Good Company Workplaces, a first of its kind community and co-working space for women entrepreneurs in Manhattan, which opened in 2007. In Good Company served thousands of women entrepreneurs and has helped shape the shared workspace industry of today. At In Good Company, Adelaide co-authored a book, The Big Enough Company, with her partner Amy Abrams, featuring the stories of over 100 women entrepreneurs.

Adelaide’s focus on racial justice galvanized while earning her B.A. in Educational Studies and Sociology from Colgate University. She went on to earn a M.A. in Organizational Psychology and a M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology from Teacher’s College at Columbia University, where she studied racial identity development and group dynamics.

Adelaide has served as an active parent in her children’s school district (both in Missouri and Michigan), and is a proud supporter and active participant of many civic organizations and racial justice initiatives. She was particularly honored to serve as a founding board member and co-chair for Forward Through Ferguson (the organizational outgrowth of the Ferguson Commission report) and to be a Pahara-Next Gen fellow with the Pahara Institute (an organization focused on developing leaders in the education equity movement.) Currently she serves on the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission, a state commission that works to promote and preserve Underground Railroad History. Adelaide is also active around anti-censorship efforts both in Michigan and Missouri, and works with her family to build a community of those who support the Freedom to Read.

When she’s not working on the slipstream and related projects, parenting her three kids, or getting into nature, Adelaide’s nose is most definitely in a book. She loves memoirs, non-fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and YA / Middle Grade novels. [Are there books that have changed your life? or your mind? Please email adelaide@the-slipstream.com and share them!]

Places that have shaped her and that she has called home:

PHL —> VA —> Upstate NY —> NYC —> PHL —> STL —> Ypsilanti / Ann Arbor.