Nia Ariel Davis Sigona, Esq.
Founder and Principal
Root + Bloom Strategies
An advocate at heart and attorney by training, Nia is expert at navigating ecosystems of people, process, policy, and practice. She brings 15+ years of interdisciplinary leadership throughout cradle-to-career education law, policy, and practice.
Root + Bloom Strategies grew out of Nia’s career of bringing groups together to advance a shared vision of impact. From the classroom, to the local school district, state university systems, national think tanks, federal policymaking, and beyond– she learned that impact happens when changemakers collaborate skillfully.
Nia translates a group’s good intent into collective impact. Her leadership has ranged across school district policy, charter school accountability, community college transfer systems, postsecondary education federal policy, and civic leadership development, all to center Black and Brown learners in equitable ecosystems. With Root + Bloom Strategies, she connects people & ideas to change systems that change the world.
From Silos to Ecosystems
A Note from the Founder
Even though Future Farmers of America was one of the largest student clubs in my high school, the first time I heard the word “silo” was in a conversation about education policy. It was years before I realized that silos have more to do with farms than learners.
After years of working across education law, policy, and practice throughout the cradle-to-career ecosystem, I have come to believe that a silo is the wrong horticultural image. Instead, having worked alongside people in “siloed” departments and disciplines… I think of trees.
Trees have a lot to teach us about connection and collaboration for shared advancement and growth. Though we may treat them as separate entities, individual trees stretch their roots wide, finding grounding in an expansive diameter of soil and sharing resources with their neighboring trees. As their flowers bloom, they depend on an entire ecosystem of actors to bear fruit. The seeds in that fruit ensure the grove’s sustainability.
Though we may treat our social impact work as separate, siloed disciplines, it’s all connected– child care to the workforce, climate change to public health, AI to education, equity and liberation to everything. Mission-driven leaders must collaborate across sectors to create meaningful impact at scale. We must think beyond this season’s buds to the ongoing sustainability and evolution of our work. How do we root and ground ourselves? How might we bloom our vision of a shared future?
I founded
Root + Bloom Strategies to live into these questions and answer them with action. I believe we can move beyond silos to cultivate ecosystems where we can thrive. Let’s cultivate them to root and bloom well.