I’m Cherri Jacobs Pruitt, founder of CJ Connections. My work helps people recognize domination-based patterns and practice partnership as a lived, everyday alternative.

This work grew from lived experience long before it had language. I’m a Colorado native and the youngest of five children. Both of my parents had disabilities—my mother lost her hearing to whooping cough as an infant, and my father became paralyzed in his early twenties due to a spinal tumor. We were also one of the few Jewish families in our white, middle-class neighborhood.

Growing up, I learned early how systems include and exclude, often without intention. I saw how difference shapes who belongs, who is accommodated, and who is expected to adapt—and how hard it can be to stay connected inside systems not designed with care at their center.

Professionally, I spent more than four decades working in public health, maternal and child well-being, policy, and community systems. Across roles, I saw caring people constrained by structures shaped by hierarchy, pressure, and control.

My work is grounded in Dr. Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory, which names these patterns and offers partnership as a real alternative—a way of organizing life rooted in care, shared responsibility, mutual respect, and connection.

CJ Connections exists to make these patterns visible and workable, supporting people in practicing partnership in everyday life.