serving individuals + organizations across mission-driven sectors
mapping pathways back to conscience, care + sustainable service
writing | speaking | moral mapping | duty of care
a map can show us the terrain, but the season shapes how we move through it.
our moral landscapes are no different.
it’s the legacy of working inside traumatized, industrialized systems that equate exhaustion with commitment and led us to believe that being a “professional” requires us to leave our intuition, values, conscience, and spirit at the door.
the pain many of us are carrying is so much more than just burnout. it’s moral injury. it’s institutional betrayal. it’s collective grief.
we call the work or addressing these issues moral cartography. it begins from the premise that to heal, lead, and imagine equity, justice and liberation for all, we need to come to know our internal and external terrain, before we can learn how to move through it across the different seasons of life.
at roots in the clouds we know that people and organizations are unique and one-size-fits-all approaches to leadership and duty of care don’t work. moral cartography offers different pathways to a common destination, which we offer through moral mapping™ (our signature coaching and consulting work), speaking, writing, and art.
offerings for every season of being human
ground that holds steady in one season of life can give way in another, and what we need in that moment shifts along with it. some seasons call for naming our wounds and finding our way back to our values. others call for us to offer empathy and care to someone who is grieving, or reflect on what's still unfolding. at roots in the clouds, we’e designed all of our offerings to meet you wherever you are, whether you're seeking support for yourself, your team, or the people in your care.
click on any of the boxes below to learn more about each offering.
challenging outdated narratives
"What if the service path we've chosen is actually an invitation—to see and heal and love and embrace our own humanity through the stories of the people we're serving? And what if that healing could happen at both the individual and organizational levels?"
— Dimple Dhabalia - Tell Me My Story
My book, Tell Me My Story, is where this map first began to take shape: through the stories we inherit, the wounds we normalize, and the narratives of service that ask us to abandon ourselves for the mission.
The work that started in the pages of my book now continues through moral mapping sessions, duty of care consulting, and our collection of empathy cards that help people and organizations move through different seasons of being human and find pathways back to conscience, care, and sustainable service.
Available in paperback, e-book, and audio at all major online retailers.
fostering empathy, connection + care
empathy is more than a feeling —
it’s a practice of presence.
an invitation to slow down long enough to truly feel what someone else is experiencing — the grief and the loss, yes, but also the joy, the wonder, the gratitude, the celebration, and the seasons that sometimes have no name. it's the practice of staying near without trying to fix, rush, or resolve, and pausing long enough to truly savor what is good. of witnessing the full, messy, beautiful complexity of what it means to be human.
our empathy cards are how we bring that practice to life — not a single gesture, but a sustained act of presence and care.
one box. six cards. shared with one person over time.
a ritual of care, unfolding slowly between sender and receiver.
a choice to keep showing up — through the hardest seasons of being human.
meet dimple
Dimple Dhabalia is an attorney, award-winning author, writer, and speaker. The daughter of Indian immigrants — her mother born and raised in Uganda, her father in India — she grew up with family stories and rituals carried across continents, an inheritance that later drew her to nearly two decades of work in asylum and refugee operations for the U.S. government before founding Roots in the Clouds.
Her work at the intersection of moral injury, collective grief, and human connection has been guided by a single question: how do we honor and stay rooted in our humanity as we navigate different seasons of life?
Through Roots in the Clouds and ambika creative studio, she is restoring the language of connection and rituals of care — creating pathways to presence that invite us to stay rooted in our empathy and conscience, not as afterthoughts, but as intentional practices we choose to return to in every season.
organizations our work has supported
