Welcome to Deep Refuge
About
Deep Refuge is for Queer Women and Trans/Gender Expansive People who are deeply invested in becoming the strongest version of themselves; who desire to live a full life and experience joy on their own terms; who dare to step into their authentic life purpose and meet this time in history head on.
Deep Refuge is a Queer, Trans, BIPOC owned company. We are not just advocates for Lived Experience; we actively bring it to all that we do. By living “in the margins”, we were primed from an early age to believe we were not worthy of love or of leading lives of purpose.
We underwent years of personal growth, professional training, and continuously fed our burning desire to create a more just and equitable world. Through it all, we have learned to see how systems of oppression show up in daily life, and how to dismantle them within ourselves, piece by piece.
Our work through Deep Refuge is our love letter to our fellow queers; it’s our way of taking what we’ve learned and reinvesting it in our community. In addition to our programming, we do volunteer and advocacy work for the larger LGBTQ+ community and are also in the process of becoming a public benefit company. Deep Refuge is a sanctuary amidst the storm, offering a leverage point to turn these dire times into the momentum you need to become the leader of your life, your love, your purpose.
In 2015, Dominique began envisioning a business that could be a sanctuary for personal transformation and has been building upon that dream ever since. After constructing the business on nights and weekends, Dominique took the leap to full time entrepreneur in 2019 with Deep Refuge. That same year, Dominique invited Ray into Deep Refuge as a strategic advisor and collaborator. The two co-facilitated individual and group intensives and immersive coaching experiences.
After years of guiding hundreds of clients in transformative work, Deep Refuge continued to grow and expand. In January 2025, after two master’s level programs, a cross-country move, and getting married, Dominique and Ray joined forces full time and Deep Refuge became Deep Refuge Coaching & Consulting, LLC. We now offer queer women and trans/gender expansive people empowerment coaching and a sanctuary to cultivate strength and purpose in uncertain times.
We are your champions in empowerment.
We are delighted to have you here.
Welcome.
Dominique Cilento
they/she
Founder | Certified Coach
Dominique’s area of specialization is in personal empowerment, guiding clients in building the capacities and skills needed to lead full, authentic lives. They provide a judgement free space to explore the areas where clients feel burdened by lack of choice and help people create new pathways to live life on their own terms. Dominique teaches clients to go from disappointment, confusion, and depletion, to being confident, clear, and living on purpose.
While growing up within several intersecting webs of oppression, Dominique learned the skills of survival: stay small, stay silent, take up no space, be agreeable. They survived to adulthood, but at what cost? They weren’t living their own life or anything that felt authentic. The skills that had once kept them ‘safe’ now were the very things destroying them. Freeing themself from these systems was no small feat and now Dominique is here to help their clients do the same.
Dominique has known since they were very young that they were meant to work with people. Being an avid learner, they read endless amounts of textbooks and attended hundreds of trainings with experts on a range of psychological modalities and concepts. Dominique leveraged this training to pursue their passion: guiding queer women and gender expansive people to unlearn the systems that perpetuate oppression and become empowered.
Dominique began their coaching career in 2002, offering clients intuitive based practices to reconnect with themselves. Since then, they’ve owned businesses in photography, art, and personal development. They also had a successful, multi-decade career in C-suite administration within multi-million-dollar organizations.
In 2015 Dominique began Deep Refuge and became a full-time entrepreneur in 2019. They offered individual and group intensives and immersive coaching experiences to people from all over the United States. By 2023, Dominique completed their certified coach training in relational dynamics and began working with people across the globe. They now use their decades of lived and professional experience to ignite within their beloved community the liberation, love and belonging they deserve to experience.
Ray J. Rodriguez, MPH
they/he
Co-owner | Director of Program Development
Ray has spent their lifetime learning about the systems of oppression that impact women and gender expansive people. From academic training in women, gender and sexuality studies through the lens of cultural anthropology and sociology to community-led workshops on the embodiment of anti-racist practices, Ray has cultivated a deep understanding of the ways our diverse community is impacted by harmful policies and perceptions.
After years conducting trainings and workshops on allyship and how to continuously unlearn the habits of white supremacy culture, Ray went on to obtain their master’s degree in community oriented public health practice with a focus on upstream determinants of LGBTQ+ health outcomes. Ray leverages this expertise to advocate for systems-level change through the American Public Health Association LGBTQ+ Policy Caucus as well as other volunteer and advocacy endeavors.
Today, Ray brings their expertise to the community closest to their heart; queer women and gender expansive people, offering empowerment coaching to cultivate strength and purpose in uncertain times.
In 2014 Ray first began recognizing their true gender identity and how to come to terms with what it meant to be non-binary and trans-masculine after living as an out, queer woman for the previous fifteen years. Through their journey, Ray learned to see how systems define, constrain, and erase those of us who do not fit cis-het binary expectations, and how to untangle those systems from our daily realities.
It is Ray’s lifelong passion to embolden queer women and trans/gender expansive people to reclaim power, possibility, and belonging on our own terms.
Our Values
- Inclusivity
- Adaptability
- Transparency
- Accountability
- Equity
Five days of journal prompts to help you
deepen your personal practice of liberation.
In just a few minutes a day, dig deeper into how you can free yourself.
Each day for five days, we’ll send you a quote to contemplate and a few prompts you can answer around the day’s theme.
This no-charge 5-day challenge is the boost you need to ignite your own relationship with personal liberation!
- Explore your stories about what personal liberation means to you.
- Get clear on your unique internal blocks.
- Walk away with a strong sense of your relationship with liberation.
- Let go of limitation around who you get to be in your own life!