Privacy Policy
Effective Date: September 14th, 2026
Last Updated: September 14th, 2026
Version: 3.0
Applies to: joinconstellations.com, the Constellations member portal, and the Constellations membership and services described below.
Constellations is a membership community for adults who want more thoughtful, supported ways to build community — built particularly, though not exclusively, for neurodivergent and disabled adults.
To do that work, we ask you for things that are genuinely personal: what daily life looks like for you, what support you need, what you are hoping to find, and who matters to you. This Policy explains, in plain terms, what we collect, who can see it, what we do with it, and what you can decide.
In this Policy, "Constellations," "we," "us," and "our" mean the business described in Section 2. "You" means the person the information is about.
1. A short summary
This summary is here to help you get oriented. It is not a substitute for the full Policy, and the sections below control.
We collect what you tell us on your Welcome Form and during your intake conversation, what you post in the member portal, what you send us through our forms, and basic technical information about your visit to our website.
Much of what we hold is sensitive — disability and health-related information, support needs, relationship goals, and, if you choose to share them, your gender identity and sexual orientation. We treat it that way.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.
Other members can see your portal photo, first name, your posts, and your comments. Members cannot see your email address, and we do not let search engines index member profiles.
You can message other members through the portal. A Connection Request can be sent to another person that can accept, decline, or ignore the request. Messages are stored by Circle, our portal provider. Our team cannot read them. Section 6 explains the details.
We do not record your intake conversation. We may use AI companion on Zoom to produce transcripts and summaries. Zoom asks you to agree when you join, and you can decline.
Coaching sessions and virtual gatherings take place on Zoom, and we use Zoom AI Companion to produce transcripts and summaries. Zoom asks you to agree when you join, and you can decline.
Nova is not anonymous. Nova is an AI chatbot run through Chatbase, an outside provider. Your conversations are attached to your member account and authorized staff can read them. The chat is not monitored in real time. Nova is not a way to report a concern, and it is not a crisis service. Read Section 7 before you type anything into it you would not want read.
Our team uses AI assistants to help organize and draft our own records, under business terms that do not allow the provider to train on our data.
A support person gets information from us only if you tell us they may. Paying for your membership does not give anyone access to your profile, your messages, or your intake conversation.
We share your information with a potential introduction, or with anyone outside the portal, only with your permission for that specific kind of sharing. One permission does not cover them all.
You can ask what we hold, ask us to fix it, ask us to delete it, withdraw a permission, and ask us to stop contacting you. Section 16 explains how.
Members can reach us at member@joinconstellations.com. Everyone else can reach us at hello@joinconstellations.com.
2. Who we are, and how to reach us
Constellations is a trade name of Inez Harrington, LLC, a Maryland limited liability company (Department ID W27606607). Inez Harrington, LLC is the business you are dealing with and the entity responsible for this Policy.
One membership. Constellations has a single membership level. Where this Policy says "member," it means anyone enrolled in it.
The other documents. The Terms of Service are what you accept at checkout. The Membership Agreement is what you sign afterward in your onboarding packet. The Community Guidelines Agreement governs conduct in the community. Neither this Policy nor any of those replaces the others; this is the one you are asked to read but not to sign.
Who decides how your information is used. Inez Harrington, LLC decides what information Constellations collects and why. In privacy law terms, the company is the controller of your information. The platforms we use — Squarespace, Acuity Scheduling, Circle (the member portal), Chatbase (which runs Nova, together with its hosting providers and the AI model provider behind it), Notion, Zoom, Stripe, SignWell, Zapier, Google Workspace, the AI assistants described in Section 7, and Eventbrite or Meetup when we use them — are processors: they handle information on our instructions to provide their service to us, and they are not permitted to use it to market to you on their own behalf.
Circle and Chatbase are two different companies. Nova appears inside the portal, but the portal and the chatbot are run separately. Section 7 explains what that means for your conversations.
How to reach us
Constellations Inez Harrington, LLC 7200 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 500, Bethesda, MD 20814 Members: member@joinconstellations.com Everyone else: hello@joinconstellations.com Website: joinconstellations.com
For privacy questions, requests, or complaints, email whichever address applies to you with "Privacy Request" in the subject line, or write to us at the address above. A privacy request sent to either address reaches the same team.
If this Policy does not work for you. If you need it in a different format, need help reading it, want it read aloud, or would rather make a privacy request by phone or with a support person sitting beside you, tell us and we will work with you. There is also a shorter companion version — the North Star Privacy Summary — written in more direct, concrete language. It covers the same ground, but this full Policy is the one that controls.
3. Who this Policy covers
This Policy applies to:
people who visit joinconstellations.com;
people who contact us or book a consultation about membership;
people who have a consultation with us, whether or not they enroll;
enrolled Constellations members;
people who use the member portal, post in it, message in it, or use Nova;
people who attend Constellations gatherings, virtual or in person;
former members;
support people, family members, payers, authorized representatives, and guardians who interact with us in connection with an adult member;
people whose information is submitted to us by someone else — a parent, sibling, care manager, or professional — before we have ever spoken with them.
Constellations is for adults 18 and older. See Section 17.
This Policy covers Constellations only.
4. Information we collect
4.1 What your membership involves
Constellations membership includes the member portal, the resource library, group programming, Nova, virtual gatherings, in-person gatherings, an intake conversation with our team, a member profile, Connection Requests and member-to-member messaging, introductions our team may suggest, the option to involve a support person, and discounted one-to-one coaching.
Pricing and cancellation terms are in the Terms of Service and shown at checkout, not here.
4.2 What you give us directly
Contact and identity information. Your legal name, the name you would like us to use, your pronouns, email address, mobile number, city and state, and confirmation that you are 18 or older.
Consultation and enrollment information. What you tell us when you contact us, complete a form on our website, or book and attend a consultation about membership. A consultation is open to the person considering membership and to a parent, guardian, or support person thinking it through on someone's behalf.
Welcome Form. After you pay, you complete a short Welcome Form. It sets up your membership record and lets us send your onboarding packet. It asks for your legal name, the name you would like us to use, your pronouns, your email, your mobile number, where you live, who paid if it was not you, how you heard about us, whether anyone helped you complete it, and anything else you want us to know. Several of these are optional and marked that way. The Welcome Form runs on Notion, which holds your answers on our behalf. Only our team sees your Welcome Form answers; other members never do.
Member Details Form. After your packet is signed, we send a short second form asking for your pronouns, your date of birth, your mobile number, your emergency contact, whether you would like a Support Person, and anything about how you communicate that would help us. We confirm your emergency contact with you again at your intake conversation.
Intake conversation. After you sign your onboarding packet, your membership begins with a conversation with our team. We ask about who you are, what matters to you, what daily life is like, any support needs you have, and what you hope to find through Constellations.
Signed agreements. Every member signs a Membership Agreement and our Community Guidelines Agreement. Members are also offered an optional Support Person Authorization. These are signed electronically through SignWell, which holds a record of the signed documents and the signing event.
Checkout. When you or someone paying for you checks out, Stripe's checkout page asks for the name of the person who will use the membership, their email if it is different from the payer's, and confirmation that the person using the membership is 18 or older. That is how we know who the member is when someone else pays.
Scheduling, and text message reminders. Consultations, intake conversations, and coaching are booked through Acuity Scheduling, which collects your name, contact details, the appointment time, and any questions you answer when booking. If you give us a mobile number, Acuity may send you a text reminder before your appointment. These are appointment reminders only. We do not send marketing texts, and you can ask us to stop the reminders at any time without affecting your booking.
Member profile. Your profile in the member portal can include a headline, a short bio, your location, a profile photo, a website, and links to your social media accounts. All of these are optional. The portal does not ask you for a diagnosis, a disability, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, or your relationship goals as profile fields — if that information reaches us, it is because you chose to tell us.
Posts, comments, and discussion. What you write in portal spaces, including comments on our articles and posts.
Connection Requests and direct messages. What you send to other members through the portal's messaging feature, and what they send you. See Section 6.
Nova conversations. What you type into Nova, what Nova answers, and the account and technical information that travels with it. Section 7 lists this in full, because Nova involves a separate provider and an identifier tied to your account.
Safety reports. What you tell us through the Report a Concern form. The form asks who is making the report, so that a person can acknowledge it and follow up with you. It is built in Notion and embedded in the portal — and published on the website as well, in case you are ever locked out of your account. If you have a Support Person, the form is the channel that reaches only you; email reaches them too (Section 9).
Gathering registrations. Which gatherings you sign up for and attend, and any accessibility, dietary, or logistical needs you tell us about so we can accommodate them. For in-person gatherings we sometimes use Eventbrite or Meetup for registration. We also collect your signed liability waiver and your photography consent for in-person gatherings.
Accessibility and accommodation requests. Anything you tell us about how you communicate best, what you need to participate comfortably, and what does not work for you.
Support-person information. If you involve a parent, family member, aide, coach, or advocate, we collect that person's name, how you know each other, their email address and phone number, and a record of what you have authorized them to receive.
That person also gives us their own date of birth and the city and state where they live, on the part of the Authorization they sign. We ask for those two things for one reason: so that the registry search described in Section 9 is about them and not about someone who happens to share their name. We record that a search was done, when, which jurisdictions were checked, who did it, and the outcome. We do not keep what a registry returned — no screenshots, no downloaded pages, no offense details.
Payment information. Payments are processed by Stripe, through a Stripe checkout page. Card numbers are entered on Stripe's systems, not ours. Some payments may currently be taken through Chase Business Services, our business bank, while we complete the move to Stripe. Chase is our bank rather than a service acting on our instructions, and it handles that payment information under its own terms as a financial institution. We receive and keep transaction records — what was purchased, the amount, the date, the last four digits and card brand, and billing name and contact details.
Compass Strategy Sessions. If you book a Compass Strategy Session, we collect what you tell us about what you need, and, with your permission, we share your name, contact details, and the context needed to make the referral useful with the professional or organization we refer you to.
Correspondence. Emails, form messages, and the notes we keep from our conversations with you.
Mailing list. If you sign up for our mailing list, we collect your first name, last name, and email address.
4.3 Information other people give us about you
Sometimes we receive information about an adult from someone else — a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, care manager, therapist, or professional — sometimes before we have spoken with that adult at all.
When that happens:
We treat the information as belonging to the adult it describes, not to the person who sent it.
A third party's submission is not that adult's consent to be contacted, enrolled, considered for an introduction, or added to anything. We seek that directly from the adult.
If we cannot reach the adult, or the adult tells us they did not want to be submitted, we delete the submission except for a minimal record that the request was made and closed.
If you learn that someone submitted your information to us and you did not want that, email hello@joinconstellations.com and we will remove it.
Our consultation form asks anyone booking on behalf of someone else to tell us who they are to that adult, to give us the adult's own contact information, and to confirm that the adult knows about the booking and agrees.
Information you give us about other people. You may tell us about someone else — your emergency contact, the person who paid, the person who told you about us, or a Support Person. We use each of those only for the reason you gave it. We do not market to them, add them to a list, or contact the person who referred you. Please tell anyone you name as an emergency contact or Support Person that you have done so.
4.4 Information we generate
Our own written notes from your intake conversation and from working with you, and what we have learned about what you are looking for and who we think might be a good introduction for you. These notes are personal information about you, and you can request them under Section 16.
We also receive activity information from the portal: when you last signed in, which spaces you belong to, and participation points and levels. The portal awards one point for every like your posts, comments, images, and events receive from other members, and our team can award points directly. Points accumulate through nine levels. The leaderboard shows the ten members with the most points over the last 7 days, the last 30 days, and all time, and gives the top three a badge.
4.5 Website and technical information
When you visit joinconstellations.com or the member portal, we and our providers automatically receive standard technical information: IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed, referring page, and dates and times of visits. Section 13 lists exactly what runs on our site.
5. Sensitive information
A great deal of what you may share with us is sensitive, and several state privacy laws give sensitive information special protection. Depending on what you choose to tell us, the information we hold about you may include:
disability, neurodivergence, diagnoses, and health-related information;
mental health history and support needs;
accommodations you need and how you communicate best;
sexual orientation, gender identity, and transgender or nonbinary status;
dating and relationship history and what you are looking for;
religious beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, and national origin, where you choose to share them;
photographs, video, and voice recordings;
financial and payment information.
How we handle it. We collect sensitive information only where it is necessary to provide the membership you asked for — understanding you well enough to point you toward the right parts of the community, arrange the support you need, and consider thoughtful introductions. We ask for your consent before collecting it. We do not sell it. We do not use it for advertising. We do not feed your intake notes or your profile into Nova. We do not share sensitive information outside the specific, consented purposes in Section 11.
You choose how much to share. You are not required to disclose a diagnosis, a disability, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, or your religion to be a member. Some of what you share makes our work better, and we will tell you when we think something matters — but the decision is yours, and declining does not disqualify you from membership or from any part of the community. If you tell us something and later wish you had not, tell us and we will remove it from our notes where we can.
What you post and message is your choice too. If you write about your diagnosis, your health, your relationships, or your identity in a portal post, comment, or direct message, that is sensitive information you have chosen to share with other members. We cannot un-share it once someone else has read it.
We are not a healthcare provider. Constellations is not a doctor's office, hospital, health plan, or healthcare clearinghouse. HIPAA does not apply to us, and information you share with us does not have HIPAA protection. We are also not licensed therapists, and nothing we provide is medical, psychological, or mental health treatment or advice. We still treat health and disability information as sensitive, because it is, and because other laws apply to it.
6. The member portal: who can see what
The member portal runs on Circle, a community platform.
The portal is private. You join by invitation only — there is no public sign-up — and we have turned off search-engine indexing of member profiles, so your profile should not appear in Google results.
Seeing other members. There is no member directory in the portal. You see other members through what they post and comment, through Connection Requests, and on the leaderboard.
Messages and Connection Requests. When you message someone for the first time, it goes as a Connection Request — they see that you would like to connect, and they can accept, decline, or ignore. Nobody has to accept, and nobody has to explain why they declined. Once someone accepts, you can message each other directly.
What that means for your information:
Your messages are stored by Circle on its systems, like everything else in the portal.
The person you are messaging can keep, screenshot, or forward what you send. We cannot prevent that, and we cannot retrieve it.
Our team cannot read your direct messages. Circle keeps messages between members private from community administrators. We see a message only if one of the people in the conversation shows it to us or reports it.
Circle, as the company that runs the platform, holds your messages on its systems and can access them under its own terms and privacy policy, including in response to legal process. We are not able to promise otherwise on Circle's behalf.
Members can report a message to us. When someone reports a message, we see what they show us, and we act on it under the Community Guidelines Agreement.
Messages between members are text only.
Because we cannot access your messages, we cannot include them in a copy of your information under Section 16, and we cannot delete them from the other person's inbox. You can delete your own messages from within the portal.
Your direct messages and your Nova conversations are not the same thing. We cannot read the first. We can read the second. Section 7 explains why.
What we cannot control. Other members are asked not to copy, screenshot, save, or repeat what you share, and doing so can get someone removed. But we cannot make that impossible. A private community is not the same as a confidential one. Please share at the level you would be comfortable with if it traveled.
Email notifications carry your content out of the portal. When the portal emails members about new posts, the full text of the post is included in the email, not just a link. Members can turn portal notifications off in their own settings.
What our team can see. Our team can see everything a member posts in the portal, member profiles, membership and payment records, safety reports, and content that has been reported or hidden. We do not read a running feed of everything. We look when there is a reason: a report, a moderation question, or a support request.
What we do not promise. We do not monitor every message and post in real time, and we cannot guarantee that we will see something harmful before another member does. If something feels wrong, please use Report a Concern — it comes straight to us and never to other members.
7. Nova and other AI
What Nova is
Nova is an AI chatbot inside the member portal. It answers general questions about connection, communication, and how Constellations works. It is trained on Constellations materials and written to reflect the Constellations approach.
Nova is not a coach, a therapist, or a person, and it can be wrong. The Terms of Service set out in full what Nova is and is not. In short: check anything that matters with a person rather than relying on Nova; Nova is not a way to report a concern; and Nova is not a crisis or emergency service.
Nova runs on Chatbase. Chatbase is an outside company that provides the chatbot service. Nova appears inside the portal, so it can look like part of Circle — it is not. When you type to Nova, your message goes to Chatbase, and Chatbase sends it on to its own providers, including the AI model provider that generates each answer.
Nova conversations are attached to your member account
An earlier version of this Policy described Nova as an anonymous chatbot. That is no longer accurate, and we would rather say so plainly than let the old description stand.
When you open Nova, the portal sends Chatbase a stable identifier for your member account. That identifier lets the conversation keep its context while you are talking, lets us associate a conversation with the right member, and lets us find your conversations when there is a reason to.
We send the minimum identifier needed. We do not use your email address as that identifier, and we do not put sensitive information into Chatbase's user fields. Your identity is confirmed using a credential generated on our own server, so the key to our Chatbase account is never exposed in a page you load.
We do not create a North Star attribute, a roster, or any similar marking on your record in Chatbase.
What is processed when you use Nova
the questions you type;
Nova's answers;
a stable identifier for your member account;
conversation and session identifiers;
dates and timestamps;
any feedback you give about an answer;
IP address, approximate location derived from it, browser, device, operating system, and similar technical information;
cookies, local storage, or similar technologies set by the chat widget;
any attachment, where that feature is available;
information about another person that appears in a message or screenshot you paste in; and
information Chatbase generates about a conversation, such as a topic or a conversation title.
What we use it for
providing and operating Nova;
keeping the context of your conversation;
associating a conversation with the correct member account;
finding your conversations when reasonably necessary;
securing the service and looking into technical misuse;
reviewing and improving Nova's answers and the material it works from;
understanding aggregate usage, and finding subjects Nova needs better information about;
enforcing membership or community policies where authorized staff encounter relevant content during a permitted review; and
responding to a privacy request, a legal obligation, or an active dispute.
What we do not use it for
We do not use Nova records to:
build a list of members who use North Star;
decide whether someone belongs in North Star;
assess a member based on the tone, bluntness, repetition, urgency, or sentiment of their writing; or
make any automated decision about membership, eligibility, discipline, or introductions.
A person makes every decision of that kind.
Human review
Authorized Constellations staff may read Nova conversations. Access is limited by role and by need. Conversations are not continuously reviewed and are not necessarily reviewed at all. We look when there is a reason: checking the quality of an answer, operating or securing the service, answering a privacy request, or following up on a concern.
Review is not a promise that anyone will see a particular message. Please do not write something into Nova hoping a person will notice it.
Nova is not a reporting channel
A message to Nova is not a report to Constellations. Nova does not pass anything on, does not notify our team, and does not open a case. If you want us to know about something involving Constellations, another member, or a Support Person, use Report a Concern in the portal or on the website, or email member@joinconstellations.com.
Staff might come across something concerning while doing an authorized review. Do not rely on that. It is not a channel, and it is not monitored.
Nova is not a crisis service
Nova is not a crisis or emergency service. The chat is not monitored in real time. Nova does not assess whether something is an emergency, and it does not contact us, emergency services, or anyone else on your behalf.
Nova may show a standard message pointing to outside resources when what you have written appears to describe immediate danger. That message is automatic. It does not mean a person has seen what you wrote. If you or someone else may be in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency service.
Automated analysis and moderation
At launch:
Chatbase's spam and guardrail detection is off. Its default definition of what to act on includes sexually explicit language, which would misfire in a community where members discuss relationships and sexuality. We would rather it never paused a member's conversation than have it pause the wrong one.
Nova does not automatically create a support ticket.
Nova does not automatically alert staff.
Sentiment is not used as a safety, conduct, or member-assessment signal.
No adverse decision is made automatically from anything in a Nova conversation.
If we ever turn on automated content review, we will update this Policy and the notice beside the chat before it is switched on.
Who receives Nova information
Beyond Constellations, Nova conversation data may be handled by:
Chatbase, as our processor;
Chatbase's hosting and infrastructure providers;
the AI model provider that generates Nova's answers;
other Chatbase subprocessors that handle conversation data;
the service used to generate the identity credential described above; and
any error-monitoring provider on the chat embed.
Chatbase states that it processes customer data in the United States, uses subprocessors, and does not use customer data to train AI models. We rely on Chatbase's published commitments for that; we do not hold a separate contract with the model provider.
Where it is processed
Nova information is processed and stored in the United States. Section 20 explains what that means.
How long Nova conversations are kept
We keep your conversations with Nova while your membership is active.
Ending your membership does not delete them automatically. It makes you eligible to ask for deletion, and we may also need to keep records to meet a legal obligation or to look into a concern.
If something in a conversation needs looking into, we may export that conversation and hold the export with our other records of that matter. Exports are kept only in approved locations and deleted on the same schedule as the records they belong to.
Deleting a Nova conversation
You can ask us to delete your Nova conversations at any time, whether you are a current or a former member. Email member@joinconstellations.com. We will acknowledge your request within two business days.
Chatbase provides a delete-conversations control, which we have enabled, so we can act on this ourselves rather than asking you to deal with Chatbase.
What we may not be able to delete. We may keep a conversation, or part of one, where we need it to meet a legal obligation, to resolve a dispute, to enforce our agreements, or to keep the community safe — including where it forms part of the record of a reported concern. When we cannot delete something, we will tell you what we are keeping and why.
Your rights reach Nova records
The access, correction, deletion, and appeal rights in Section 16 apply to your Nova records as they do to everything else: your contact information held in Chatbase, your conversation records, any attachments, and any information derived from a conversation.
Send those requests to us, not to Chatbase. You should not have to negotiate with our processor. We will coordinate with them.
If a Support Person helps you use Nova
If your Support Person sits with you and helps you use Nova while you are signed in, the conversation is attributed to your account like any other. A Support Person must not use Nova as you, or while signed in as you, without you there. Please both avoid entering information you have not chosen to share.
Other AI we use
Zoom AI Companion. Coaching sessions and virtual gatherings take place on Zoom, and we use Zoom AI Companion to produce transcripts and written summaries so we can pay attention to you instead of to note-taking. When you join a call, Zoom asks you to agree to recording and AI Companion before it starts. You can decline and still take part. Transcripts and summaries are working notes for our team. They are not shared outside Constellations except as described in Section 11, and they are not used to train Nova.
We do not use recording or AI Companion for your intake conversation.
AI assistants our team uses. Our team uses Claude (Anthropic) and Notion AI to help us draft, organize, and summarize our own records, including member records. We use these under business plans whose terms do not allow the provider to train its models on our data. They do not make decisions about you, they do not talk to members, and we do not put your information into any AI tool that is not on this list.
Circle's own AI features. Circle offers an AI agent of its own, a content writer, member activity scores, and automated transcription. We have turned all of those off. Nova is not a Circle feature. The participation points and leaderboard in Section 4.4 are a different thing — a tally of likes received, not AI — and are on.
No AI decides who meets whom. A person makes every one of those decisions.
A note on what is not here: features we are building but have not launched are not described in this Policy. When a new AI tool launches, we will update this Policy and tell members before it is available to them.
8. Connection Requests, introductions, and coaching
Connection Requests. If another member catches your interest, you can send them a Connection Request through the portal. They see that you want to connect and choose whether to accept. A conversation opens only if they say yes. If someone declines, you are not owed a reason, and you should not try again through another route.
Introductions we suggest. Our team may also identify a possible introduction between two members. We tell each of you separately, and nothing moves forward unless you both agree. Deciding not to is always a complete answer.
What the other person sees, and when. When we ask someone whether they would like to be introduced to you, we describe you in writing first: your first name and a short description with basic information about you. We do not show them your photograph at this stage. Your photograph is shared only after you have both said yes.
We do not share your last name or any contact information unless you give us permission for that specific introduction, and we do not give members each other's email address, phone number, or postal address at all. We do not share your intake notes, your support needs, or anything you asked us to keep private.
Our team writes that short description from your intake conversation, and you see and approve it before it is shown to anyone. You can change it at any time.
Introductions are not guaranteed. Membership gives you access to the community and consideration for introductions. Membership does not promise that you will be introduced to anyone.
Coaching. What you discuss in coaching is covered by this Policy. Coaching notes are kept separately from your community records, and we will ask you before using anything from a coaching session for introductions or anything else in Constellations.
People who work with us. Coaches, facilitators, photographers, image consultants, recruiters, and other freelancers sometimes work with us or directly with members. Every one of them signs a confidentiality agreement before working with us or with any member, and each sees only what they need for their part of the work.
9. Support people, payers, representatives, and guardians
Many of the adults in Constellations involve someone else — by choice, or by legal arrangement. These are four different roles with four different rules, and we do not treat them as interchangeable.
A Support Person is someone you choose: a parent, family member, friend, coach, or support worker who helps you keep up with your membership and stay safe when interacting with other members. You decide whether to name one and when to change it — and you do it on our Support Person Authorization, which both of you sign.
There is one level, and it is everything. Your Support Person is copied on all Constellations emails to you: announcements, event details, reminders, scheduling, billing, and every introduction we offer you, including the ones you turn down. There are no partial options; you either name a Support Person or you do not.
Our replies work the same way. While an Authorization is in place there is no private email channel apart from your portal account details, which go only to you. If you need to tell us something your Support Person should not see — including a concern about your Support Person — use Report a Concern rather than email. That form, and our follow-up to it, reach only you.
We search before they receive anything. Before anyone becomes your Support Person we search publicly available sex offender registry information for that person, for the one purpose of evaluating safety within Constellations. We do not search members. Someone currently required to register as a sex offender cannot be a Support Person, and that is the only thing the search decides. We record the fact of the search, the date, the jurisdictions checked, who performed it, and the outcome — and nothing of what a registry returned.
Your Support Person does not receive your portal login, your private messages with other members, your Nova conversations, what happens in coaching, or anything you ask us to keep between you and us. If something needs your answer, we send it to you first. The Support Person Authorization sets out the full list of what they never receive.
No separate portal account. We do not give Support People their own portal accounts. A Support Person may sit with you and look at the portal together, on your account, at your direction and in your presence — but they do not log in as you, use your account without you, send messages as you, respond to Connection Requests for you, or change your information. If they help you use Nova while you are signed in, that conversation is attributed to your account — see Section 7.
What your Support Person agrees to. By signing the Authorization, your Support Person agrees that what they learn through Constellations stays private, including within the family; that they help beside you rather than deciding for you; and that naming them gives them no legal authority over you. You can change or end the arrangement at any time, for any reason, by writing to member@joinconstellations.com — or by calling and asking us to put it in writing for you. Your Support Person can step back at any time.
Emergency contact. Every member names an emergency contact — the person we call if you are unwell or need help at a gathering or on a call. It can be your Support Person or someone else. We use it only for that. Naming an emergency contact does not give that person access to your information.
A payer is whoever pays. Payment gives that person billing records and confirmation that the membership was purchased. Payment does not give anyone access to your posts, your messages, your Nova conversations, your intake conversation, your Connection Requests, or who you are getting to know. If a parent or family member is paying for your membership, we will tell you before you begin exactly what we will and will not share with them.
An authorized representative is someone you have given written authority to act for you, including making a privacy request on your behalf. We verify that authority before acting. See Section 16.
A legal guardian or conservator is someone a court has appointed with decision-making authority for an adult. If someone tells us they are a guardian or conservator, we ask for documentation of the appointment and its scope, because guardianship orders differ widely and many are limited to finances or healthcare and do not extend to the personal and social decisions Constellations involves.
We do not assume that a disability, a diagnosis, or a family member's involvement means an adult cannot decide for themselves. Where an adult has legal decision-making authority, that adult is our member and their choices govern. If we cannot verify someone's authority, or if what a support person or family member wants conflicts with what the member wants, we follow the member, and we may pause things until it is resolved.
10. How we use information
We use information about you to:
answer your questions and help you decide whether Constellations is a fit;
run your intake conversation and understand what you are looking for;
give you access to the member portal;
run discussions, resources, gatherings, and webinars, and communicate with attendees;
operate the messaging and Connection Request features;
operate Nova, as Section 7 describes;
consider possible introductions;
arrange the accommodations and support you have asked for;
take payment, keep financial records, and meet tax and accounting obligations;
send you service and account messages;
send you appointment reminders, including by text message if you have given us a mobile number;
send you our newsletter and event invitations if you have opted in, until you unsubscribe;
operate, secure, and improve our website, portal, and internal systems;
keep the community safe — reviewing reports, investigating harassment, misrepresentation, impersonation, financial solicitation, or unsafe conduct, and enforcing our Community Guidelines Agreement;
keep records we need to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims;
comply with the law.
What we do not do. We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral or targeted advertising. We do not use it to make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects — a person, not a system, makes every decision about who is introduced to whom.
11. When we share information — and what needs your permission
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising.
Legal and safety disclosures. We may disclose information when we are legally required to — a subpoena, court order, or lawful demand — or when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to prevent serious harm to you or someone else, to protect the safety of our members or the public, or to establish or defend legal claims. Where we are permitted to tell you, we will. We cannot promise absolute confidentiality. We are not licensed clinicians, there is no therapist–patient privilege in our work, and a court can compel records we hold.
Business transitions. If the business is sold, merged, or restructured, your information may transfer as part of that transaction. We will require the receiving party to honor this Policy, or give you notice and a meaningful choice before your information is used under a materially different policy.
Aggregated and de-identified information. We may create and use statistics and de-identified information that cannot reasonably be linked back to you.
12. Video calls, recordings, photographs, and gatherings
Video. Consultations, intake conversations, coaching, virtual gatherings, and webinars may take place on Zoom. If Zoom is not accessible or comfortable for you, tell us and we will work out another option.
Recording and AI Companion on calls. We use Zoom AI Companion on coaching sessions and we record some — not all — virtual gatherings. We record only with your agreement, given before the recording starts. Maryland law requires everyone on a call to consent before it is recorded, and several other states where our members live have the same rule.
You may decline to be recorded and still take part. For one-to-one calls, tell us and we will run the call without recording or AI Companion. You can ask us to stop recording partway through, or to delete a recording afterward. A group gathering that is being recorded cannot be un-recorded for one person, but you can keep your camera off, hide your name, or send questions in writing.
In-person gatherings. Currently, in-person gatherings happen most often in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. At every in-person gathering we ask you to sign a liability waiver and a photography consent. Photography consent is your choice, and declining it does not keep you from attending.
Marketing use is a separate permission. Photography consent at a gathering lets us take a picture; it does not let us publish it. We do not use your photograph, video, or words in marketing, on our website, or in testimonials without your separate written permission.
Recordings are personal information. You can ask for a copy, ask us to correct the record, or ask us to delete a recording or transcript under Section 16.
13. Cookies, analytics, and marketing technology
There is no Google Analytics, no Meta or Facebook pixel, no Google Ads tag, and no LinkedIn, TikTok, or Pinterest tracking. We do not build advertising profiles about visitors, we do not target ads based on your visit, and we do not let anyone else collect information about your browsing across other websites through our site.
The member portal runs on Circle and uses the cookies Circle needs to keep you signed in. The Nova chat widget is provided by Chatbase and may set its own cookies or similar storage.
Your choices.
We do not currently use a cookie consent banner. Our own first-party analytics cookies load when you visit. We would rather tell you that plainly than imply a choice we do not offer.
Most browsers let you block or delete cookies. Blocking necessary cookies may keep parts of the site from working.
Whatever your browser settings, you can email hello@joinconstellations.com and ask us not to track your visits.
Global Privacy Control. Our website is not currently configured to detect Global Privacy Control signals automatically. Because we do not sell personal information, do not use it for targeted advertising, and run no third-party tracking, there is no advertising opt-out for a GPC signal to trigger. If you send us an opt-out request in any form, we will honor it.
Do Not Track. Browser "Do Not Track" settings have no agreed standard, and we do not respond to them.
14. Email, text messages, and how we communicate
Service messages. While you are a member, we send messages about your membership. You cannot unsubscribe from these while you are a member, though you can ask us to change how we reach you, and you can turn portal notifications off in your own settings.
Marketing email. We send our newsletter, event invitations, and news through Squarespace Campaigns, only to people who opted in. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link and we honor unsubscribes promptly.
Text messages. If you give us a mobile number when you book, Acuity Scheduling may text you a reminder before your appointment. These are appointment reminders only.
We do not send marketing text messages. If that ever changes, we will ask for your separate written consent first.
You can ask us to stop texting you at any time — reply STOP, or tell us — and it will not affect your booking or your membership.
15. How long we keep information
We keep information only as long as we have a reason to.
Ending your membership does not delete them automatically. You can ask us to delete them at any time, before or after your membership ends; we acknowledge within 2 business days. We may keep a conversation where we need it for a legal obligation, a dispute, or a reported concern, and we will tell you when that applies.
When we delete, we delete from our active systems. Backups are overwritten on their normal cycle, and a copy may persist briefly in a backup before it is cycled out. We may also keep a minimal record showing that you asked to be removed, so we can honor that going forward.
Four different things. People often mean different things by "delete my account," so we treat these separately:
Cancelling your membership ends your access at the end of your paid term. Your records stay with us for the period in the table above.
Deleting your portal account removes your access to the portal. Your posts, comments, and messages may remain visible to the people who could already see them unless you also ask us to remove them. Members cannot delete their own portal account from within the portal — email member@joinconstellations.com and we will do it within five business days, and confirm when it is done.
Requesting deletion of your personal information is broader: it covers our notes, your Nova conversations, and everything else, subject to the limits in Section 16.
Withdrawing an optional consent stops that specific thing without ending your membership.
What other people keep. We cannot retrieve what another member saved, screenshotted, or remembered, and we cannot delete a portal email or a message from someone else's inbox.
16. Your privacy rights and how to use them
We extend the rights below to everyone we serve, in every state, whether or not a particular law requires it of us.
You may ask us to:
Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy in a usable format.
Correct anything inaccurate.
Delete your personal information, subject to the limits below.
Take your information with you in a portable format.
Stop contacting you, or change how we contact you.
Take you out of consideration for introductions, or out of the portal.
Withdraw a permission you gave earlier. Withdrawing permission does not undo sharing that already happened, but it stops future sharing.
Limit how we use sensitive information.
Opt out of any sale of your personal information, targeted advertising, or profiling with legal or similarly significant effects. We do not do these things, so there is nothing to opt out of — but the right is yours if that ever changes.
These rights cover your Nova records too — the contact information held about you in Chatbase, your conversation records, any attachments, and any information derived from a conversation. Send the request to us, not to Chatbase.
We will not penalize you for exercising these rights. If a request means we genuinely cannot do something — for example, you ask us to delete the profile we would need in order to introduce you to anyone — we will tell you plainly and let you decide.
How to make a request. Email member@joinconstellations.com (members) or hello@joinconstellations.com(everyone else) with "Privacy Request" in the subject line. Tell us what you want. You do not need to use legal language, and you do not need to explain why. If writing an email is hard, ask us and we will take your request another way.
How we check it is you. Before we act on a request about specific information, we need to be reasonably sure it is really you, because what we hold is sensitive and giving it to the wrong person could cause real harm. We will usually verify by matching your request against information we already have. For higher-risk requests we may ask for more. We will not ask for more than we need.
Someone acting for you. You may use an authorized agent or representative. We will ask for written proof of their authority, signed by you, and we may also confirm the request with you directly. If a court has appointed a guardian or conservator, we will ask for the order.
How long we take. We will respond within 45 days. If we need more time, we will tell you within those 45 days and may take up to 45 additional days. There is no charge for a reasonable request. A request to delete a Nova conversation is acknowledged within 2 business days.
If we say no — appeals. If we decline your request, we will explain why in writing and tell you how to appeal. To appeal, reply to our response or email us with "Privacy Appeal" in the subject line. We will respond in writing within 60 days. If we deny your appeal, we will give you a way to contact the attorney general in your state.
A note on deletion. We honor deletion requests, but we cannot always delete everything. We may keep information we need to meet a legal or tax obligation, to resolve a dispute, to enforce our agreements, to keep the community safe — including records of a safety report about someone — or to remember that you asked not to be contacted. When we cannot delete something, we will tell you what we are keeping and why.
17. Adults only
Constellations is for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 or permit anyone under 18 to enroll, use the portal, or attend our gatherings. If we learn we have collected information from someone under 18, we delete it. If you believe a minor's information has been submitted to us, email hello@joinconstellations.com.
18. If you were part of the earlier Constellations program
Constellations previously ran through a different website and portal. The program has been redesigned. If you were part of the earlier program, here is what that means.
The operator has not changed in substance. The same person runs Constellations now as before; the business is now organized as Inez Harrington, LLC.
Information you gave us under the earlier program stays where it was collected, under the privacy policy that applied then. It does not move into the new program automatically.
When you enroll in the redesigned program, this Policy governs everything from that point. We will ask you before carrying anything over from your earlier records, and you can tell us not to.
Enrolling in the new program is not permission for new uses of your old information.
Permissions you gave before still mean what they meant. We will confirm those with you at enrollment rather than assume they carry over.
Several things are new, including member messaging and Connection Requests (Section 6), Nova (Section 7), and Zoom AI Companion on coaching calls and gatherings (Section 12). Please read those sections even if you have been with us for a while.
19. Where your information is held, and security
Your information is held in the United States, in these systems.
SystemWhat it holds
Squarespace
joinconstellations.com, website forms, and marketing email
Acuity Scheduling
Consultation, intake, and coaching bookings, and appointment reminders
Circle
The member portal — profiles, posts, comments, direct messages and Connection Requests, spaces, gatherings, and membership and access records
Chatbase (with its hosting providers and the AI model provider behind it)
Your conversations with Nova, the account identifier attached to them, and the related technical information in Section 7
Notion
The Welcome Form, safety reports, and our internal member records and notes
Zoom
Consultations, intake conversations, coaching, and virtual gatherings, and — where you have agreed — recordings, transcripts, and summaries
Claude (Anthropic) and Notion AI
Our own records and drafts, while we work on them
SignWell
Signed Membership Agreements, Community Guidelines Agreements, and Support Person Authorizations
Stripe
Payment processing and transaction records
Google Workspace
Email, documents, and files
Eventbrite / Meetup
Registrations for in-person gatherings we list there
Our safeguards. We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards: multi-factor authentication on our business accounts, limiting access to people who need it, an invitation-only portal, turning off search-engine indexing of member profiles, turning off member uploads in posts, comments, and messages, turning off Circle's AI features, and using established vendors with their own security programs. We also keep Constellations member information in a workspace separate from our other business records.
Nova records specifically. Nova conversations are available only to authorized personnel with a legitimate need. Staff accounts in Chatbase require two-factor authentication, and permissions are assigned by role. Where a conversation is exported to look into a concern, the export is stored only in approved locations and deleted on the same schedule as the records it belongs to. Nova transcripts are not downloaded into ordinary email, onto personal devices, or into unrelated databases. Our access and deletion procedures for Nova records are documented internally.
Everyone who works with us signs a confidentiality agreement before they can encounter member information.
No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee that your information will never be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. Email in particular is not a secure channel. If a breach affecting your personal information occurs, we will notify you and the appropriate authorities as required by Maryland law and the law of your state.
20. Where information is processed, and visitors outside the United States
Constellations is based in the United States. Our systems and records are located here, and that includes your Nova conversations, which Chatbase and its providers process and store in the United States.
Our membership is offered to adults in the United States only. Our website can be reached from anywhere. If you visit from outside the United States or send us a message, the information you provide will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws differ from those in your country.
21. State-specific information
Different states give their residents different rights. We extend the core rights in Section 16 to everyone. Law checked September 6, 2026.
Washington and Nevada. We are not currently able to enroll members who live in Washington or Nevada. Both states have consumer health data laws with requirements we are still working through, and disability information is central to what members share with us. This is a decision about getting those requirements right, not about the people who live there. We also do not use Nevada's public sex offender registry for any purpose, including the Support Person search in Section 9, because Nevada restricts the use of that information by a business.
Washington's My Health My Data Act and Nevada's consumer health data law (SB 370, codified in NRS Chapter 603A) regulate health-related information held by businesses that are not healthcare providers, including information about a person's health or disability status. These laws apply without regard to business size or revenue. If you move to Washington or Nevada during a paid term, please tell us and we will talk through your options.
Maryland residents. The Maryland Online Data Privacy Act took effect October 1, 2025 and applies to processing activities beginning April 1, 2026. It gives Maryland consumers rights of access, correction, deletion, and portability, and imposes unusually strict limits on sensitive data: a controller may not collect, process, or share sensitive data unless doing so is strictly necessary to provide or maintain a product or service the consumer requested, and the sale of sensitive data is prohibited outright. Whether Constellations meets its applicability thresholds depends on how many consumers' data we process, and we are below them. We apply its core protections regardless. Maryland residents may contact the Maryland Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division about a privacy concern.
California residents. You have rights to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information and of certain uses of sensitive personal information. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by California law. We run no advertising pixels, no third-party analytics, and no cross-context behavioral advertising of any kind. You may designate an authorized agent, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.
Residents of other states with comprehensive privacy laws — including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Florida, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island — have similar rights of access, correction, deletion, portability, and opt-out, and in most cases a right to appeal a denial. Section 16 tells you how to use all of them.
Whether every one of these laws applies to Constellations depends on thresholds a business our size does not meet.We have chosen to offer these protections to everyone rather than sort our members by state.
22. Changes to this Policy
We may update this Policy. When we do, we will change the "Last Updated" date at the top and post the new version here.
If we make a material change — one that meaningfully affects how we use or share your information — we will give you notice before it takes effect, by email to members where we have your address and by a notice in the portal and on our website. If a change would apply your information to a genuinely new purpose, we will ask for your consent rather than assume it from your continued membership.
We keep prior versions of this Policy and will provide one on request.
23. Questions and complaints
Members: member@joinconstellations.com. Everyone else: hello@joinconstellations.com. Or write to us at the address in Section 2.
If you are unhappy with how we handled a privacy request, tell us — we would rather hear it from you. You also have the right to contact the attorney general in your state. Maryland residents may contact the Maryland Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division.