Facilitation & Consulting

“My consulting work blends social innovation, human-centred design, and community organizing with developmental evaluation approaches.”

Expert Facilitation

Skillful facilitation is the heart of my practice, creating opportunities for dialogue, mutual learning, effective sense-making, increased alignment, and better decisions.

I have facilitated over 500 projects ranging from team-building and governance sessions; to facilitating action labs to prototype and test social policies; to working with a multi-stakeholder team to redesign the contracting system for Human Services; to leading high-stakes public participation processes on topics such as patient engagement, the opioid epidemic, suicide prevention, inclusion for LGBTQ+ communities, and affordable housing and houselessness.

As part of my commitment to community-engaged work, I teach a graduate course on the theory and practice of facilitation in the Master of Arts in Community Engagement Program (University of Alberta).

Strategic Thinking

In an environment characterized by complexity and uncertainty, the ability to think strategically, to make sense of shifting conditions, and to assess what is working and not working is vital for resilience and adaptability.

I specialize in facilitating processes that stimulate strategic thinking and produce “narratives of change” that include evaluative components.

These strategic plans are clear about underlying assumptions, including:

What is our ambition? What would need to be true for this strategy to be successful? How would we know if we achieved our desired results?

Recent strategic planning clients include: CMHA-Edmonton, Olds College, School of Public Health (University of Alberta), Legal Aid Alberta, Edmonton Seniors Coordinating Council., Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues.

Social Innovation

Human-centred design (HCD) principles and systems thinking approaches can help shape interventions that are relevant and impactful for real people.

My expertise with social innovation, developmental evaluation, and participatory methods opens up new avenues for positive change.

I have enriched my innovation practice by using documentary photography, digital storytelling, and arts-based methods to expand the possibilities for critical reflection, dialogue, and deliberation. I have facilitated workshops using these methods in South Africa, Kenya, Sweden, Tanzania, Pakistan, Haiti, and the USA (Louisiana).

Recent work includes: Supporting a social innovation lab to scale up the adoption of regenerative agriculture in Alberta; and facilitating an initiative to address food security in Lac La Biche.

Collective Action

As a former community organizer, I have extensive experience facilitating citizen-led initiatives to tackle a range of social justice issues, This includes designing processes to establish and strengthen coalitions, networks, and collective impact efforts to address complex challenges.

Recent work includes: Supporting the growth of a network of nonprofits serving seniors; and facilitating the formation of an alliance addressing equity and diversity in the forest sector.

I am also the Academic Content Creator and lead instructor for an undergraduate course on engaging with division and addressing polarization, which explores methods and frameworks to support dialogue and effective collaboration.