I believe that successful facilitations emerge from creating organized templates, leaning into growth, and honoring the humanity in others.

I am an experienced facilitator of creative projects and strategic planning, both in person and virtually. I’ve led design-thinking and strategy workshops for 10-100 participants both nationally and internationally. Whether in short workshops or long-term coaching, I can guide groups with little background in human centered design through ideation, dot voting, service blueprinting, journey mapping, or pilot planning.

I’ve also facilitated short experiential trainings on storytelling, creative problem solving, and feedback. In one multi-month innovation project, I coached employees through research, synthesis, ideation, prototyping, and scaling. Their final solution was adopted by their HR team.

A few organizations that I’ve facilitated for: Experience Institute, University of Chicago Public Policy and Technology Master’s Program, Blue Cross Blue Shield, 18 Coffees, National League of Cities, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

A few example facilitations:

National League of Cities: Developing city-specific strategies for post-education success

My role: I co-designed and co-facilitated the 2.5-day workshop

About: The National League of Cities provides technical support to cities addressing complex challenges. The organization supports cities across the country in their endeavors to improve the lives of residents.

Six cities were selected to participate in a recent initiative to address basic needs to improve post-secondary and workforce success. Each city team had representatives from higher education, economic development, and city hall.

Approach: Each city had a strong foundation of data outlining the specific challenges and opportunity areas for their city to address basic needs to improve post secondary success. The workshop used design methods to help teams apply a human-centered lends to the data so that they could create an actionable strategic plan.

• Systems Mapping

• Ideation

• Evaluation: 2x2 matrix, dot voting

• Strategic Planning

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Aligning mission and goals for strategic planning

My role: I developed the Mural templates and co-facilitated two virtual workshops with executive staff.

About: The executive team of the organization wanted help with their strategic planning. Each leader had their individual goals, and my role was to bring alignment to the mission, vision, individual goals, and shared goals.

Approach: We used creative methods as a way for leaders to think differently about strategic planning and to drive their engagement. We used personal storytelling as the basis of a vision alignment and then used visualization methods to facilitate project prioritization.

• Storytelling

• Brainstorming and prioritization

• Elevator pitch alignment

• Future service development

• Reflection

18 Coffees and Haight Brand: Designing systems for progressive activism

My role: I scoped the challenge, developed materials, and facilitated the full day workshop for change makers.

About: 18 Coffees is a strategy and innovation consultancy with community partners who are collaborators and co-conspirators in the work of helping mission-driven companies get a foothold in the future. Haight Brand (representing Chance the Rapper) partnered with 18 Coffees to host a one-day workshop with community partners to ideate on systems to support progressive political activism.

Approach: The community partners each brought unique expertise—marketing to strategy and politics—but limited experience in design methods. My goal was to lead people through the design challenge and develop potential ideas to implement.

• Interviewing Stakeholders

• Synthesizing insights

• Ideation

• Service Blueprinting