I support and encourage the leadership shifts that are needed to achieve community resilience. I work to create the conditions in which people and organizations can be in effective service of a cause greater than themselves. As leadership is about harnessing energy so that we can accomplish what we set ourselves to do, my learning in my master’s program, Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, was about the creation of necessary space to fuel co-creation, engagement, impact, and influence, so that we are creating the future that we want to inhabit together. Creating the space that builds trust and honors courage and risk-taking, and that allows for innovation and creativity to emerge.
My career has spanned the realms of program and workshop design, facilitation, leadership development, and coaching while working in the fields of philanthropy and food systems. I began my career co-founding and co-directing Puente a la Salud Comunitaria in Oaxaca, Mexico, an organization focused on public health, sustainable agriculture, and economic development, all through working with amaranth, a grain native to Mesoamerica and outlawed with the Spanish conquest. I have worked with numerous social justice and leadership development organizations since then.
As I deepened my experience with leadership development and social change organizations, I realized that what I wanted to more deeply explore was the concept of inner and outer alignment of values and action. I began to study methods that incorporated both of these realms. Through that exploration, I am now deeply engaged with the Art of Hosting, the Center for Courage and Renewal, and the Authentic Leadership Center at Naropa University, calling upon these methods in my work as well as my life.
Originally from San Francisco, I studied at Middlebury College in Vermont for my BA in Latin American Culture and Politics. After working for several years, I returned in the fall of 2013 to study a Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability in Sweden. I have lived for five years in different countries Latin America, and I relish travel, farm life, my homeland of California, and good cooking and food.