Facilitating Transitions
I love supporting people, organizations and communities finding their way through the fog of complex transitions and conflicts. What has brought me to supporting such deep and vulnerable work?
I am deeply committed to breaking the cycles of trauma and violence, which is rooted in my early life experiences. I’m a survivor of early childhood abuse. After many years of ongoing conscious healing work I moved from a state of victim to creator of my own life. This shift in perspective helped me unearth the gifts in my trauma, and my calling to help others transform conflicts into powerful, generative solutions and ways of relating.
Both thanks to my privilege and the choices I have made, I got to travel and live in different parts of the world. Over the past 22 years I have lived in Italy, Belgium, the UK and Egypt, and have traveled all over Europe, Africa, North and South America. I speak 3 languages fluently and 2 reasonably well. I have worked and played with people from all walks of life. I can relate to pretty much all people and quickly adapt to a new context. I am also mother of a toddler, who among many things is teaching me to embrace emergence and constant change.
I am on a lifelong journey of undoing white body supremacy within myself and actively practicing anti-racism. I came to this work through traveling and experiencing both a deep sense of love and unity, as well as separation and otherness. Although the latter always felt artificial to me – man made.
In 2002, on my first trip to Mama Africa, I was part of a youth delegation to the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. I ended up on the Soweto Mountain of Hope, at a gathering between international delegates to the Summit and children from the surrounding community. We spent a few hours skillfully guided by facilitators from a network called Pioneers of Change simply connecting in our shared humanity. By the end of our encounter everyone was lit up and the love in the room was palpable. In that moment, I decided I would dedicate my life to this work of creating spaces where we can experience our shared humanity beyond boundaries. And so I have.
I am a respectful outsider, a calming force, who can shine a bright light, weave connections and build bridges. I am the person you want by your side when you have some tough challenges ahead.
A certified conflict mediator and integral facilitator and I hold an MA in Leadership with concentration Peace Building and Conflict Transformation from Saint Mary’s College of California and an MA in International Communication from the International University of Perugia in Italy.
Project examples
2018-2020 I worked with Burning Man Project and co-lead, designed and facilitated a multi-year cultural direction setting process in several phases: phase 0 – co-creation with leadership, phase 1 – community engagement and co-creating 5-10 year vision and phase 2 co-designing operational transformations with diverse stakeholders.
2018 I have worked with tech company on a long term culture change process triggered by several sexual harassment reports. The process included company wide listening sessions, leadership support, including a retreat and the set up of employee resource groups. I am also working with an established non profit on a collective vision building process engaging their global community, that will inform new policy and practice of the organization.
2017 I supported an urban high school in Oakland with action research on equity and inclusion, and facilitated multiple collaborative gatherings and strategy retreats for non profit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.2006 – 2012 I supported the European Union Institutions with stakeholder engagement for strategy and policy development and participatory leadership development.
2016 I worked on the National Listening Tour on a Culture of Health for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with Bob, Kate and Zulma, read more here. 2006 – 2011 I was part of co-creating and facilitating Tasting the Future – a multi-stakeholder lab on food sustainability.
2015 I worked on two large stakeholder engagement processes on ICT & education in South Africa and a national skills development strategy for Tanzania with their national governments supported by the World Bank.
2014 I was part of the team co-creating Labcraft, a book on social innovation labs collaboratively written by 12 innovation lab leaders in four days during a book sprint. I also facilitated several collaborative book writing workshops.
2011-2013 I lived in post-revolutionary Egypt, where I played a supportive role in the emergence of the social innovation eco-system.
In 2010 I worked with various companies to collaboratively design spaces so they support a more engaging customer experience, generative team culture, meaningful interactions.
2009 I facilitated conversations about the contribution of the arts and culture to the climate change debate at COP15 in Copenhagen.