Expert Facilitation

Effective facilitation is the heart of my work. I host groups in facilitative processes that may be:

  • Strategic: collaboratively identifying and working towards common goals;

  • Connecting: bonding and building trust towards better performance;

  • Transformative: exploring and transforming limiting beliefs individually and in systems

  • Teaching: designing and delivering curriculum on a variety of topics, but especially around culture change and group dynamics;

or some combination of these four.

“Christine is a lifelong learner who brings a substantial repertoire of tools and systematic approach to designing and facilitating group processes that address complex and intractable problems. Her specialty is bridging between people who are divided; for example, lovingly guiding white people to look at what’s hard to look at like systematic racism. She’s able to do this because of her deep respect and compassion for people and their process of learning and change. Even (and especially) when she’s immersed in serious work, she helps others work from a place of joy. While she has tried and true tools, her approach is never formulaic, it’s all particular to the people and circumstances, always working with the emergent.”

Isoke Femi, Minister and Maven of Transformative Learning at GLIDE

Participatory Strategy

I partner with organizations to distill and advance strategy. This can mean leading diverse stakeholders through a multi-month process to develop consensus on a new organizational direction, or working with a small team to hone existing program strategy. The end result is the same: clear direction that is both inspiring and implementable.

“Christine is a highly skilled strategic partner. Her facilitation skills are superb along with her listening and ability to effectively manage a consulting assignment seamlessly. She led the strategic planning process for our 32 member team and 18 member Board of Directors. Over the 8 months of the project, she gathered information about us, listened, did external research and keep the project moving on time and on budget. The project ended with Christine leading our day long Board retreat. Our resulting Strategic Framework and Strategy Screen documents were excellent and endorsed by our Board as our 3 year strategic guide.”

Roxanne Jerde, President/CEO - Community Foundation of Sarasota County

Photo by Olivia Smartt

Photo by Olivia Smartt

Stakeholder Networks & Leadership Programs

I love to help design, build, and grow networks of leaders to work together on complex goals: reducing regional food insecurity; transforming the way foundations invest their money; advancing equity in the conservation sector. It may seem simple to bring leaders together around a common problem, but there are tried and true methods to make networks powerful, including effective curriculum. Some of my favorite work is building these networks-- also called communities of practice -- to cultivate connection, innovation and productivity.

Here’s a list of select leadership programs and communities of practice I’ve designed and/or led:

“Christine was essential to developing, planning, and implementing our community of practice on food insecurity. She was critical in big-picture thinking about strategy and the scope of what we could accomplish in a three-year period. She helped us build agendas, tailor meeting topics, facilitate group discussion and decision-making with twenty-three community organizations. This decision-making involved multiple working group sessions focused on specific topics and moving from ideas to an action plan. In short, this project would have been impossible without her. She has also provided insight into her theoretical framework and collaborated on manuscript and report writing deliverables for the community of practice.”

Marissa Spear, Program Evaluator, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Community Health and Research

Coaching & Advising

I offer executive coaching and advising to individual leaders and teams and coaching mentorship for individuals who are looking to grow their facilitation skills, or support running adult learning programs. In both cases, I take a participant-driven and results-focused approach that helps identify goals, remove personal blocks, and tap new resources to make progress. Learn more about coaching options here.

“I recommend Christine to anyone who wants to better understand their own path, especially those who feel they're at a fork in the road or stagnant. She is unbelievably good at helping people get unstuck by tuning into themselves more fully.”

Dave Kramer, Director of Green Programs at Boston Green Academy

I often combine the offerings above in packages that fit my client’s needs. Please reach out and we’ll chat about how I can start to help you and your team get where you want to go.