LaShauna Austria is the owner and principal operator of Seeds of Change Consulting and Kindred Seedlings Farm. She possesses a demonstrated record of collaborating with rural communities and both faith-based and secular organizations to address race, food justice, land ownership, and equity issues. Building on her substantial experience in leadership, management, and administrative roles with for-profit…
Jason Biehl is an anti-racist educator, born and raised in D.C., with over 20 years of experience working in education with youth from diverse backgrounds. In 2017, he founded Change The Narrative, and works collaboratively as an educational consultant to further racial equity within organizations and schools. He believes in the benefit of “interrogating whiteness” work…
Darren Jones possesses several years of experience in multiple roles within higher education and education technology. In his roles, he designed learning programs and leadership curricula, facilitated leadership training, and provided leadership, personal, and academic coaching to college students. Darren is the Principal Coach & Consultant for Momentum Coaching & Consulting, LLC and serves as an…
With 15 years of experience as a transformational project management leader, Jomil Bell has been a high-impact performance coach, focused on driving connectivity, enhancing the employee experience, change management, and building culture. As a DEIB facilitator, she designs coaching programs for women in leadership and executives to navigate change and scale growth. As the creator of the…
Jessica Fan is a systems change consultant with expertise in designing learning experiences to spread innovative practices, tools, and mindsets. With a background in human-centered design, technology, and knowledge strategy, Jessica creates learning platforms and programs that are outcomes-based, action-oriented, and scalable. While at Reos Partners, she was the lead designer of the Emergency Aid Roadmap (funded…
Keesa is an award-winning human-centered-systems designer who focuses on equity and access issues in Food systems. She is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Penny Stamps School of Art and Design school where she was awarded honors in sustainability and design leadership. Her research paradigm is centered in transformative practices for social impact….
Beatriz Coningham has a doctorate degree in Leadership, Learning and Change from the George Washington University in Washington DC. She has lived, studied, traveled, and worked in different countries in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While living in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, she co-founded and led a private…
Cherice Hopkins is the founder and CEO of In Harmony, LLC. Her specialty is helping organizations enhance their capacity to fulfill their missions in a manner meaningfully inclusive of diverse communities (both within their organizations and among the clients they serve). Cherice believes practicing equity and inclusion is a way of life and embraces the joy…
Cheryl Shah’s 20+ years of corporate experience have led her to the conclusion that there must be a better way to lead, live and work. Her extensive work experience makes her an accessible and empathetic speaker and facilitator who can connect with the daily challenges of leaders and help uncover their potential to lead with extraordinary…
Joseph McIntyre is a facilitator, process artist, systems thinker, and seeker focused on supporting groups to create a more just and sustainable future. He serves as the principal at 10 Circles Collaboration Consulting where he focuses on facilitation of complex system change efforts, leadership development, and coaching. Joseph formally began facilitating groups in 2001. From 2006…
We are expert facilitators from around the world united by our passion for making collaboration work when “messy human stuff”—egos, cultural differences, miscommunication—create silos that put your mission at risk.
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Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira (she/her) is a collective intelligence enthusiast, master facilitator and technical strategist with over 25 years of experience designing and facilitating participatory meetings and convenings for high-performing teams and organizational collaboratives including FHI 360, Ipas, MSI Reproductive Choices, the Urgent Action Fund, the World Health Organization and UNFPA among others.
Prior to consulting, Alex spent 11 years advancing access to safe abortion at Ipas where she partnered with global teams and led organization-wide initiatives as a Senior Advisor for Technical Innovation and Excellence, the Associate Director for Community
Engagement and Policy Advocacy and as the Senior Advisor for Organizational Learning. Alex has also served as the Philanthropic Partnerships Officer for the Astraea Foundation, as a Global Research & Policy Advisor for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (now OutRight Action International) and as a Program Fellow with the Global Fund for Women. She has served on the board of directors of the Safe Abortion Action Fund (UK), The Stone House (NC), the Third Wave Foundation (NY) and Resource Generation (NY).
Alex has designed and led over 70 high-stakes participatory workshops, retreats and convenings for over 2000 stakeholders across Africa, Asia and North America. She is among the most seasoned facilitators, globally, of Abortion Values Clarification for Action & Transformation (VCAT) Workshops where she has led community members, activists, health care providers, ministry officials, multilateral donors and embassies—all with wide ranging positions on abortion—through a process that shifts their orientation from one of contentious debate to an opportunity for empathy and principled collaboration to advance bodily autonomy. She has trained and mentored over 150 emerging facilitators
and team leaders globally on designing and facilitating inclusive, liberatory and participatory meetings.
With two decades of experience advancing equity and justice through philanthropy and global health programming, Alex approaches facilitation as a strategic opportunity to practice high-impact, equity-based collaboration skills that live on beyond our convenings. Alex brings skillful attention to transforming personal, interpersonal and systemic barriers to meaningful participation. She is passionate about helping groups connect, navigate principled disagreement, prioritize, focus, and align towards powerful actions that advance justice, joy and wellbeing in the world.
Alex is a recipient of the Wildacres Leadership Initiative William C. Friday Fellowship (2014-2016), holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and French Literature from Connecticut College and a master’s degree in International Affairs with a focus on gender, sexuality and international human rights from Columbia University. As the first member of her family to attend university, she is humbled to stand on the shoulders of self-taught entrepreneurs, savvy dissidents, survivors of Portuguese dictatorship and lovers of learning. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, in the Southeastern United States, in a beloved cross-class, multi-racial intentional community of gorgeously imperfect humans trying to build deep interdependence.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, CHANGE MANAGEMENT, CULTURE CHANGE TEAMBUILDING
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Systems change, Change management, Culture change
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Change management; Culture change; Strategy; Teambuilding
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, STRATEGY SYSTEMS CHANGE, PRODUCT OR SERVICE DESIGN
Ángel Zambrano Cobo is Communications Specialist at UFacilitate. As a communicator and cultural manager based in Caracas, Venezuela, he collaborates with groups and organizations that seek to build community and generate change through projects of social innovation, cultural action and human rights.
He is also a founding member of Ciudad Laboratorio (@ciudlab), a civil association that seeks to influence urban experience and transformation through observation, art and pedagogy. In 2017 he was part of the founding team of Labo Ciudadano, a social innovation lab focused on human rights, social fabric and nonviolent mobilization. Until mid-2022 he was co-general coordinator of this organization, and today he is part of its advisory board.
Leigh has an extensive experience in business process management. She has worked with BP and KPO business that caters to international professionals through identifying methods to discover, mode, analyze, measure, improve, and optimize business processes.
She started as a customer care representative while studying in college and after earning a bachelor’s degree in business management from Central Philippine University, Leigh worked as a virtual assistant to US professionals. By this time, she already assisted top-tier management with company materials, workflows, training and finance. Working her way up to the management level, Leigh handled different teams in fields like real estate, medical, construction and cleaning.
Leigh also has experience working with sales and marketing as a sales executive closing service deals and also had experience working as an events support generalist to a KPO company that provides shared services across the globe.
Aparna is Chief Facilitator Builder at UFacilitate, helping to select and onboard high-quality facilitators to the UFacilitate family. For the last 7 years, she has been working with early growth stage impact startups across India, South Africa, and Latin America, helping them identify the business models and value propositions, create a growth strategy, raise funds and measure their impact. During her time working with education nonprofits in India, she learned about the critical role that good facilitation plays in ensuring meaningful engagements and also got trained by the Facilitators Network Singapore. While working with an accelerator in Latin America, she created a facilitator’s handbook for online and offline engagements, equipping the reader with the basic tools and thinking steps.
Aparna’s aim through UFacilitate is to take the simple handbook many steps ahead and help leaders in the impact space innovate effectively, make decisions, and build projects that involve multiple stakeholders and have large-scale impact.
