working with you to design & facilitate Dialogue processes - so you can have the conversations that matter

Process design

• Are you grappling with a complex challenge and need to bring a diverse group together to discover the optimal way forward?

• Are you experiencing the pain, anger and confusion of sustained conflict and need space in which you can bravely engage each other towards healing connection, understanding deeper needs, and (re-)establishing healthy relationships?

• Are you in a system mired in intractable conflict, involving multiple groups and multiple issues, which are all so entangled that no one knows what to do?

• Are you wanting to cultivate the potential for a desirable future that you cannot quite envision – but know that bringing the right people together could spark the creativity and relationships needed to co-create something wonderful?

I can help you think through how to design a process that can effectively engage your whole system. I am happy to coach and advise you. Or I can work more actively with you to assess the context with key stakeholders, hone in on the purpose and goals, and help conceptualize the change process. This might include such elements as forming an advisory group, preparatory meetings, informal dialogue sessions, trainings and workshops, as well more formal forums for deliberation and decision-making. Depending on the needs, a one-off event may be the best approach, for now. Or I can accompany you through a more complex, multi-stage process.

Facilitation

With decades of experience facilitating, I have led meetings ranging in size from 2 to 2,000 people – in settings as diverse as open-air forest retreats to the UN General Assembly Hall, and in countless community centers, hotels, and conference rooms around the world. I am flexible!

I work with you to design meetings that will make a difference. I have learned the importance of ensuring everyone is aligned around what they want to accomplish, why it matters and how it will move them forward. After agreeing the overall purpose, goals and specific meeting objectives, I then work with you to design a process agenda to help achieve the group’s purpose. I am able to work with you to adapt if new needs emerge. And sometimes what is called for is willingness to experiment our way forward together, responding to emerging insights and opportunities to grow in generative ways.

Sometimes your main purpose is dialogue, a space where each person can share openly and listen deeply, developing the renewed respect and shared understanding needed to break out of the stuck patterns of conflict and systemic exclusion. Sometimes your main purpose is to generate innovative thinking or to jointly analyze complex challenges and generate creative options through deliberation. And sometimes the group needs to make the best decisions possible – one that brings on board all the key stakeholders rather than dividing them. Whether your group needs dialogue, deliberation, decision-making – or some combination of these – I can work with you to articulate the questions that matter and to craft processes to engage them. I am sensitive to power imbalances, systemic exclusion, and justice dynamics: I work to address them through both the design and facilitation.

I seek to create a warm, clear and constructive atmosphere where everyone can to shift into a creative and collaborative dynamic. I bring a trauma-informed awareness into the design and facilitation of processes to help create possibilities for healing experiences through dialogue. I seek to be a calm, non-anxious presence holding space that empowers each person to engage in ways that meet their needs. Each participant needs to be able to contribute freely and be treated with respect and dignity. Quiet ones should feel encouraged to speak and prominent speakers encouraged to listen. This can involve giving priority to relationship building and creating group norms and values before diving into the outcomes oriented deliberations. Creating a conducive atmosphere also requires paying special attention to the venue, room layout and hospitality – as well as meticulous planning of logistics to ensure that everything flows smoothly.

I am comfortable actively facilitating and chart writing for the whole group. Yet I tend to use process methods that enable high participation (sometimes called ‘liberating structures’) that de-center me as the ‘up-front’ facilitator. Either way, I am responsive to what is happening in the group and can quickly adapt as needed.

Some of the process methods I draw upon in designing highly participatory processes include: Appreciative Inquiry, Circle Processes, Future Search, Open Space Technology, Polarity Management, Scenario Planning, World Café and many others. I infuse these process with deep awareness of conflict dynamics and restorative practices to support transformation.

some of my facilitation experiences

I have worked with many different kinds of groups on many different kinds of issues, including:

• Conflict transformation within systems, including within religious denominations on gender and sexual identity; within school systems grappling with ‘culture wars’ dynamics.

• Community dialogue, including for racial justice and healing, addressing contentious ‘culture war’ dynamics, and for envisioning desirable futures.

• Restorative healing processes, bringing together those who have been harmed through conflict to support clearness, connection and pathways towards a preferred future relationship.

• Inter- and intra-ethnic peacebuilding in conflict-torn societies around the world.

• Strategic planning, visioning and organizational development for non-profits, universities, government agencies, and community groups.

• Policy dialogue with government agencies, politicians, experts and civil society groups.

Major conferences and large group processes

• Rockingham County Public Schools Community Dialogue - lead resource person and facilitator of multi-stage framework for large scale community dialogue to address ‘culture wars’ polarization around a range of contentious issues. Click here to listen to a feature about it on NPR’s All Things Considered.

• Mennonite Church USA’s “Future Church Summit” – lead designer and facilitator of a multi-phase process of church renewal leading to an interactive multi-stakeholder dialogue for more than 700 delegates.

• Global conference at UN headquarters “From Reaction to Prevention: the Roles of Civil Society in Preventing Armed Conflict and Building Peace”—process design, preparation and facilitation of plenary and large panel sessions of conference involving more than 2,000 participants from civil society, governments, and IGOs, New York, July 2005

• European Regional Conference of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict—facilitated a consensus building process for more than 250 people to agree an Action Agenda.

• “Tools for Peace”—lead facilitator of this international, inter-religious peace conference.

• “Role of the EU in the South Caucasus” – lead facilitator of conference for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• ‘Leading Together’ – whole of system, faculty-staff deliberations of Eastern Mennonite University’s strategic plan for 300+

• University of Virginia Student Affairs Division retreat “Processing the Tragedy & Finding a Way Forward” after campus shooting

Dialogue and joint-analysis

Policy dialogue: I have facilitated dozens of seminars for policy makers, political party representatives, civil society representatives and analysts – many involving participants from across conflict divides – to explore various issues in conflict prevention and learning from peace processes. The following are some examples:

• With Berghof Foundation, I have served as dialogue facilitator for the Emerging Leaders Network to address democratization, multiculturalism and Kurdish issues in Turkey (2023-2024). I also co-designed and co-facilitated a seminar for the Afghanistan High Peace Council in Jakarta November 2017 and served as resource person and process designer for seminar with Afghanistan’s Provincial Peace Councils, Kabul October 2018.

• With Hope International, I designed and facilitated a series of high level inter- and intra-ethnic dialogue processes for ethnic leaders in Myanmar seeking to determine their strategy for transitional processes that was grounded in a longer term vision of development, 2009-2011.

• With Minority Rights Group International, I developed series of dialogues for governmental and civil society representatives from five East European countries on key problems in majority/minority relations and wrote published reports of the outcomes, 1996-1998.

• With Building Bridges for the Greater Good, where I am a founding Board member, co-created and facilitated an ongoing series of community dialogues on race, history, heritage and community building in Staunton, Virginia, 2017-ongoing.

• With Mennonite Church USA, I designed and facilitated dialogue for an advisory group to develop recommendations for the Church on the status of LGBTQ people in the Church and wider governance questions, 2019.

• With Church of the Brethren, USA, dialogue to develop guidelines to create more inclusive and welcoming youth conference.

• With the Shenandoah Riverkeeper, I designed and facilitated multi-stakeholder process to discover common ground around how to promote a healthy Shenandoah River and a vibrant farm economy, 2018-2019.

Strategic planning, retreats & meeting facilitation

I frequently work with organizations to facilitate their strategic planning processes, retreats, and meetings - including for:

• Berghof Foundation

• Bridging Divides Initiative (Princeton University)

• Conciliation Resources

• Consortium Initiative on Nagorny-Karabakh

• Eastern Mennonite University; School of Graduate Studies; EMU Enrollment Department; Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite Seminary

• Free Tibet Campaign

• Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

• Haiti Advocacy Working Group

• Nyein Foundation (Shalom) Myanmar

• Jackson Mississippi Public Schools Restorative Justice Initiative

• Oil Change International

• PLATFORM London

• Saferworld

• Shenandoah Green