Values and Approach

My work centers:

  • Deep change and transformation rather than superficial shifts;

  • Concrete skill-building for effective collaboration;

  • Friendliness, warmth, joy, levity, humor, and practicality;

  • Engaging, collaborative, and interactive processes;

  • Directness and real talk, not beating around the bush;

  • A recognition of nuance and complexity; the stories of our organizational dynamics are not always simple;

  • An investment in healing relational dynamics;

  • Valuing group process while landing tangible goals.

I bring an intersectional analysis of power to all of the work that I do; I believe deeply that dynamics related to race, gender, class, dis/ability, colonization, culture, age and generation are always operating inside of organizations - and that working to understand and address these dynamics profoundly expands our potential for effective and transformative work.

Nonprofits are currently a vehicle for a great deal of powerful social change and direct service work. At the same time, the nonprofit structure exerts pressure on groups to accept and uphold status quo practices that limit us and do not serve liberatory values or movements. It is possible to radically revision many of these practices, and find new ways of doing things that serve our values and goals; and, it takes conscious and focused intention to reshape structures away from the status quo.

Our movements, and our world, are in a time of intense upheaval. Climate catastrophe, genocide, an ongoing pandemic, expanding religious nationalism and white supremacy, and extractive economies teetering towards collapse have created conditions that require deep commitment and resilience from our movements. Our organizing and change work must be prefigurative: we need to build power, skills, structure, and organization that reflect the liberation we are working towards.

None of our organizations function in a vacuum; we impact and are impacted by our broader networks and communities, the institutions we interface with, and the structures we exist within. Effective organizational change work must acknowledge these connections and create strategies to address them.