Leading Change:

Building Our Collective Capacity

Our world needs committed leaders who are equipped to navigate uncertainty and complexity, facilitate connection, and produce powerful results, even in the face of significant challenges.

The Leading Change intensive seeks to answer this call by training participants to facilitate meaningful and impactful collective interventions, fostering a network of resilient, healthy, and socially-just businesses, communities, and systems.

Program

The Leading Change team, in partnership with the Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation, is excited to offer your community an innovative leadership training focused on facilitation. We believe a good leader is a facilitator; a host. The kinds of participatory processes and mindful listening that we will teach are essential capacities for any leader who wants to build and unleash collective impact. Join us to build your capacity in facilitation: the art of making the very most of our time together.

Have you ever walked away from a meeting or conference where you knew so much more was possible, so you felt dissatisfied with the results? Were you wishing for more connection, exchange or the earnest exploration of joining forces for collective impact? We spend so much of our time gathered together in meetings and conferences where we confirm what we already know, rather than explore possibilities. Skilled facilitation is the art of making that time together as productive and meaningful as possible.

During the Leading Change intensive, participants cultivate a set of facilitation skills that provide a solid foundation for leading change in diverse communities and systems. The team guides participants through a process of learning by doing, by inviting attendees to exchange and explore their unique experiences, challenges, and wisdom in a collaborative, participatory learning environment. Participants have an opportunity to practice the tools in real-time, receiving live feedback and coaching on their facilitation approach. Participants can expect to form relationships with other change-makers from their community and beyond, who seek to bring about meaningful action. Attendees emerge from the intensive with a possibility for collaboration on future projects, and an ongoing learning community.

Leadership

Building on combined 13 years of participation in the Art of Hosting community of practice, and 18 years of training sustainability leaders at Byron Fellowship, our approach is specifically designed for social change agents, professionals, emerging and seasoned business leaders, and those working in collaborative environments.

The Leading Change team brings together four streams of learning and practice, a powerhouse of approaches to navigating the complexity that our human systems present:

The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Mattercombined 13 years of practice.

Mobius Method embodiment + reflection12 years of practice.

Mindfulness – over two decades of combined practice.

Systems Thinking – three decades of combined practice.

+ Clients, partners, and affiliations

Methodologies, frameworks, practices, and principles that inspire and inform our body of work:  
Circle Practice

Theory U

Mindfulness

Open Space Technology

Cynefin Framework

Systems Thinking

World Cafe

Divergence Convergence

Non-Violent Communication

Proaction Cafe

Creative Movement

Dana Pearlman

Dana Pearlman

Dana designs and facilitates multi-stakeholder engagements and action learning experiences to support systemic change.

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Anamaria Aristizabal

Anamaria Aristizabal

Anamaria is a catalyst for personal development and social innovation through masterful Integral Coaching®, transformative learning journeys and creative expression, done in service of a thriving planet.

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Amelia Terrapin

Amelia Terrapin

Amelia is passionate about creating environments where business executives, social change agents and K-12 students can embrace their capacity for continuous learning.

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Laura Yates

Laura Yates

Laura uses policy, economic, and applied sciences training and experience to support nonprofits and businesses working for a better world.

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Partners

We seek diverse and committed educators, facilitators, leaders, innovators, collaborators, professionals, entrepreneurs, business leaders, social change agents, and those leading meetings within and between organizations.

Please reach out if you are ready to have meaningful and impactful meetings that unearth what is most important, and lead you towards solutions even when things are uncertain and complex. Leaders who can effectively host difficult conversations achieve what seems impossible: to increase understanding of each other amidst different points of view and co-create, in spite of divergent agendas.

Participant Experiences

I had a fantastic experience.  The tools and processes of Leading Change are just that, tools.  The weekend was a powerful manifestation of what is possible when a group of people comes together, each answering their own sense of calling, each committed to their own self-mastery in service to a world where all can thrive.  The positive co-creative energy of the learning environment kept building throughout the whole weekend. The facilitators demonstrated what it is to practice, increasingly embodying the essence of the concepts, principles, and ways of being they were teaching.  Through their authentic practice, they invited others to do the same.
Elizabeth Walsh

Visiting Professor, School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo

I didn’t expect Leading Change to be so powerful for me, but I was moved by it deeply. The rich and thoughtful experiences at the training let the tools/methods/tips that we learned really sink in. It really drove home the idea that facilitation and leadership are both dependent on connecting with others on a human level, rather than with an agenda, product, or program. It was truly eye-opening and life-changing for me.
Peter Kobak

Project Manager, Innovation Team - City of Peoria

The Art of Hosting/Leading Change Training had me from the moment it began. We began our time together in our bodies, as a collective, in circle practice and were heartily welcomed to participate fully and wholly in the training. Each hour brought illumination, more questions, and tangible methodologies to champion systemic injustice. Dana, Anamaria, and Amelia are a power trio of wisdom. It is my hope I can bring my fellow change-agent friends and colleagues to the next Art of Hosting Training!
Lindsay Sudekis

Educator

I found Leading Change to be an excellent experience, both personally and professionally. The training was a wonderfully-blended experience of practical skills-building and deep personal growth. Through the workshop, I came to better understand my perspective and personal motivations, as well as build a deeper confidence in my skills and the value of my work. The visioning exercises we learned have already been useful in both conversations with colleagues, as well as within current work projects. I was also able to add more interactive and participatory elements to large community event, the Indianapolis Sustainability Summit, which allowed for it to be more fruitful for everyone involved – a direct benefit of the facilitation training!

We made the Summit more participatory by using some of the techniques learned during the Leading Change workshop. The summit would have likely followed a more typical speaker/panel style for all sessions. Over 300 people attended the event, with approximately half participating specifically in the workshops that were participatory/cafe style activities. The workshops were also the launch of our public input period for the City’s first Sustainability and Resilience Action Plan, and helped set a positive and engaging tone as we continue to gather input over the next few months. The input from summit attendees will help critically shape our sustainability plan by ensuring it is based on community needs and priorities. Given how well it went we plan to continue to use participatory engagement in future events.

Jeffrey Meek

Project Manager, Indianapolis Office of Sustainability

More testimonials from Leading Change Participants...
“My experience felt alive, relevant, and meaningful. It also felt very unique to me, and I appreciated our diversity and everyone’s unique contributions, as well as the support and encouragement to bring my own unique contributions.”

 

“I anticipated that this training would help me find a graceful way to transition out of my current work setting. Instead, I found renewed reasons to stay at it and ways to engage others around me, with similar frustrations, to start working toward meaningful change.”

Dana Pearlman

Dana Pearlman designs and facilitates multi-stakeholder engagements and action learning experiences that leads to transformational learning and social innovation. She utilizes many methodologies, frameworks, practices, principles and systems thinking. Her academic background is in clinical psychology and strategic leadership towards sustainability.

Dana uses powerful questions to unearth wisdom at the individual, team, organizational and community and systemic levels. Her intent is to steward a world that is more whole, interconnected and in alignment with our true selves for wiser + conscious impact. Her sweet spot is at the intersection of authentic leadership, tapping into collective wisdom, and cultivating communities of practice in order to collectively transform failing systems in our world.

Dana has designed and facilitated sessions for the State of Vermont, The Ministry of Education of Tanzania, Accenture Tech Vision Advisory Board, Zoomdata, Swissnex, Public Health Institute’s Population Health Innovation Lab, GlobeMed, Dalai Lama Fellows, California Association of Hospitals and Health Services, Sonoma Co. Sustainability and Energy Dep., Impact HUBs, Stanford Leadership Experiment, CIIS, Sonoma State U’s CORE Leadership, Sustainability Learning Centre, BTH in Sweden: Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability.

Dana is lead facilitator for Mycelium. She designed and delivered the inaugural Bold Academy. She hosts intensives in The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter and leads workshops in Authentic Leadership from her co-created research and published: The Lotus: A practice guide for Authentic Leadership towards Sustainability. Dana is Advisor to the SelfDesign Institute, Curriculum Advisor to Dalai Lama Fellows, Founding Board Member for The Base Camp and mentor for HIVE Global Leaders Program. Dana is catalyzing and accelerating world-changing leadership necessary to meet the profound challenges of the 21st century.

“Dana is a tremendous force who excels in connecting others more deeply to themselves and to others. She has been an invaluable advisor, mentor and colleague over the past few years. Her insights into and support with the Dalai Lama Fellows’ Ethical Leadership curriculum have been deeply meaningful. Dana can distill her wisdom nonverbally and briefly, and also in great detail–we are lucky to be working with her.”

Bidisha Banerjee

Program Director, Dalai Lama Fellows

Anamaria Aristizabal

Anamaria sows the seeds of inspiration, encouraging others to own their power, and to create and lead in a way that transforms and responds to what the world needs. She works with New Ventures West, a world class coaching school, as a coach and coach trainer. She is a leadership trainer at George Washington University’s Center for Public Excellence and at Byron Fellowship, both leadership development initiatives for change agents from around the world. She is an Art of Hosting practitioner and trainer, with extensive experience designing and facilitating powerful learning journeys for different groups.

As a social innovator, she co-founded Aldeafeliz ecovillage in 2006 near Bogota Colombia, a community whose purpose is to be a demonstration center for resilience and sustainability. For 11 years a group of 25 adults and 10 children have been experimenting with various social and ecological technologies, including sociocracy, non violent communication, and permaculture, aspiring to live harmoniously with each other and with the land they are stewards of. Anamaria a member of various organizations that aim for personal, organizational and societal transformation. She is chair of the Colombian chapter of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) dedicated to offering learning circles that foster systems thinking. Also founding member and executive board member of the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, and a member of the ImpactHUB Bogotá.

Prior to her coaching and facilitation career, Anamaria worked as a consultant for McKinsey, the World Bank, CAF- Development Bank of Latin America, and various government entities in Colombia. Anamaria has an MBA and a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University and a BA in Biology from Mount Holyoke College. Anamaria is based in Bogotá, Colombia, and recently published her first book in her country (October 2016), translated as “Life Re-Vision: A Guide to Find your Path when you Lost Your Way; A Journey to Rediscover your Essence, Reinvent Yourself, and Renew your Future Vision”.

Amelia Terrapin

Amelia is an experienced facilitator, educator and systems thinker.  After a career as a professional dancer and educator, she developed an approach that uses movement to enhance learning in all different kinds of environments.  Reluctant to choose between art and science, her work unites the two.

She founded Mobius to use movement as a powerful learning tool for groups that range from schoolchildren and at-risk teens to engineers and business executives. Through movement, participants gain a deep understanding of complex ideas, build trust, and discover new ways to collaborate effectively.  She has spent 12 years refining the method into a useful human technology that can be used in a variety of settings.

Her approach has been presented at the Engineers Without Borders Sustainable Resources Conference, the Applied Improvisation Network Conference, and Bioneers by the Bay. Clients have included the Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, the North Dakota STEM Network, the Teton Science Schools in Wyoming, the Rainbow Community School in North Carolina, and MetaIntegral Associates.

“I’ve worked with Amelia to deliver an embodied approach to systems thinking for leaders in one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies. I found her passion for this topic to be contagious, her commitment to excellence inspiring, and her execution of high caliber.”
Barrett C. Brown

Principal, MetaIntegral Associates

Laura Yates

Laura Yates is a management consultant, blending policy, economic, and applied sciences training and expertise to support nonprofits and businesses working for a better world. Originally from Indianapolis, Laura spent seven years growing up in Switzerland, where she was inspired by the Swiss cultural and regulatory approach to community and the environment.

Laura currently serves as Program Coordinator for the Byron Fellowship Educational Foundation, where she plans a week-long intensive for emerging leaders, social entrepreneurs, and changemakers. Laura also manages relationships with the Byron Alumni network and organizational partners, working with the mentor team and educational partners to develop trainings and content to support Byron Fellows well beyond their week on-site.

Laura also serves as Project Manager for the Breaking Through Gridlock initiative, which supports people in having difficult, values-laden conversations in pursuit of a better world. As project manager for the educational initiative, Laura delivers Breaking Through Gridlock workshops, develops curriculum resources to support educators in incorporating the BTG methodology in their classes, and interfaces with faculty partners.

Laura graduated from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs in 2016 with a Master of Science in Environmental Sciences (MSES) and a Master of Public Affairs (MPA), concentrating in Sustainable Development and Policy Analysis. Laura holds a BS in Economics and a secondary major in Earth, Environment and Global Sustainability from Bentley University, where her research covered cross-cultural communication, environmental economics, and sustainability in business.

From 2014 to 2017, Laura lived in a self-designed, self-built tiny house, as an experiment in sustainable, values-driven living and design (hear the story from Laura’s 2015 TEDx talk).

Clients, Partners,

& Affiliations