I’m a builder of coalitions, facilitator, change maker, convener, connector, mobilizer, and eater of chocolate.

I’m a mother, sister, daughter, cousin, and aunt. I’m Scottish and Irish with a mix of English and French picked up over the generations. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, running on the trails of Redwood Regional and eating Gordo burritos and loving the air and the light at Pescadero State Beach. I eat chocolate every day.

I study people and change, but mostly I’m a practitioner. I’m always observing, experimenting, reflecting, learning, and doing. I feel drawn to these questions: How do groups of people behave? How do organizations change? How can organizations collaborate to achieve more than they could separately? How can groups of organizations make transformational systems change?

I look to natural systems for answers because we are nature. Rivers and forests and bee colonies and murmurations are my teachers. Chaos theory and complexity theory have influenced my thinking, along with the people and places listed below, with lots of appreciation to my TOGETHER Bay Area and 30×30 PCC colleagues.

Some of my teachers and influences include:

The seasons and tides

June Gunter and Toula Ousouljoglou

Pearl and Mel Shaw

Andra Lichtenstein and Kathy Ko

Bettina Ring, Larry Orman, John Woodbury

Chaiman Valetin Lopez, Chairman Reno Franklin, Kenneth Holbrook, Taylor Pennewell

Peter Forbes

Margaret Wheatley’s books, especially Turning To One Another

Seth Godin’s writing, especially This is Marketing

Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering