In 2013, my 8th year of consulting, I’m pleased to report I served 39 organizations (15 returning clients & 24 new clients…see below for details). Not only is this the most number of organizations I have served in any year, I also reached my goal of serving my 100th client (finishing the year serving my 115th organization!). I facilitated 40 retreats or meetings and led 7 trainings attended by over 200 people.

Some highlights for me personally were the retreats I facilitated for multiple collaborative change initiatives: Building Healthy Communities Long Beach, North East Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative, Little Green Fingers, LA County Active Transportation Alliance, along with others. This reflects my growing interest in collaboration, which is this topic for my masters thesis in Organization Development. For this, I mapped out 25+ collaborative change initiatives in Southern California and am in the process of interviewing managers and funders from five of these. More and more, I’m working in partnership with my Affiliates to serve multiple organizations working together to accomplish some big goal none of them could achieve on their own.

In addition, I led several really engaging team building retreats for multiple organizations, including the Trevor Project, Pablove Foundation, Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, Alcott Mental Health Services, Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma and Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Pride. For all of these, I incorporated best practices I learned from my masters program and applied them with my clients – Appreciative Inquiry, process consultation skills, culture assessments, “self as instrument”, large-group interventions and more! Related to team building, I worked with the leadership of these and other organizations to get to the heart of real issues: conflict transformation, building trust, negotiating differences, sharing gifts, making requests, delivering accountability, sharing power, having the conversation everyone has avoided and resolving it beautifully and building greater understanding. I love it! I’ve also tweeted about my work throughout the year, along with adding a few more places for an organization to host a retreat in Southern California (now over 55 sites!).

Outside of work and school, my wife and I welcomed our two boys into this world! Being a father gives me a whole new perspective on life and only reaffirms my work to transform Southern California into a sustainable region. My work this year helped strengthen organizations working to create community gardens, reduce pollution, support green businesses, create parks and open space, reimagine the Los Angeles River, create a walkable Los Angeles and serve people in need. My boys and I say “thank you” to all of the clients I  served for working effectively to change the course of Southern California towards a more livable, healthy place for all.

My goal for 2014 is to work in partnership with my affiliates to both serve collaborative change initiatives and larger organizations. If you know of an organization that needs to have a critical conversation, resolve a tough issue, build upon its strengths, cultivate its leadership, strengthen its team or engage it’s leadership in creating the future, please contact me and I will reach out to them. Thanks and happy new year!

Collaborations I Facilitated meetings retreats or processes for:

Organizations I Facilitated retreats or processes for:

Organizations I led trainings for and/or served in various other ways: