In 2014, my 9th year of consulting, I’m pleased to report I served 31 clients (11 returning organizations or collaborations & 20 new ones…see below for details). To date, I have now served 133 clients! In 2014, I facilitated 42 retreats or meetings and led 6 trainings attended by over 235 people.

Some highlights for me this year:

• Facilitating another retreat for the Little Green Fingers Collaborative (one of 30+ collaborative change initiatives in Southern California.
• Working closely with the leadership of the Little Tokyo Service Center to plan for their future
• After serving the San Gabriel Mountains Forever Campaign to refine their strategy, President Obama came to town and declared a large section of the San Gabriels a historic monument.
• Collaborating with LA Mas to develop their organizational strategy
• Facilitating an engaging workshop on facilitation for XPRIZE
• Facilitating a charette for the LA Great Streets Initiative
• Facilitating a leadership retreat for the Girl Scouts executive team
• In addition, I elevated my consulting practice with new methods, explored facilitation and values in complex environments and incorporated appreciative team building into my practice
• Three of my short articles on facilitation were published as part of The Bonfire Collection: A Complete Reference Guide to Facilitation and Change.
• Finally, I started a half-time consulting project serving the Funders Collaborative for a Sustainable, Equitable Los Angeles. This role combines my
  passion for working on issues related to
  transportation, land use and equity along with serving collaboration.

In support of my consulting practice, I wrote a thesis on managing collaborative change and graduated from my masters program in Organization Development.

Throughout this process, I worked to develop my own collaborative leadership. If you’re interested to learn more about this field, here are my top book recommendations.

I continue to tweet about my work and retweet the work of others I find inspiring. I added a few more places for an organization to host a retreat in Southern California (now over 55 sites!). I also partnered with my Affiliates and Associates to serve clients. Here’s a blog from one of my Associates Kelly Martin who shared about her experiences serving a client.

For more photos of my work, check out the photos I’ve posted on Twitter.

Outside of my consulting practice, my wife and I are raising two boys. As I wrote last year, “being a father gives me a whole new perspective on life and only reaffirms my work to transform Southern California into a sustainable region”. I’m learning about the art of leadership in complex environments. Experiencing the wonder of watching them grow up and change provides me with inspiration daily! We enjoyed riding together in the South LA CicLAvia and seeing so many other families out that day.

My goal for 2015 is to complete the transition of my consulting practice and serve collaborative change initiatives in a deeper, more sustained way. If you know of issues that multiple organizations are working on together, please contact me and I will reach out to them. Thanks and happy new year!

Retreats or conversations I facilitated: 

Organizations I led trainings for:

Links to my previous annual reports: 2013, 2012, 2011