Nana Yaa Boakyewaa Amoah is a Macro-Economist focusing on strategic planning and providing creative-problem solving approaches to start-up and organizational challenges; she advises a wide range of private and public sector clients on socio-economic and human capital investment for growth and impact in sub-Saharan Africa. She has built her expertise in strategic advisory and business coaching…
LaShauna Austria, a visionary leader, nurtures change through her roles as the driving force behind Seeds of Change Consulting, the heart of Kindred Seedlings Farm, and co-founder of Kindred Future Collaborative. Her journey, rooted in Alamance County, NC, embodies a commitment to rural life, advocating for land preservation and Southern food traditions. With a rich…
Jason Biehl is an anti-racist educator, born and raised in D.C., with over 20 years of experience working in education with youth from diverse backgrounds. In 2017, he founded Change The Narrative, and works collaboratively as an educational consultant to further racial equity within organizations and schools. He believes in the benefit of “interrogating whiteness” work…
Lorena Tamayo is a speaker, facilitator, Business and Life Coach endorsed by ICF focused on conscious Leadership and purposeful organizations, with 15+ years of corporate experience in Sales, Trade Marketing, and Marketing in Latin America. Her passion is to empower individuals and organizations to lead their lives and their teams with meaning and direction. Lorena is…
Liesbeth (Liz) Kieboom is an organizational consultant with a track record in organizational anthropology, change management and human resource management. In group facilitation or individual coaching processes she accompanied, management development, employee engagement and power dynamics are recurring elements. Liz worked in international corporate, governmental and non-governmental settings, such as media, universities, multinationals, multilateral agencies and…
Anamaria Aristizabal is a Master Certified Coach (MCC), Facilitator, Author, and Change Agent. She is the founder of Re-Vision Academy, which offers a new approach to purpose, leadership, and human development. She also works with New Ventures West, a world class coaching school, as a coach and coach trainer. She is an Art of Hosting practitioner…
Ciku Kimeria is an author, journalist, communication and strategy specialist, adventurer and travel writer. She writes both fiction and non-fiction focusing on African stories that need telling. She is the current Quartz Africa Editor and a longtime contributor to Quartz, having authored almost 60 articles for the site, on topics as wide-ranging as the perils of…
Joey Leskin is a Masters-educated Leadership Consultant from London who designs and facilitates experiential and educational workshops for audiences across the globe. He specializes in communication skills, remote work methodologies and team development, and has worked with numerous non-profits and startups. His focus is on empowering early-stage professionals, early-stage managers and those working cross-culturally, having had travel experience in…
Carmen Franco is passionate about co-creating transformative experiences with her clients, helping organizations and leaders explore their potential to increase their impact. Using her varied background and experiences in start-ups, Fortune 500 corporations, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations. Carmen is committed to enhancing organizations, your practice, team, and/or company via 1:1 and/or team coaching —…
Jeremy Blanchard supports changemakers to find their passions and bring their dreams into reality with ease. He believes working for justice and equity is some of the most challenging work we can be doing right now, and we need support to do it in a way that is sustainable. We all want to see a…
We are expert facilitators from around the world united by our passion for making collaboration work when “messy human stuff”—egos, cultural differences, miscommunication—creates silos that put your mission at risk.
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Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira (she/her) is a collective intelligence enthusiast, master facilitator and technical strategist with over 25 years of experience designing and facilitating participatory meetings and convenings for high-performing teams and organizational collaboratives including FHI 360, Ipas, MSI Reproductive Choices, the Urgent Action Fund, the World Health Organization and UNFPA among others.
Prior to consulting, Alex spent 11 years advancing access to safe abortion at Ipas where she partnered with global teams and led organization-wide initiatives as a Senior Advisor for Technical Innovation and Excellence, the Associate Director for Community
Engagement and Policy Advocacy and as the Senior Advisor for Organizational Learning. Alex has also served as the Philanthropic Partnerships Officer for the Astraea Foundation, as a Global Research & Policy Advisor for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (now OutRight Action International) and as a Program Fellow with the Global Fund for Women. She has served on the board of directors of the Safe Abortion Action Fund (UK), The Stone House (NC), the Third Wave Foundation (NY) and Resource Generation (NY).
Alex has designed and led over 70 high-stakes participatory workshops, retreats and convenings for over 2000 stakeholders across Africa, Asia and North America. She is among the most seasoned facilitators, globally, of Abortion Values Clarification for Action & Transformation (VCAT) Workshops where she has led community members, activists, health care providers, ministry officials, multilateral donors and embassies—all with wide ranging positions on abortion—through a process that shifts their orientation from one of contentious debate to an opportunity for empathy and principled collaboration to advance bodily autonomy. She has trained and mentored over 150 emerging facilitators
and team leaders globally on designing and facilitating inclusive, liberatory and participatory meetings.
With two decades of experience advancing equity and justice through philanthropy and global health programming, Alex approaches facilitation as a strategic opportunity to practice high-impact, equity-based collaboration skills that live on beyond our convenings. Alex brings skillful attention to transforming personal, interpersonal and systemic barriers to meaningful participation. She is passionate about helping groups connect, navigate principled disagreement, prioritize, focus, and align towards powerful actions that advance justice, joy and wellbeing in the world.
Alex is a recipient of the Wildacres Leadership Initiative William C. Friday Fellowship (2014-2016), holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and French Literature from Connecticut College and a master’s degree in International Affairs with a focus on gender, sexuality and international human rights from Columbia University. As the first member of her family to attend university, she is humbled to stand on the shoulders of self-taught entrepreneurs, savvy dissidents, survivors of Portuguese dictatorship and lovers of learning. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, in the Southeastern United States, in a beloved cross-class, multi-racial intentional community of gorgeously imperfect humans trying to build deep interdependence.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, CHANGE MANAGEMENT, CULTURE CHANGE TEAMBUILDING
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Systems change, Change management, Culture change
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Change management; Culture change; Strategy; Teambuilding
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, STRATEGY SYSTEMS CHANGE, PRODUCT OR SERVICE DESIGN
Ángel Zambrano Cobo is Communications Specialist at UFacilitate. As a communicator and cultural manager based in Caracas, Venezuela, he collaborates with groups and organizations that seek to build community and generate change through projects of social innovation, cultural action and human rights.
He is also a founding member of Ciudad Laboratorio (@ciudlab), a civil association that seeks to influence urban experience and transformation through observation, art and pedagogy. In 2017 he was part of the founding team of Labo Ciudadano, a social innovation lab focused on human rights, social fabric and nonviolent mobilization. Until mid-2022 he was co-general coordinator of this organization, and today he is part of its advisory board.
Leigh’s expertise in business process management has been shaped by her diverse professional journey. Starting as a customer care representative while still in college, she steadily progressed.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in business management from Central Philippine University, Leigh transitioned into roles with increasing responsibility. She began as a virtual assistant for US professionals, where she efficiently supported top-tier management with various tasks including managing company materials, workflows, training, and finance.
Leigh’s career path led her to management roles overseeing teams across industries like real estate, medical, construction, and cleaning. Her hands-on experience in these sectors provided her with a solid understanding of business operations and management practices.
Additionally, Leigh demonstrated her skills in sales and marketing as a successful sales executive, closing service deals. Her role as an events support generalist at a KPO company further broadened her skill set, contributing to delivering services to clients worldwide.
Leigh’s diverse background and proactive approach make her an asset in optimizing business processes and driving success.
Aparna is Chief Facilitator Builder at UFacilitate, helping to select and onboard high-quality facilitators to the UFacilitate family. For the last 7 years, she has been working with early growth stage impact startups across India, South Africa, and Latin America, helping them identify the business models and value propositions, create a growth strategy, raise funds and measure their impact. During her time working with education nonprofits in India, she learned about the critical role that good facilitation plays in ensuring meaningful engagements and also got trained by the Facilitators Network Singapore. While working with an accelerator in Latin America, she created a facilitator’s handbook for online and offline engagements, equipping the reader with the basic tools and thinking steps.
Aparna’s aim through UFacilitate is to take the simple handbook many steps ahead and help leaders in the impact space innovate effectively, make decisions, and build projects that involve multiple stakeholders and have large-scale impact.
