Daniela Vollmer is a designer turned economist with 10 years of experience in social impact consulting, economic development, and the design and implementation of public policy. She has collaborated with NGOs, foundations, and government organizations in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She has held roles primarily focused on project management, design, implementation,…
Chioma Nnaji is a seasoned public health trainer, facilitator, and organizer with over 20 years of experience advancing racial justice, health equity, and immigrant health. She began her career as a community health worker in HIV and sexual health and has since worked across sectors—including community-based organizations, healthcare, academia, and government—to strengthen systems through participatory…
Aparna Shekar is a passionate and highly experienced soft skills trainer and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience designing and delivering learning programs that support both individual growth and business transformation. Her work is rooted in the belief that strengthening people’s capabilities leads to better outcomes, and she brings this to life through…
Sarah Ellison is a seasoned facilitator, strategist, and organizational development leader with over 18 years of experience working in 18 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and North America. She has lived and worked in Benin and Malawi, bringing a deep cross-cultural perspective to her…
Megan Smith, founder of Work Your Values, has over 20 years of experience building innovative, high-performing teams across diverse cultural and international settings. As an expert in leadership development and executive coaching, Megan supports leaders in reaching their goals and fostering more creative, energized, and resilient teams. She has lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil,…
Tru Pettigrew is a celebrated author, dynamic speaker, committed community leader, and award-winning marketing executive with over 20 years of experience at some of the nation’s top advertising and marketing agencies. From 2020 to 2024, Tru served with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx of the NBA and WNBA, where he made history as the organization’s…
Ogbo Awoke Ogbo is a certified executive coach and business transformation consultant committed to driving Africa’s economic growth by empowering entrepreneurs and institutions. With a background at Shell and Chevron as a Remote Sensing & GIS specialist, he transitioned into leadership consulting and has since advised over 200 companies across Africa and Southeast Asia as…
Over the last 10 years, Laura has coached top-level executives and middle level managers as well as teams from North America, EMEA and Asia. Her clients mostly come from fortune 100 companies as well as startups. Industry-wise, she has experience in Hi-tech, Financial services, Internet, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing, Education, and more. Her coaching hours have reached…
Shiv Paul is a transformational leader with over 20 years of management consulting experience at McKinsey & Company and Adobe’s Professional Services group. As a strategist, his specialization in change management and in digital transformation focused aligning people, processes, culture, and structure to drive successful adoption and retention of digital, structural and organizational solutions. In…
Sara LaCava Lieberman (she/her) has over fifteen years of fundraising experience and a track record of helping organizations achieve significant and sustainable fundraising growth as a staff member, board member, and consultant. She is passionate about fundraising as movement building, incorporating DEI principals into fundraising, and building a culture of philanthropy that is rooted in…
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.
