Neharika Dembla
Neharika Dembla is a facilitator, strategist, and social impact professional with international experience across the UK, Thailand, India, Guatemala, and other global contexts. Her work spans organisational culture, DEI, sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship, customer experience, and community building. With a background in law and an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management from Imperial College London, Neharika brings a strong human centred and entrepreneurial approach to her work. She has designed and delivered programmes focused on gender equity, employee engagement, behaviour change, wellbeing, and inclusion, working with organisations ranging from global companies to startups, NGOs, and community organisations. As a multiple time co-founder, Neharika has hands-on experience turning ideas into experiences, products, and communities. This includes co-founding Friends of Friends in Thailand, where she designed curated offline experiences for groups of up to 80 people, as well as developing ventures in education, wellbeing, and sustainable food. Her approach is grounded in curiosity, creativity, and understanding people before designing solutions. She draws on design thinking, customer journey mapping, stakeholder engagement, and her experience across different cultures to create inclusive and engaging experiences that help people connect, contribute, and move ideas forward.
Yash Maniar
Yash Maniar is an India-based facilitator, social entrepreneur, and International Coaching Federation certified coach who empowers individuals and organizations in their journey from purpose to action. With a strong focus on aligning personal values with organizational goals, Yash designs and facilitates transformative learning experiences that help teams deepen collaboration, strengthen leadership, and find greater meaning in their work. As an experiential learning facilitator and coach, Yash has designed and led programs on social innovation, leadership, sustainability, systems change, and design thinking across Asia, including China, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Thailand, and Bangladesh. He has facilitated with organizations such as The JUMP! Foundation, coached global climate action teams through the Gigatonne Challenge, and completed over 350 hours of one-on-one coaching with entrepreneurs, leaders, and changemakers. Yash’s entrepreneurial journey includes co-founding Shunya Alternative Solutions, an eco-friendly products venture incubated by The DO School and supported by The Pollination Project. Through Shunya, he helped replace more than one million pieces of plastic cutlery with biodegradable alternatives in India. He has also worked across startups in product strategy, digital marketing, and learning design, bringing a systems thinking and human-centered approach to both organizational growth and social impact.
Kāvya Raman
Kāvya Raman believes design is the use of power to shape what’s possible. She designs and facilitates spaces for change with organizations, movements, governments, and communities learning how to become good future ancestors. Her work focuses on shaping strategies, practices, and ways of working that help people and institutions cross thresholds with care, courage, and imagination. Over the past fifteen years, Kāvya has lived and worked across war zones and megacities including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Turkey, Jordan, Haiti, Egypt, Italy, and the United States, navigating cultures, languages, and ways of knowing, being, and belonging. Her experience spans social impact design, facilitation, coaching, organizational leadership, and program strategy with nonprofits, foundations, international organizations, and governments, including collaborations with The International Rescue Committee, The Gates Foundation, Oxfam International, Global Affairs Canada, and the U.S. Department of State. Her superpower is adaptation.
Gautam Paul
Gautam Paul brings over two decades of international leadership experience across media, technology, and professional services. He has a proven track record of driving performance, transformation, and growth in volatile and complex corporate environments. Having revitalized underperforming teams, scaled high growth organizations, and led cross functional groups across the UK, India, and New Zealand, Gautam combines strong commercial acumen with deep insight into human motivation and leadership effectiveness. His coaching approach blends strategic clarity with practical execution, enabling senior leaders to strengthen their influence, navigate change with confidence, and build resilient, high performing teams. Gautam has advised executives in startups, established enterprises, and global firms, equipping them to align teams to strategy, manage competing stakeholder demands, and deliver measurable business impact in times of uncertainty. Known for driving growth through clarity and culture, Gautam has supported leadership teams to achieve breakthrough results by sharpening goals, strengthening communication, and embedding accountability. In one instance, he coached a stagnant leadership team to double their results within a year by focusing on mindset and collaboration rather than pressure alone. He has also guided leaders launching new ventures to assemble, mentor, and align high performing teams, enabling successful initiatives and strategic partnerships. His work consistently helps leaders turn complex challenges into opportunities for growth and impact. Across his engagements, Gautam emphasizes expanding leadership presence, deepening strategic focus, and unlocking individual potential to ensure sustained high performance and meaningful results.
Aru Daswani
Aru Daswani is an ICF PCC accredited leadership coach and facilitator working one to one with leaders, teams and organizations in the deep inner transformation needed for a positive impact in society and the planet. She creates safe spaces to allow for the shift of consciousness and the inner development needed for the evolution of humanity, using the Inner Development Goals framework as a catalyser for transformative change.
Elliot Corona
Elliot Corona. With over 15 years of experience supporting an industrial training ecosystem (Aramco), complemented by leadership development (QatarEnergy LNG) and leading virtual learning projects (U.S. Dept. of State), Elliot brings a unique combination of corporate and academic perspectives in developing competency-based learning solutions that address capability gaps and business goals. At Aramco, one hybrid learning project involved working with the Corporate Academy to co-design and implement a Sustainability Awareness Program targeting trainees – Aramco’s largest onboarding pipeline. As the lead designer, Elliot conducted a thorough needs analysis, co-developed the program’s learning framework with SMEs, and co-facilitated the pilot delivery. He subsequently trained 14 facilitators from seven training centers, enabling scalable implementation. Pre-COVID, he led the development of a behavioral change model for the “Quit & Win” smoking cessation program in collaboration with healthcare professionals, a smoke-free steering committee, and a dozen certified facilitators to consolidate data. In three years, these efforts resulted in 100 verified “quitters” kingdom wide. Across initiatives, Elliot has served as a bridge between learners, SMEs, facilitators, and operational stakeholders to ensure that development efforts tackle underlying performance needs rather than satisfying statistical requirements alone. More recently, Mr. Corona has broadened his talent development expertise as a Virtual Educator supporting four U.S. Department of State projects in Bangladesh. Designing integrated modules in job readiness and academic profile-building skills, Elliot scaled a synchronous VILT program from one to five in-person learning hubs. He engaged over 100 participants per cohort by linking EdTech, competency frameworks, centralized reporting, and partnerships with local support systems. In parallel, Elliot facilitated in-person workshops for QatarEnergy LNG via a regional training provider, challenging employees to apply leadership skills in emotional intelligence, creativity, time management, and technical writing in task-based simulations. Outcomes were evaluated through qualitative performance observations, L1 evaluations, and pre/post measures designed to identify competency gains and knowledge gaps using standardized methods. Elliot’s professional experience is backed by a master’s in management from Harvard University with an emphasis in organizational performance, coupled with certificates in L&D and project management. In short, Elliot is a versatile trainer who is ready to contribute to the co-design and development of learning solutions with evolving needs. He welcomes a discussion on how “we” could make a meaningful impact.
Laura Ines Romero
Laura Inés Romero s an executive coach and leadership development consultant with more than 20 years of international experience leading global teams, driving organizational transformation, and helping leaders thrive in complex, multicultural environments. Drawing on her background in technology, business, and organizational development, she partners with managers and leaders to strengthen self-awareness, build stronger relationships, and create more engaged, high-performing teams. Throughout her career, Laura has held leadership positions at IBM in both Argentina and the United States, as well as at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Argentina and Washington, D.C. She has led globally distributed teams across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, managing organizations of more than 1,000 professionals while leading initiatives in employee engagement, organizational culture, talent development, diversity and inclusion, Agile transformation, and leadership development. As a certified executive coach with more than six years of coaching experience, Laura combines strategic business thinking with emotional intelligence and deep listening. Her coaching helps leaders navigate change, increase their leadership effectiveness, communicate with greater authenticity, and develop the confidence to lead through uncertainty. She believes that meaningful leadership begins with creating space for reflection, self-awareness, and genuine human connection. In addition to coaching leaders, Laura has trained new coaches, facilitated leadership and creativity workshops, and designed leadership development programs for managers and emerging talent. She also volunteers as a facilitator of an emotional education program for young adults and is the founder of YellowSeeds, where she helps individuals and organizations build more conscious, human-centered workplaces through coaching, facilitation, and leadership development. Laura is an International Coaching Community (ICC) Certified Coach, a Certified Scrum Master, and holds an MBA in Business and Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciece. Her multidisciplinary background enables her to bridge business strategy, technology, and human-centered leadership to help individuals and teams grow with purpose and impact.
Carmen Franco
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 — be it face-to-face or virtual. Having lived and worked in other countries, like Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia, speaking multiple languages, Carmen also has a unique awareness and sensitivity to coach effectively in cross-cultural business environments. Her coaching approach draws on her keen understanding of leadership, organizational culture, business, diversity, equity and inclusion, social justice, teams, and individual change. Carmen embraces diversity and is a champion for psychologically safe, respectful, inclusive workplaces. In addition to clients across the U.S. She has clients in many countries, including China, Singapore, France, Germany, India, Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.
Jessi Bellama
Jessi Bellama is a strategy and design leader with 20 years’ experience creating direction from uncertainty for growing and changing organizations using Human-Centered Design and a shared value lens. She deeply believes in creating a world where organizations embody human and societal thriving to achieve purpose-driven goals. Jessi has crisscrossed the private, public and nonprofit sectors – and the world – which has enabled her to develop a well-rounded and diverse skill set to facilitate the design and implementation of action-oriented strategy, building values-aligned cultures, and guiding teams through growth and change. She has a particular knack for cultivating and strengthening teams, partnerships and networks to build momentum across cultures, as well as across sectors that may speak different languages such as healthcare, financial services, and sustainable development. Her career journey has included: developing an independent business model for LAUNCH, a partnership between Nike, NASA, USAID and the U.S. Department of State to support system-disrupting entrepreneurs in sustainability; spearheading a practice to drive corporate reputation through social impact at Booz Allen Hamilton; launching Wellington Management Company’s first global employee engagement program with 700 employees in the first year; developing an employee engagement strategy for a recognized fashion brand to launch and embed a newly developed purpose-driven mission; designing and delivering a course on human-centered project management and consulting for an African start-up technology design firm; and embedding a circular economy nonprofit’s organizational values by aligning operations, processes and behaviors to build the desired culture through a period of rapid growth. As a ‘Third Culture Kid,’ Jessi appreciates the opportunities to be found in ambiguity. She grew up in Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, and South Africa and has direct cross-cultural work experience in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Belgium and Georgia. She speaks (to varying degrees of fluency) and has worked in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Bangla and Georgian. She also speaks German, though has never lived or worked in Germany. Jessi holds an MBA in global strategy from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an BA in Sociology and International Studies from Kenyon College. She is a level 2 certified CrossFit Coach, because she believes in fostering physical, mental and emotional wellness in all our human realms.
Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira
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.