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.
Tarek Maassarani
Tarek Maassarani is a mission-driven attorney, program strategist, university professor, and project director with 20+ years leading federally funded initiatives across justice, equity, and climate resilience. He has litigated human rights cases, managed multi-agency partnerships, developed countless programs, published books and articles, and trained civil society and government agencies. As CEO of Sustainable Construction Solutions, he applies his legal and programmatic expertise to sustainable infrastructure, advancing fireproof, non-toxic, and low-carbon materials and methods aligned with resilience and decarbonization goals. Under his leadership, the company has delivered successful pilot projects and expanded public-private partnerships. Maassarani began his career providing civil legal services law at the federally-funded Neighborhood Legal Services Program, where he served as a Covington & Burling Westwood Fellow and later as a senior staff attorney. At NLSP’s Nani Helen Burroughs office, he represented underserved residents across housing, employment, public benefits, consumer protection, and discrimination cases, while also managing law student interns and supporting D.C. Bar legal clinics and Spanish-speaking workers’ rights seminars. He then served for over a decade as a consultant and trainer for the U.S. Institute of Peace and director of the Salam Institute, in which capacities he managed five-to-six figure USAID and State Department-funded civic engagement and peacebuilding programs across Africa, Afghanistan, and domestic military bases. He facilitated training for educators, nonprofits, African peacekeeping forces, U.S. Army units, and foreign service officers, and co-authored curricula on religious peacebuilding, conflict resolution, trauma resilience, and nonviolent action. As co-founder and technical lead of Restorative DC, Maassarani designed and scaled a citywide restorative justice initiative across Washington, D.C., delivering technical assistance to over 40 schools, coordinating a diversion program for the Department of Human Services, and advising the Office of the Attorney General on the creation of a nationally recognized in-house restorative justice unit. He later co-directed Central Virginia Community Justice, where he launched a restorative diversion program in partnership with local prosecutors, expanded referral networks, and formalized regional implementation. More recently, he served as lead trainer for the U.S. State Department–funded #Influencers4Peace initiative, which engaged 150 social media leaders across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Niger to promote social cohesion and counter violent extremism.
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.
Flynn Tan
Flynn Tan [they/them] is a service designer, UX designer and researcher, and facilitator who loves to help people connect, thrive, and move towards their dreams. Using a human-centered approach, design thinking, and expertise in UX, systems thinking, and accessibility, Flynn thoughtfully and meticulously designs experiences and processes which create a safe space for groups to nurture curiosity, deepen empathy, explore internal and external unknowns, practice different ways of thinking/doing, and develop skills. In recent years, Flynn has advised teams on human-centered innovation and process improvements in healthcare; advocated for accessible and inclusive design in the arts and entertainment; and facilitated reflective, collaborative, and personal development workshops. Flynn holds a BA in English Literature and Web Programming & Applications from New York University; a MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in UX Design and UX Research; and a Facilitation Certification with Voltage Control. With roots in Florida and memories in Manila, New York, London, Virginia, and Colorado, Flynn is now exploring life in Texas. In their free time, Flynn loves to read, learn skills and explore new hobbies, make art and games, and hike with their dog, Iris. Every day is dedicated to their life’s mission to help grow a more intentional, creative, curious, and connected world.
Michael Fryer
Michael Fryer has been creating spaces in which people can explore the things that really matter for the past 29 years. His work has taken him all over the world and given him an opportunity to gain insights into the core ingredients of healthy teams and communities. He learned his trade in Northern Ireland with The Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation center. Their focus on the importance of relationships, and on listening and intentionally creating a space in which new perspectives can emerge, resonated deeply. From 2018-2024 he taught applied skills-based courses as a Professor of Practice at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies. Accompanying and guiding a team as they journey from confusion, frustration and apathy through to engagement, clarity and enthusiasm about their next steps is always such a privilege. Michael focuses on highlighting the links between seemingly random and unrelated ideas, themes and perspectives and then connecting them with the challenges being explored with a team. Through asking better questions, Michael helps teams move past simplistic explanations for complex challenges and transform deeply rooted conflicts and change processes. He has most recently focused on helping senior leaders navigate the inevitable challenges of digital transformation initiatives. He lives in the beautiful mountains near San Diego with his wife Vanessa and young daughters Eloise and Lucette.
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.
Zoe Jarvis
Zoë Jarvis is an experienced community development practitioner and values-based leadership facilitator with over a decade of experience working across grassroots, governmental, and international contexts. She currently serves as Chairperson of the Board of a UK-based Charity and as Partnerships Facilitator and Quality Assurance Lead at Columba 1400, where she designs and delivers leadership programs for young people and key adult stakeholders across Scotland. Her career has spanned a range of impactful roles—from coordinating GBV crisis response in the Middle East with Women’s Crisis Care International, to protection case management with the Danish Refugee Council in Myanmar, to community engagement across vulnerable populations in Glasgow, Scotland.. A skilled facilitator and trainer, Zoë specialises in enabling transformational change in complex adaptive systems. She brings expertise in designing participatory processes that foster emergent solutions, cultivate trust and collaboration, and support systems to adapt and evolve in response to dynamic challenges. Her work spans diverse themes including protection monitoring, trauma-informed care, cross-sectional leadership, and community-based development. She has extensive experience in social partnership building, monitoring and evaluation, capacity development, and advocacy. Her achievements include technical leadership in establishing Bahrain’s first contextualized GBV crisis response centre, co-founding two women-led community centres in South Africa, and designing interdisciplinary training and resources for social workers, legal professionals, and humanitarian teams globally. Zoë holds a Master’s in Humanitarian Action and Peacebuilding from Oxford Brookes University/UNITAR, where she graduated with the highest classification, and has received multiple academic awards including the Max Pollok Memorial Prize and Ruth First Prize for her work in social justice and community development.
Tamara Christensen
Tamara Christensen is a strategic process designer and empathetic facilitator on a mission to reimagine how we work better together. With 20+ years of experience blending design thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration, and research,Tamara helps people and organizations build innovation capabilities while applying them to complex challenges. She works with a range of organizations from local businesses to universities to global Fortune 100 companies like Honeywell and 3M. Tamara is the founder of Idea Farm Co-op, a design thinking firm, and a co-founder of CoCreACT®, a transatlantic innovation consultancy specializing in helping leaders and teams thrive in ambiguity. She serves as an Expert-In-Residence with the University Design Institute (UDI) at Arizona State University where she uses co-design to advance transformation in higher education and she is also an international educator with Thunderbird School of Global Management Executive Education. Tamara has been described metaphorically as a glass of prosecco, a whirling dervish and a sharpie. Her books, Leading in Ambiguity: how to transform uncertainty into possibilities and F-ing Innovation: Why innovation is hard and what to do about it are available on Amazon.
Aparna Shekar
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 interactive, insight-driven workshops and one-on-one coaching engagements with clients across the world. With a background in marketing, education, and facilitation, Aparna partners with organizations in sectors such as banking, technology, automotive, consulting, and education to help leaders deepen emotional intelligence, build resilient teams, and lead with clarity and purpose. She is especially skilled at facilitating learning for culturally diverse groups and is known for creating high-energy, inclusive learning environments both online and in person. As a certified coach and master trainer, Aparna is consistently praised for her engaging facilitation style and her ability to foster meaningful connection. Her areas of expertise include leadership development, communication, coaching and mentoring, emotional intelligence, influencing without authority, and managing uncertainty with resilience. She has led programs for organizations such as Microsoft, UBS, Mastercard, Deloitte, Intuit, Skoda Auto, Thoughtworks, and many others. Outside of her professional work, Aparna is a trained classical singer and dancer, a curious and enthusiastic home gardener, and a passionate storyteller. She has won awards for her writing and creativity and brings warmth, curiosity, and care into every space she enters. Whether she is coaching a senior leader, designing a team workshop, or simply listening deeply, Aparna remains committed to helping people show up with intention and grow with confidence.