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ORGANIZATION EFFECTIVENESS SPECIALISTS 

 

We develop and deliver organizational learning solutions and use whole systems approaches to leadership and organization development emphasizing diversity, fairness, and inclusion, transformative leadership, and transformative learning best practices as strategies to strengthen organizational cultures, produce more positive organizational climates and as a result improved goal behaviors. We evaluate the durability of organizational systems and provide remediation and capacity building consultation services. We assess operational needs and design production and project management systems to achieve goals, objectives, and benchmarks. We offer leadership coaching and mentoring to maximize movement towards desirable workforce goal behaviors. 

 

Our work includes:

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• Whole-system organization assessments to gather data for design-build solutions unique to that specific organization.

• Diversity, fairness, and inclusion training protocols for companies, nonprofits/NGOs, universities/colleges, and K-12 school districts through workshops and activities that include small, medium, and large group discussions; simulations; assessments and recommendations; teacher in-service training and community meetings.

• Trauma and posttraumatic growth webinars to create and support trauma-informed and healthier communities.

• School-wide program assessments and training to alleviate tensions between disparate student groups (including between members of gangs and non-gang student groups, members of minoritized student groups and racialized non-minority student groups), between students and teachers, and between students and administrators.

• Leadership and professional development training for the State of California Department of Education, Office of Indian Education; the cities of Oakland, Richmond, San Jose, and Watsonville, CA to improve service delivery to minoritized groups; the California Parks and Recreation Society; and the Northern California Center for African American History and Life. Workshops included leadership best practices to work more effectively with minoritized groups, facilitation techniques, interpersonal and interdepartmental communications, organization theory and behavior, organizational change, creating organizational vision and mission statements, and identifying personal and corporate values.

• Organization, program, and curriculum development technical assistance to create a youth entrepreneurship training program for minoritized groups for Joseph Bute & Associates, Oakland, CA and the National Economic Development & Law Center, Berkeley, CA.

 

SELECTED CONSULTING PROJECTS

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Education Institutions

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Concordia University, Mequon, WI

Designed and implemented posttraumatic growth webinar delivered to faculty, staff, and students to provide insights about trauma (particularly in light of the pandemic), paths to posttraumatic growth, maximizing individual gifts.

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Walden University, Minneapolis, MN

Designed and implemented a series of trauma and posttraumatic growth webinars for students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Topics included trauma research findings, summary of trauma and their aftereffects, steps to achieve posttraumatic growth, tools and techniques to live more meaningful lives; selfcare in times of the pandemic.

 

San Jose State University, San Jose, CA

Designed, organized, and implemented a series of three day Workshops for 100 students with Recreation Majors.  Subject area: "Overcoming Communications Barriers in Urban Areas." The workshops focused on working across minoritized and culturally distinct groups.

 

Dixon High School, Dixon, CA                                                                                                   

Provided a series of activities over a seven-month period to reduce racial tensions within an aggie school campus between a group calling themselves HIKKKs from racialized landowner families and their migrant workers of Hispanic descent who were members of a student body of 900. Activities included school-wide assemblies; small, medium, and large group discussions; simulations; school-wide assessments and recommendations; teacher in-service training; community meetings; inter-school exchange programs; and social events. Post intervention Accreditation report identified the school as going from one of the least safe schools in California to one of the safest.

 

​Monte Vista High School, Danville, CA                                                                                                

Designed training curriculum and provided intervention strategies to reduce racial tensions on campus. Activities included moderating assemblies for 1,600 students and teachers; and providing a vehicle for on-going school-wide student driven activities.

 

Oakland Technical High School, Oakland, CA

Worked with school administrators and faculty to design, organize, and implement 60 workshops, in which 1500 students, 80 faculty, and 10 administrators discussed and resolved common school problems in an urban, predominantly African American high school that if left unchecked would have resulted in more serious negative outcomes between the minoritized student population and predominantly Caucasian faculty and administrators.

 

Oakland Unified School District, Oakland, CA

Designed and implemented training curriculum for elementary school teachers to improve communications and human relations among/between staff as well as minoritized student groups. Special emphasis was placed on appreciating diversity and improving communications across cultures.

 

 

City and State Government Agencies

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California State Department of Education, Office of Indian Education                         

Trained members of various American Indian nations living on Reservation in Board Development best practices.

 

Department of Recreation and Parks, Richmond, CA                                                                           Provided Department employees serving largely ethnic minority and racially diverse communities with organizational and professional development training and consultations to prepare the Department for a future strategic planning process. Interventions and trainings included foundation exercises in organization theory and behavior, leadership development, interpersonal and interdepartmental communications, organizational change, creating an organizational vision and mission statements, and identifying personal and corporate values.

 

Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, San Jose, CA

Provided advanced leadership training and community development practices to 30 mid and senior level management employees serving highly minoritized neighborhoods.

 

Oakland Parks and Recreation Department, City of Oakland, CA

Designed, organized and implemented several three-day workshops for 50 professional staff serving minoritized communities throughout the City of Oakland.  Subject:  "Breaking Through Communication Barriers and Problem Solving."

 

Watsonville Parks and Recreation Department, Watsonville, CA

Designed and implemented cross-cultural communications training for mid and senior level managers working in minoritized communities.

 

 

Businesses

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Engie North America, Austin, Texas

Selected as the sole external trainer to design and implement a diversity, fairness, and organizational effectiveness employee workshop to advance diversity and fairness as part of the company’s Diversity Festival for employees across North America. The topic: Breaking Bias.

 

Cigna Education Reimbursement Scholars Program (ERP)

Through the Walden University Strategic Alliances Group I facilitated a customized leader development webinar for about 100 members of the Cigna Education Reimbursement Scholars Program (ERP) titled Tribe to Tribe We Are One: A formula for embracing other as my sisters and brothers. The webinar covered mental models and perspective shaping, socially categorizing others into groups as a process for creating other, forming and reshaping personal tribes, dark nights of the soul, leading from the inside out, opportunities for post-traumatic growth, actively creating a more meaningful life.

 

HACEMOS, AT&T, Global

Through the Walden University Strategic Alliances Group I facilitated a customized leader development webinar for about 90 members of the HACEMOS (an Hispanic employee organization within AT&T) employee group at AT&T titled Framing My Vision for the Life I Want to Live and Sing About in My Song. The webinar covered the dynamics of change process and overcoming their unintended consequences, grappling with traumatic events over an entire lifespan, personal capacity building through self-assessment, proactively choosing a way of being, overcoming negative self-talk, creating a life vision and plan for a meaningful life.

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HACEMOS, AT&T, Global

Through the Walden University Strategic Alliances Group I facilitated a customized leader development webinar for about 150 members of the HACEMOS (an Hispanic employee organization within AT&T) employee group at AT&T. The leader development program targeted designated line supervisors, mid-level, and senior-level corporate leaders as well as emerging leaders who are members of HACEMOS. The training challenged current paradigms and mental models in practice, offered alternative ways of seeing and working with employees, offered conceptual cognitive and behavioral models, and a tool for developing an inside out leadership approach.

 

SDI Insulation, Burlingame, CA

Provided executive and line manager coaching; comprehensive whole systems analysis and improvements including identifying strategies for cost savers exceeding $350,000, 2 all-staff trainings including leadership fundamentals, organization culture and climate, establishing strategies for shifting from compliance to values based discipline strategies; improving communications between operating units and between the CEO and individual employees; strategies for establishing a learning organization; identified and offered strategies for mitigating risk. Functioned as Executive Coach and Special Advisor to the CEO. Attended high level meetings with consultants and selected employees, reviewed strategic reports prepared by consultants and assessed their findings, and advised the CEO on strategic issues to grow the company from a small to medium sized companies. Provided marketing consultation to identify and promote the company as a “green” company including designing display booths, creating automated PowerPoint presentations for kiosks demonstrating product applications and services, marketing to trade show audiences, and networking with Hunters Point building project coordinators and contractors.

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Apex Insulation, South San Francisco, CA                                                                                             

Designed Bid Control system for Estimators to reduce communications conflicts and to increase system coordination, improve operational efficiency, and increase productive output. Provided analysis of marketing strategies including consumer messaging. Provided organization analysis and capacity building recommendations. Provided business development TA to form the Apex Insulation Company. Worked with owner to establish an office presence. Designed an inventory control system that identified product theft.

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Greatwork, Oakland, CA                                                                                                                              

Provided pre-production research support for a television video project on Black motorcycle gangs in California. Assisted Producer and Director with sourcing funders and then writing grant applications. Provided project management system support during selected video projects. Provided evaluation, consultation, and training services in the areas of education, management, and organization development.

 

Gratitude in Biz, Bellingham, WA

Working with client to develop a virtual curriculum for teaching professionals how to use gratitude in their careers to benefit customers, colleagues, friends, and family members.

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Ramhorn, Oakland, CA

Author, History of a Community Resource, Property Developer, Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza and Community Development Project to serve the highly ethnically diverse communities in Oakland, CA; data gathering including extensive library searches and telephone surveys. 

 

 

Nonprofit/Nongovernmental Organizations

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Stumbling Blocks 2 Stepping Stones: Overcoming limitations through art, Bellingham, WA.

Formed a group of volunteers to produce a month long celebration for 10 local artists with disabilities including loss of sight, aphasia and other dementia, and Parkinson’s Disease. One of the three bands included musicians with Down Syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. Participants who attended the event identified it is the best venue event of the day. The proceeds went to The Art Without Boundaries Association.

 

Hope Homes, Inc. Stow, OH

Provided Executive Coaching and technical assistance (TA) to a long-term care organization including conducting an organization-wide assessment in the areas of operations management, service delivery systems, financial development, strategic planning, marketing, staff development, and Board development of this highly diverse organization.

 

Northern California Center for African American History and Life, Oakland, CA

Provided organizational development technical assistance and training to the Board of Directors to prepare the Board for capacity building through strategic planning.

 

Buchanan YMCA, San Francisco, CA                                                                                                      

Directed Summer Youth Employment Program. Provided primary programmatic leadership in the implementation of the annual Summer Youth Employment Program. Designed, organized, implemented Labor Market Orientation (LMO) Workshops for 400 youth and young adults (15 to 21 years old) in job preparation and placement activities throughout the highly minorized Western Addition and Haight-Ashbury communities.  Responsibilities included program development and evaluation activities.

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National Economic Development & Law Center, Berkeley, CA                                                         

Provided general organization, program and curriculum development TA in the area of training youth  entrepreneurs as a community economic development alternative in low-income communities of color.                

Oakland Youth Enterprise, Inc., Oakland, CA    

Lead Trainer, Writer, and Curriculum Writing Team Coordinator that created an entrepreneurship curriculum and training process for 15-18 year-olds including materials titled, A Community Economic Development Approach To Business Planning and Implementation.  Performed primary curriculum research, writing, and marketing functions.

 

Umbrella House, Sunnyvale, CA

Provided financial development Technical Assistance to agency staff and Board of Directors. Focus: Established an annual support fundraising campaign to raise $25,000 to support a women’s shelter program.