Kiara Nagel
Kiara Nagel is a creative strategist based in Los Angeles with 20 years of experience building creative and collaborative initiatives and supporting social groups, leaders, and organizations to become more engaged and effective.
At the core of her diverse body of work is a dedication to ensuring those most affected are directly engaged in decision-making about how their places can be shaped, understood and represented and connect and collaborate with others to bring about change.
Bill Richmond
My work with networks comes out of my experiences as a classroom teacher and working inside large educational bureaucracies. I believe that the power of networks comes from the idea that we are all leaders and everyone is a peer.
With this in mind, I enjoy working collaboratively to find simple and meaningful solutions to complex problems. Most of work has been centered on network mapping and network training.
My network mapping experience includes developing surveys, using network mapping software, map generation and analysis, coordinating mapping projects, giving presentations on maps and metrics, and training others to do network mapping and analysis.
Tracy Kunkler
Tracy Kunkler, MSW, is a Principal and co-founder of Circle Forward, a system of collaborative governance, providing frameworks and decision-making tools to leverage change in large-scale systems. It has been particularly effective in cross-sector networks, where the complexity of institutional partners makes decision-making more difficult. It is being used by networks at many different levels, from neighborhoods and municipalities, to food policy and large landscape conservation networks, to other community development and cross sector networks around the country.
Circle Forward Partners, our team, brings the latest research and our own hard-won experience into your space to support you in designing your own collaborative governance system.
Deitre Epps
Deitre Epps is the CEO and Founder of RACE for Equity, LLC.
Deitre has worked for over twenty years to address the ill effects of poverty on low income communities. She provided direct services to Baltimore City’s children and their families for over a decade as an educator and program director for infants to 8th grade students and as a professor at Baltimore City Community College. She also taught early childhood education courses at Towson State University. She was previously the founding director of the Baltimore School Readiness Initiative, a city-wide effort which contributed to an increase in kindergarten readiness from 27% to 58% over four years using the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework.
Christine Capra
I’ve played many roles in change efforts over the decades, and have discovered that I’m happiest when acting as a Network Guardian, supporting others with the skills & tools they need to be as effective as possible.
To that end, I’ve applied my background in data-gathering/ evaluation/visualization, combined with my Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership, to my ongoing drive to discover and develop tools that can help others turn their social change visions into realities.
With my partner, Tim Hanson, I developed the network-data-gathering-tool sumApp (www.greaterthanthesum.com/sumapp) which anyone can subscribe to, to learn about the connections in their network. sumApp gathers that data in a social-network/survey-like platform and outputs the data in the format needed for network visualization tools such as Gephi and Kumu.io.
Curtis Ogden
Curtis Ogden is a Senior Associate at the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC). Much of his work entails consulting with multi-stakeholder networks to strengthen and transform food, education, public health, and economic systems at local, state, regional, and national levels. He has worked with networks to launch and evolve through various stages of development.
Some of his current and past clients include: Food Solutions New England, Vermont Farm to Plate Network, InFACT at Ohio State, Partnership for the Future of Learning, New Technology Network, Next Generation Learning Challenges, Cancer Free Economy Network, Collaborative Action Newark, Community Practitioners Network (New Hampshire), and CareerSTAT/National Fund for Workforce Solutions.
William P. Moore, Ph. D.
Bill has spent his entire career working in our most challenged communities – both urban and rural – and with vulnerable populations to find solutions to our most pressing social, education, and health concerns. Bill is a Senior Fellow at the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Principal at The Strategy Group.
The Group provides advisory and consultation services to foundations, nonprofits, schools and communities in areas of organizational learning, network development and community engagement, community capacity building, rural health and social justice issues. Bill recently retired from the REACH Healthcare Foundation after serving as the Vice President of Program and Evaluation where he guided the overall design, implementation and evaluation of the Foundation’s grant- and change-making strategies.
Beth Tener
Beth Tener is a leadership trainer and coach who helps social change leaders live their values as they address complex challenges, such as transitioning to a clean energy economy, disrupting racism, and revitalizing communities. She is passionate about bringing people together in ways that unlock and ignite personal, group, and community potential. She is the founder of New Directions Collaborative, based in Portsmouth, NH, and has worked with over 200 organizations and collaborative networks. Her current focus in an initiative based in New Hampshire called Kinship: a hub to amplify the power of community. Here, experienced community builders and social change leaders can connect and get peer support, coaching, and training. She also offers participatory meeting design services. Beth writes a blog on topics of collaborative leadership, systems change, and networked ways of working. She has also curated great lists of resources for network weavers here and here.
Abby Yanow
Abby Yanow is a Facilitator and Leadership coach. She has created and facilitated many peer learning networks for the purpose of knowledge-sharing, problem solving and collaboration. Her colleagues consider her the go-to person for creating communities of practice. Abby also coaches facilitators on network and meeting design.
Since 2001, Abby has served as President of the Boston Facilitators Roundtable. In the BFR she has developed a thriving community of facilitators and consultants who generously share their knowledge and expertise. Under her leadership, the BFR was awarded the 2015 Outstanding Regional Organizational Development Network award.
Debbie Gowensmith
Debbie Gowensmith, M.S., is vice-president of Groundswell Services, Inc., dedicated to strengthening equity-building movements. She provides consultation in evaluation and community-based research, specializing in network facilitation and evaluation.
Debbie has found networking to be a key component in developing innovative, powerful ideas that catalyze social change. Her experience includes six years directing an organization that empowered Hawaiian communities to reclaim stewardship of the places where they live, work and play. Through networking, dozens of isolated Hawaiian communities more quickly and effectively created dynamic community-driven resource management projects that are changing conservation in Hawai‘i.