Inviting a consultant into an intimate relationship with an organization can lead to powerful results. By being involved in weekly meetings, facilitation of teams and working directly with multiple leaders, a consultant can build the understanding and relationships needed for deep cultural or organizational shifts.
“You are the tiny yet super significant extra energy that this organization needed.”
-Business VP
“What you just articulated, we would never say in a corporate setting, but just what we needed to hear. Your organizing experience shows up here and is critical for our cultural creation.”
-Cinder President
Centering Shared Leadership and Anti-Racism
I worked with Cinder, a small staffing company, to create its first-ever leadership team and transform the company culture toward anti-racism and inclusion in its relationships, policies, strategies, meeting culture and more. Over the year, the company shifted from 20% to 60% people of Color, including women of Color in over half its leadership team. Our work together ranged from birthing a new mission and vision to practicing healthy and heart-centered communication to strategic planning to grappling with the nuances of honestly walking a path of equity with decision-making and action.
“What you just articulated, we would never say in a corporate setting, but just what we needed to hear. Your organizing experience shows up here and is critical for our cultural creation.”
-Cinder President
Conflict Transformation and New Org Structure
With co-facilitator Kavana Tree Bressen, I worked with the Extinction Rebellion-US, a national climate action org, to process equity-related conflict and redesign the organizational structure to integrate 30 chapters in a multifaceted, shared-hierarchy.
Over seven months we worked with individuals and teams, facilitated meetings, advised on processes, created protocols and explored both value-based and structural tensions. Together we arrived at a new equity-centered modified-sociocractic hub design that they launched nationwide.
“I really enjoyed working with you during the restructuring process. You are kind, perceptive, and passionate about your work, the environment, and justice. I particularly appreciated your positive energy, insights into process/structure, and ability to mediate difficult conversations.”
-XRUS leader
“I really enjoyed working with you during the restructuring process. You are kind, perceptive, and passionate about your work, the environment, and justice. I particularly appreciated your positive energy, insights into process/structure, and ability to mediate difficult conversations.”
-XRUS leader
“You built capacity for our team at an exponential level. Exponential. And I am astonished at the efficiency at how you approached this. It would have taken us a year and a half to go from where we started to where we ended, and in fact, we probably wouldn’t have made it by ourselves. We didn’t have the tools or the structure without you Jenny.”
-Library Dean
More Than a New Org Chart
In 2026, I led the first phase of a department restructure at Portland Community College’s Library Access Services. Many of the staff had never been asked to reflect on their workplace, let alone shape it themselves. I realized they needed more than a new org chart: they needed the experience of being heard, and discovering they could actually listen, collaborate, and solve problems together. I designed an arc that explored problems before solutions through sessions of small groups, visual formats, somatic practices, and quiet reflection time. They drew their jobs as metaphors, mapped spectrums of opinion, interviewed each other, practiced ‘yes, and.’ My goal was to “increase surface area” between people: more empathy, better outcomes. I tracked if people felt included, if power was shifting, and if anxiety was softening into curiosity. By the end, they’d woven the tools for collaboration into their workplace vernacular, and many were surprised to realize they’d been ‘learning to fish while we fished.’
