For nine years, Nelli was an internal consultant with the Australian Federal Government.  After managing and facilitating national stakeholder engagement campaigns for the Australian Taxation Office, Nelli was promoted to the Australian Public Service Commission, as the director of the entire Consultancy and Innovation unit.  In that capacity she and her staff provided policy and organization development consulting to all federal public service agencies.  Ultimately, she founded the highly-regarded private-sector consulting firm, Gestalt Enterprises, where her clients included the High Court of Australia (that country’s Supreme Court), Santos Energy, Australian Agency For International Development, Australian National University, South Australian Department of Social Inclusion, University of South Australia and more.  She has also served on the board of directors of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) and she was the regional director of the IAF Oceania region.

Since joining Community At Work in 2013, Nelli has facilitated and consulted with a large portfolio of clients on many aspects of multi-stakeholder collaboration, including: Wikimedia Foundation, Genentech, Google, The Russell Family Foundation, The SCAN Foundation, Tides, Aktana, University of California Office of the President, First 5 San Francisco, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, DPR Construction, Civil Service College of Singapore, University of Oregon School of Law, Advent, University of Tokyo Global Health Leadership Institute, Canopy, City and County of San Francisco, University of California at San Francisco, Institute for Sustainable Energy and Economics at University of Illinois, The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Watershed Asia, International Livestock Research Institute, Flexera-Appollo Consortium, Jack London Improvement District, University of Montana Western, San Francisco Department of Public Health, and more.

In 1979 Sarah graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies.  This led her into the motion picture industry , where over the next 8 years, she worked on more than 40 films.  She wrote, directed and produced two educational documentaries.  This set of experiences introduced her to the realities of how groups collaborate — the strengths, the potentials, and the many challenges.

In 1987, eager to pursue her interest in the human dimensions of work, she joined PLAYFAIR, the consulting firm founded by Matt Weinstein (author of best sellers Having Fun At Work and Work Like Your Dog).  At PLAYFAIR Sarah facilitated co-operative games with large groups — often hundreds and sometimes thousands of participants.

Sarah’s fascination with issues of cooperation and communication in the workplace continued to deepen.  She returned to university in 1991, earning her PhD in clinical psychology in 1995, after which she completed a post-doctoral fellowship focusing on family systems and group dynamics.  During these same years she became a member of the Community At Work team who spent six years writing Facilitator’s Guide, and she was retained for several years as an Adjunct Professor of Organization Transformation at California Institute of Integral Studies.

In 1997, a year after publication of the first edition of Facilitator’s Guide, Sam invited Sarah to affiliate with Community At Work.  Since then she has developed an international reputation, both as an effective consultant and as a teacher.  Her Community At Work client list spans across public service organizations and businesses in many industry sectors.  She has worked with The Burning Man Project, Agilent Technologies, Doctors Without Borders, Hewlett Packard, March of Dimes, Electronic Arts, Alberta Energy Regulators, Earth Island Institute, Symantec, SanDisk, Greenpeace, Lexis Nexus, World Bank, Vulcan Aerospace, City of Edmonton, World Fish Program, International Rice Research Institute, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Network, and more than 100 other organizations.

As a workshop leader, Sarah has taught group facilitation skills and consulting skills to thousands of participants in Kenya, France, The Philippines, England, Germany,  Fiji, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Australia and across Canada and the United States.  She has been a featured speaker at many professional conferences, including repeat engagements at the Organization Development Network (ODN), the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) and the International Association of Facilitators (IAF).

Diamond has extensive background engaging with government, philanthropic, and community resources to develop and implement initiatives that apply a racial equity framework to the governance, programming and capabilities of the systems that supports local communities.

Diamond has worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services as its Director of Birth Equity and Community Collaboration. In that capacity, she has served, from its inception in 2018 to the present, as one of the creative founders in the design and implementation of the Los Angeles County African American Infant and Maternal Mortality (AAIMM) Prevention Initiative. Previously, she also collaborated with community partners to create a racial equity framework for the establishment of the Los Angeles County Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Initiative. And she co-founded and has been a co-facilitator of two lived-experience advisory bodies: the Reentry Health Advisory Collaborative and the Black MotherBoard — both designed to share policy and program decision-making power with institutional leaders. In 2020 she founded the consultancy Liberation By Design LLC.

In all of these experiences, Diamond’s north star has been to lead and/or facilitate participatory processes that share power and decision-making with systems-impacted people and communities. She is committed to strengthening her purpose and practice by integrating ancestral healing and spiritual practices into her mission to advance the liberation of Black people.

Diamond earned her M.S.W. from the University of Southern California. Before that, she attended Emory University where she graduated with a B.A. in English and History. She enjoys traveling, hanging with her dog, Benji, spending time with family and friends, and practicing the healing arts.

For many years Todd was a partner at the pioneering digital consulting firm, Covision. In that capacity, he helped create and refine several frameworks for collaborating on digital platforms, whether online, in person, or hybrid. In collaboration with Carolyn Lukensmeyer and others, for example, Todd played a key role in supporting the development of the AmericaSpeaks “21st Century Town Hall Meeting” model.

Todd is adept with the following Online Collaboration platforms:

• Zoom
• Mural
• Jamboard
• Slack
• Google Docs
• Covision
• Poll Everywhere
• Survey Monkey
• Mentimeter
• Trello
• LucidChart
• MindManager
• Session Lab
• Eventbrite
• Word Clouds
• YouTube

His skills and seasoning in the online environment are much in demand. Todd has teamed with dozens of senior-level group facilitators (based in many countries), advising and supporting them with appropriate engagement technology to enhance their clients’ objectives.

Todd has an M.A, in Interdisciplinary Art from San Francisco State University, a course of study that profoundly influenced his thinking about collaboration in other contexts. At the same time, the formal education allowed Todd to refine his competencies with video production, music, theater and improv. Ultimately, he has been able to apply all of those interests in the service of supporting groups to do their best thinking.

While in the Navy, Paul convened a program (aboard the Sail Training Ship Young Endeavour) that has come to be regarded as arguably Australia’s premiere experiential youth development program.  A key to its success was Paul’s frequent use of participatory values in both the design and application of the program.

While remaining within the Australian Government Sector, Paul continued to practice and refine his facilitation skills, culminating in his facilitation of a series of high-level multinational discussions on global security cooperation, exploring key strategic policy, coordination, and capability.

In 2016 Paul completed his years of service with the Australian Department of Defense and launched his second career, as an organization consultant with the well-respected Australian consulting firm, Bendelta.  While there, Paul worked closely with a range of Australian federal and state government agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and private sector firms across many sectors:  construction, telecommunications, engineering, and health, in Australia and throughout the Asia Pacific Region.  With his prior experience, Paul’s reputation for providing expert leadership development and executive coaching grew quickly, and soon his Bendelta clients utilized Paul’s talents to bolster their group and organization development outcomes too. 

Since founding PB Leadership & Coaching in 2021, Paul has worked with the Australian Institute of Sport, Australia Post, Janssen (APAC), the Australian Federal Police, Worksafe Victoria and many other organizations. 

Paul is on the Board of Directors for Lasercraft, an Australian Disability Employment Enterprise, and he is on the Board of Directors for PTSD Australia/New Zealand, a not-for-profit dedicated to raising awareness and supporting research into treatments for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  He is also a volunteer Watch Commander for Marine Rescue New South Wales where he is actively involved in saving lives on the ocean.