Steve Davis, M.S., M.A. is the founder of FacilitatorU.com, a virtual university offering training, tools, and resources to group leaders and co-founder of Living Giving Enterprises. Steve works with his clients to overcome their fear of presenting themselves, to resolve barriers to their creativity, to empower their under-performing teams, to enhance their facilitation skills, and to build their businesses online and offline. He also publishes a weekly ezine for facilitators, the Master Facilitator Journal, to over 5,000 readers in nearly 100 countries. He offers a unique and diverse skill set encompassing management, business and life coaching, group facilitation, training design and delivery, e-commerce, marketing, writing, and engineering. With his technical background as a former engineer, coupled with his passion and experience in personal development and group leadership, he’s well equipped to help individuals and teams get pragmatic results. Recent work includes delivery of live and virtual seminars in facilitation, coaching, collaboration, sustainable leadership, communication, change, and life management skills. He just completed a book to empower group participants called, “12 Courageous Acts of Leadership for Participants to Change Meetings for Good.” To learn more about Steve, visit his website at www.livingmastery.com.
Darin Harris is co-founder of Living Giving Enterprises, an organizational and leadership development company home of Journeyofcollaboration.com.
For over 25 years, Darin has led people, programs, and projects to unparalleled performance. Local, state, federal, and international public sector, non-profit, and private, for-profit organizations call on his expertise in organizational consulting and facilitation. He draws from a suite of professional skills including group facilitation and problem-solving, strategic planning, process improvement, project management, and policy analysis and evaluation.
His clients include X4 Health; Menasha Corporation; Washington State Employee Credit Union; Friends of the Pheasant Branch Conversancy; Wisconsin’s Green Fire; University of Wisconsin-Madison; University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; University of Vermont; WI Department of Human Services; Madison Metropolitan School District; Middleton-Cross Plains School District; Williamson Street Grocery Cooperative; American Players Theatre; City of Columbus; Middleton Chamber of Commerce; International Crane Foundation; WI Department of Natural Resources; River Alliance; Wisconsin Environmental Initiative; and the Environmental Council of States (ECOS).
In 2007, he teamed with FacilitatorU to create a comprehensive, week-long facilitative leadership program called Journey of Facilitation and Collaboration (JoFC)that has drawn nearly 800 participants from across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Darin is a speaker, author and instructor who guest lectures at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Edgewood College in Madison, WI and Northland College in Ashland, WI. He held a distinguished prefix title for his work at UW-Madison, where he worked as an internal consultant at the Office of Strategic Consulting for over 15 years.
Harry Webne-Behrman. Harry Webne-Behrman has served as a facilitator and mediator for over 35 years. Along with his wife, Lisa Webne-Behrman, he is Senior Partner of Collaborative Initiative, Inc., a private consulting and mediation firm based in Madison, Wisconsin. Harry has worked with hundreds of businesses, schools, community groups and public agencies. Harry also worked for many years with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Human Resources, teaching professional courses on conflict management, communication skills, facilitation skills, managerial mediation and other areas. In November 2006, Harry received the Wisconsin Association of Mediators Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his extensive contributions to the field. He is the author of The Practice of Facilitation (1998), Guardian of the Process (1994), and other training manuals in facilitation and conflict resolution. Harry currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Janice Belgredan. For over 25 years, Janice has worked for a statewide technical assistance system for special education, focusing on adult learning and professional development, serving in multiple roles as a trainer, product developer, coach and organizational consultant. In her work in human services and education to support individuals with disabilities, she discovered that this work is really about transforming the ways we see ourselves and others, and about learning and living full lives together.
Barb Bickford is principal at Bickford Collaboration in the eastern metro area of Minnesota, where she trains and supports groups to collaborate for health and sustainability. Recently retired from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, she was subject matter expert in medical waste and was known for fostering collaboration among healthcare organizations, regulators, law enforcement, waste managers and others. Barb was a key partner in a three-year multi-state project to keep pharmaceuticals out of the Great Lakes and chaired a diverse group of stakeholders seeking to reduce the impact of pharmaceutical waste on Wisconsin’s environment and communities. She helped develop a mentoring program for DNR staff, spearheaded a program to help DNR staff get to know one another and what they do, and offered numerous interactive workshops for healthcare and DNR staff. In 2013, the DNR Board presented Barb with the DNR’s highest award (the Rebecca Wallace Award) for her leadership in mentoring and seeking collaborative solutions to environmental issues. Barb is a quiet yet strong leader with extensive group experience as diverse as leading a Girl Scout troop, founding and facilitating a support group for women in jail, hosting international students, leading wilderness canoe trips, offering healing retreats and playing bass in a “roots” style band. She is thrilled to be supporting leaders to greater collaboration through JOFC.
Todd Brennan works for the Alliance for the Great Lakes as a Watershed Project Manager where he collaborates with communities to improve watershed health within the Great Lakes. Todd leads a team of colleagues and partners that are innovating outreach, planning and policy approaches to watershed pollution control. When done right, this typically requires fostering three expressed values: empathy, mutualism, and commitment. Todd came to the Great Lakes with salt water in his veins having worked on the North Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific oceans in expeditionary education, fisheries management, and marine mammal research. Todd holds a Captains license to sail vessels up to 100 tons and sometimes acts as a relief Captain. Having sailed tens of thousands of miles on all coasts, Todd has said that there is nothing crazier than sailing for days through the heart of North America on the vast Inland Seas. Todd received his master’s degree in Water Policy and Planning at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, where he is now a member of the Alumni Board of Trustees.
Kathleen Paris, Ph.D. is Consultant and Managing Partner with Kathleen Paris, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin. An author, speaker, and consultant, Paris also holds the title of consultant, distinguished, emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She provides management and strategic planning consulting and leadership development in higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, and for-profit businesses. In addition to work on the US mainland, she provided consultation to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France in 2016-17. She has also consulted in Guam, The Virgin Islands, Canada, Cyprus, and the UK and has written numerous books and articles, including Bringing Your Strategic Plan to Life: A Guide for Nonprofits and Public Agencies. Kathleen currently serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program in Educational Leadership at Edgewood College in Madison. In the past, she has taught Strategic Planning Courses for the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, UW-Madison. She is a faculty member of UW System Leadership Program, focusing on decision-making in complex systems.
Sandy Salvo is Founder of Centered Connections, helping businesses and individuals seeking to reach their full potential. Recently retired from the healthcare industry where she served as an improvement coach, quality analyst, and program manager for patient and family-centered care, Sandy is currently focusing her time on the things she loves most: teaching JOFC; spending time with her grandchildren; facilitating Resilience and Thriving workshops; and organizing retreats aimed at promoting compassion, vitality and self-awareness through Qigong and meditation practices. In her career, Sandy has also served non-profits and the government sector as a trainer, facilitator and improvement coach. Sandy has a master’s degree in Human Resource Management and is certified through the Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi. She is passionate about helping leaders discover new ways of acting and being that opens doors to healthy dialogue and results in new possibilities for them and their teams.
Mark Stevens, Ph.D. is Consultant and Principle of Engaging Minds, LLC, where he promotes participation in public and organizational settings through advising and facilitation. He worked for over a dozen years at a US Navy shipyard for maintaining and overhauling nuclear submarines. After a year of sandblasting and five years as a shipyard photographer, he changed career paths to work as a management analyst. He spent his last two years on assignment to the Advanced Industrial Management Program at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) where he helped to manage the development of new job planning processes for US Navy maintenance facilities; coordinating and facilitating the work of NAVSEA personnel, federal contractors, and representatives from the eight naval shipyards to define, model, and test the new processes. Mark left the federal government for graduate school intending to help solve environmental problems. Within a year, he realized that environments don’t have any problems, people do. Recognizing that unilateral problem solving is the most prolific source of problems, he chose the path of facilitation. He now helps groups to transform the fabric of their conversations; weaving in more sincere and authentic relatedness, listening, commitment, honest dissent, possibility, and ownership.
