
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 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.