Experience & Service

What follows is a traditional “Bio”, but in it you won’t discover who I am or whether we should work together.  It won't help you feel the passion I bring to this work, the compassion I have for people, or the way I create a safe space in which people can bring out their best and connect with others. Such understanding can only come by meeting and connecting with me, and then letting your intuition decide what’s right.

 Select Facilitation Projects:

  • Design and facilitation of the City of Covington’s citizen-driven strategic planning process.
  • Co-design and facilitation of Invest in Neighborhood’s leadership development training.
  • Design and facilitation of the 3CDC Over the Rhine community engagement process.
  • Design and facilitation of the Faye Apartments Community Council rebirth.
  • Facilitation of over twenty Cincinnati “Urbanist” meetings—urban-issue discussion forums designed to build a grass roots movement to change public thinking on urban resident recruitment
  • Design and facilitation of the Enright Avenue Urban Eco-Village (Cincinnati) resident engagement and strategic planning process which has lead to a 501(c)(3) organization that has purchased two properties, developed a community newsletter and work groups, and held successful tours of living, progressive dinners, children’s workshops and other civic events.
  • Design and facilitation of the Covington Business Council’s board engagement and strategic planning process.
  • Design and facilitation of Alteractive Speaks (InkTank’s Public Issues Series, Fall 2005)
  • Facilitation of IMPACT Over the Rhine’s strategic planning process
  • Open Space Facilitation in many settings (over 50 sessions the past 10 years)

Select Civic Leadership Positions

  • Member of the Cincinnati Mayor’s Commission charged with re-constituting the City’s department of planning (chaired by Liz Blume)
  • Board member of Citizens for Civic Renewal (2005-present, board chair, 2007-09)
  • Board member of OTR (Over the Rhine) Foundation (2002-present)
  • Board member of Greater Cincinnati Planned Giving Council (2003-present); presenter of Planned Giving on the Run, a year-long course in how to start a planned giving program
  • Former Board member of IMPACT OTR (2001-2003)
  • Former board member of Big Brothers (1995-2000) and big brother to Darryl Pabst for eight years
  • Leadership Cincinnati, Class XXVII Graduate (2004)

Select Training

  • Extensive and ongoing "Civic Engagement" training with Peter Block
  • Training with Jay Rothman of the Aria Group in consensus-based data-gathering and community-facilitation techniques
  • Systematic Inventive Thinking with Amnon Levav
  • Compression Planning (“storyboarding”) strategic and project planning training with Jerry McNellis
  • Beech Acres Mediation Training (certified mediator)
  • Landmark Adult Education (graduate of the “Curriculum for Living”)
  • Dale Carnegie workshops on relationship building
  • The Likeable Lawyer (others-centered negotiation training based loosely on “Getting to Yes”)

Previous Work Experience

  • United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Director of Planned Giving, 2001-present
    • Facilitated creation of a partnership between the United Way Foundation and Greater Cincinnati Foundation to raise endowment funds for human services
    • Raised over $15 million in endowment funds in five years
  • The Law Office of Jeffrey L. Stec, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1995-2001
    • Pro bono foster care advocacy on behalf of children and parents
    • Domestic relations, juvenile delinquency and criminal defense practice
  • Dinsmore and Shohl, Cincinnati, Ohio, Mass Tort Litigation Associate, 1992-1995

Education:

  • University of Michigan Law School, J.D., cum laude (top 25%), 1992
  • University of Michigan, B.A. (English), with High Distinction (top 10%), 1989