Meet our experienced team including interns and associates

Patricia Galaczy - organizational development, leadership education and professional facilitation (The Art of Dialogue)

Patricia Galaczy is a Leadership Educator dedicated to providing customized professional training and development, facilitation, keynote presentations and organizational development solutions to leaders across industry.

Patricia facilitates organizational dialogue and learning via a comprehensive, experiential and participatory suite of short, non-credit courses designed to broaden understanding and development of skills in: Self-Development, Leadership, Mindfulness, Group Consultation Process, Organizational Dialogue, Interpersonal Communications, Team-Building, Performance Management, Project Management, Critical Thinking, Creativity and Change Processes.

Since she first began leading groups in 2000, she has relied heavily upon an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to her design and delivery of curriculum; drawing upon first-hand experience and the most recent research and practice in the fields of Leadership, Organizational Development, Mindfulness, Adult Education, Business, Arts and Cognitive Science to deliver a customized and contemporary educational experience for all learners.

Visit Patricia's Linkedin page or email her.

 

Kathleen Manion - child welfare programme design, social work practice and community research and evaluation

Kathleen has spent the last twenty years working within social and community services, specializing in the fields of research and evaluation. Her diverse experience has included research in various countries and settings, working at both a national ministerial level and also at the grassroots.

 Kathleen is passionate about supporting children and young people to reach their full potential, and demonstrates this focus during consultation on policy and programme development, relevant research and evaluation techniques and promoting quality community and social work practice.

 Kathleen's skills include academic and layman's writing and editing, teaching and curriculum development. She is also knowledgeable and experienced in a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and community engagement processes and has a PhD. in International Social Work from the University of East London (UK).

Visit Kathleen's Linkedin page or email her.

 

Alvaro Moreno - human rights, monitoring and evaluation, education

Over 25 years of experience in the research, planning, management and evaluation of social and community change projects and programs, both in Canada and Overseas. Areas of experience include participatory research, planning and evaluation; training in human rights, democratic development, social and community economic development, environmental education, conflict transformation, diversity awareness and anti-racism education.

 

 

Visit Alvaro's Linkedin page or email him.

Lee Sentes - programme design, strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation

Lee has been described as an organizational Swiss Army knife.  A born generalist, Lee believes in collaboration, experience and honesty - if he doesn't know, he'll tell you.  Then he'll help find the answer.

Lee has been working with non-government organizations globally since 1997, including NGO networks in the UK and New Zealand Aotearoa.  Lee helped found Development Action Ltd. in New Zealand in 2010 and undertook the majority of work up until his departure in May 2012.

Personable and easy to work with, Lee has a particular interest in creating spaces for the sharing of ideas.  Translated into an organizational setting, this interest can take many forms depending on the needs of the client, such as mapping office processes, drafting policies and job profiles, creating dialogue venues outside of the office, hosting information swaps and collaborative learning events, etc.

Lee is a skilled facilitator and can help get your good ideas flowing.  Put Lee to work at your next strategic planning session, discussion on community development project design, or get him to fine-tune your funding applications.  Lee can help at every step. 

Visit Lee's LinkedIn page or email him.

 

Interns

Carla Funk - Royal Roads University Phd. scholar and Mitacs recipient

Carla has recently been awarded a prestigious Mitacs grant.  She is currently an active intern with Development Action, undertaking research in Tanazania.  Her research entited "Recipients' Perspective of Development Aid in Tanzania" promises to be a fascinating insight into the role and impact of philanthropic funding.

 

Canadian Associates

Val Cortes - group leadership development, arts-based group facilitation, and conflict resolution training

Valeria Cortés is a Leadership Educator and Trainer. Val helps organizations achieve their goals through a range of activities: strategic planning, programme design, leadership development, conflict resolution, group facilitation, and “training for trainers” programs.

Val focuses on arts-based adult learning, and she likes to create inclusive, diverse spaces that enable creative cross-cultural communication. She integrates systems thinking into all her work, and these systemic considerations often provide the key insights to the problems she addresses.

One of Val’s core experiences is in the area of student leadership development. She has designed, facilitated, and coordinated student leadership programs in México, the United States, and Canada, and has supported service-learning programs and facilitated leadership development initiatives for over fifteen years. Val has an M.A. and a M.Ed. for her work in this area.

Email Val at valeria.cortes@gmail.com

 

International Associates

Ann Braun - Braun Wheatley Partners (abraunw.blogspot.com)

As a Monitoring and Evaluation practitioner with Braun Wheatley Partners, Ann has more than 15 years of experience in monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment in the context of international development and in supporting organizations to extend their capabilities in M&E. Ann returned to consulting in 2008 after several years as an evaluation advisor with NZAID.

Ann is based in New Zealand, but works across a wide range of countries.

Key skills and interests include:

• Monitoring and evaluation of national and international development initiatives.

• Development of monitoring frameworks and systems.

• M&E Training, mentoring, coaching and facilitation.

• Advice on frameworks, systems, evaluation TORS and plans.

• Support to communities of practice.

• Participatory, gender sensitive and mixed methods approaches.

Visit Ann's Linkedin page or email her.