Rosa Zubizarreta
As founder of DiaPraxis, Rosa supports leaders and groups to work creatively with divergent perspectives. Her mission is to develop collective capacity for transforming friction into useful energy and greater insight. Author of From Conflict to Creative Collaboration, a manual on Dynamic Facilitation, she has taught this collaborative sense-making process internationally.
Rosa is conversant with various approaches to group dialogue and creative problem-solving, and enjoys adapting and combining different formats as needed to support each particular situation. In addition to earning three master’s degrees in organization development, clinical social work and multicultural education, Rosa has also trained in Internal Family Systems, Focusing, Heart IQ, Deep Democracy, and Constellations.
Rosa recently completed a PhD in Organizational Development and Change from Fielding Graduate University, and is currently a Visiting Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for the academic year 2023-2024. With a life-long passion for social change, Rosa is an Affiliated Practitioner with the Co-Intelligence Institute. She enjoys exploring the intersections of group facilitation, personal growth, and social transformation in her online journal, The Listening Arts.
Here are some key associates with whom she’s worked on a variety of projects:
Andy Paice
Andy lives in London, where he works as a consultant advising and supporting local authorities to empower and bring the public into decision making processes. His role is to make sure that it’s not just people’s votes that count but also their voices. He designs, convenes and facilitates fair, democratic processes to find wise and mutually beneficial solutions.
Andy is also a Senior Associate with the Co-Intelligence Institute, a US non-profit . He also supports CII’s founder Tom Atlee by promoting the Wise Democracy project and its associated pattern language, a tool for co-creating deeply participatory cultures.
With a passion for problem solving, facilitating creativity and helping people to ‘get unstuck’ by seeing things from a variety of empowering perspectives, Andy also draws on his background as a Buddhist monastic and teaches mindfulness practice in organizations. Learn more at AndyPaice.net.
Martha Cuffy
Martha is a facilitator, leadership consultant and wellness architect with a background in organisational relationship systems, process work and somatic-led practices. With an MBA from Strathclyde Business School and an MA in Yoga Psychology from Bihar Yoga Bharati University in India, her education straddles the worlds of business and personal development.
In the UK, Martha co-initiated a leadership retreat programme at Windsor Castle to support senior Black and Asian leaders in diverse sectors. She also works in partnership with BYP Network and Kike Oniwinde to support upcoming Black leaders. In the realm of deliberate democracy, Martha co-facilitates Citizen Assemblies on the climate emergency as well as other participatory processes for local governments. With regard to sustainable development and leadership, Martha has facilitated regional initiatives in the Caribbean, collaborating with organisations such as Greenpeace, Ocean Foundation and the Clinton Climate Initiative.
Martha is known for accessing untapped realms, revealing deeper stories and energising our spirits, leading to previously unimagined change. She collaborates with Rosa and Andy to offer learning experiences in Dynamic Facilitation as a co-creative sense-making approach to participatory and deliberative democracy.
Christiana Wall
Christiana Wall has a Relationship Coaching and Counseling practice in Chatham, NY and leads workshops on “The Art of Not Taking it Personally”. The synergy of her offerings is informed by her trainings in Psychosynthesis, Anthroposophic Psychology, Spatial Dynamics, Non-Violent Communication, Restorative Justice, and more.
Christiana co-led “Call of Self in the Call of the Cosmos”, a workshop at the 2016 Psychosynthesis Annual Conference in Taormina, Italy, and authored “Valuing Self – The Gift of the Cosmos” , a chapter in the book Call of Self: Psychosynthesis Life Coaching.
A social worker at heart (in the best sense of that term!) Christiana has been a New York State Certified Mediator since 2000 and earned her Masters in Social Work from SUNY Albany (2003). She has collaborated with Rosa on various projects, including staff development work with Waldorf Schools and community workshops on “Communication Practices that Open Minds and Hearts”.
Past Collaborators
Many thanks to Bruce Nayowith for his assistance with several workshops over the years, as well as for his theoretical contributions to this work.
Much appreciation to Uli Nagel for her enthusiastic support of this work, and for her initiative with local outreach efforts.