Welcome!
I’m excited to learn what has brought you here. Let’s connect and find out if I or someone in my community can support you.
Warmly,
Olive
About
The quick bio
I support individuals, groups and organizations to skillfully navigate complexity, uncertainty and change. (Some examples are here).
I orient my practice around a desire to be in right relationship with self, with communit(ies) who have been systemically marginalized, with the Indigenous peoples on whose lands I live, and with Earth’s living systems on which we depend.
Over the years, I have chosen professional roles and academic inquiries, as well as certifications and trainings, that support my ability to address the interlocking crises of this moment; from the climate emergency to settler colonialism to economic inequality and more.
The longer read
I bring more than 15 years leading and collaborating on the human systems side of change, in a range of roles, organizations and sectors. From co-designing and facilitating award-winning engagement processes for the City of Vancouver, to managing an employee leadership program for Lower Mainland Health Authorities’ Energy and Environmental Sustainability Team, to leading an executive transition review for a prominent BC-based campaigning organization, my diverse range of experiences provides a powerful bridge into the specifics of client systems and your unique challenges.
I work consciously with the complexity in systems; attending to the relationships and interdependent factors that shape the outcome of a day-long meeting, an organizational culture change effort or a planning process. Rooted in the coaching skills of deep inquiry, the pattern sensing tools of Human Systems Dynamics and other systems-thinking methodologies such as Theory U, and the group process work of Dialogue and Deep Democracy, my approach creates the conditions for ongoing personal and organizational learning, from the discovery phase through to delivery and implementation.
My work is always grounded in specific and tangible tools that support clients to see clearly, to strengthen relationships and to choose wise actions for going forward. Clients often take the tools learned in sessions into daily practice and workplaces beyond the session or facilitated process.
I have designed and taught courses on dialogue, engagement, leadership and systems change for Royal Roads University, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University’s Continuing Studies programs, as well as offered guest lectures to engagement practitioners and other change-makers across Canada.
Training and Education
I have a SSHRC-funded MA in Environmental Education from Royal Roads University, along with certifications in Authentic Leadership, Human Systems Dynamics, and Co-Active Coaching. In addition, I have advanced training in methods of Deep Democracy and The Work that Reconnects.
Life before consulting!
Before launching my consulting practice, I managed a leadership development program and provided strategic advising on change management, innovation and employee engagement for the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Team of the Lower Mainland Health Organizations. Prior to this role I designed award-winning engagement processes for the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action plan among other initiatives.
Some of my staff positions have include developing a cross-sectoral living wage campaign in my role within the communications department at the Hospital Employees Union; managing the design and implementation of popular education programming for Check Your Head: the Youth Global Education Network.
I acknowledge with humility that I do my work and make my home as a settler on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tseil-Waututh and Squamish people, who are the rightful stewards of this place. And I recognize my responsibility to contribute in my life and work towards meaningful reconciliation and decolonization.
PS (Since I believe we are more than our paid work.) I’ll add that I’m a city cyclist, a maker of sauerkraut, a thrower of dinner parties, a lapsed poet, as well as a former podcast host and co-producer. In 2010, I rode my bike across the U.S. and would do it again.
I live with my partner and kiddos in an intentional community in what is colonially named East Vancouver.
Facilitation & Process Design
As a facilitator and process designer, I help create a container in which participants can engage their full(er) selves and groups can access their collective capacity to move towards individual and shared goals.
I collaborate with clients on a range of projects that include:
- Multi-day planning sessions
- Educational workshops
- Team coaching and development
- Strategic decision-making
- Cross-sectoral dialogues
- Process design advising
- And more!
Approaches such as deliberative dialogue, design thinking, theory U, deep democracy, co-active coaching, authentic leadership and adaptive leadership are among the resources that I bring to this work.
Through holistic attention to individual realities, group dynamics and the larger system in which we are embedded, I support clients to identify and act from their wisdom, core values and highest potential.
Interested in working together? Let’s talk…
One-on-one Coaching
Personal coaching helps us to access the wealth of strength, creativity,
compassion, wisdom and courage we all hold. Drawing from these capacities we become more free to release the stuck patterns in our lives and create new and generative ways of being.
Approach
I recognize clients as the expert of your own life and I work collaboratively with you to deepen your learning about yourself, your values and your desired future. The coaching relationship serves to deepen your change process by engaging your expertise, providing greater focus, awareness of choice and clear accountabilities for the patterns you want to shift and the life you want to create.
While this method works with you as an individual, I recognize that the wider contexts of capitalism, climate crisis, patriarchy, settler colonialism, racism and other forms of oppression and systemic ‘stuckness’ also influence us. In my coaching work, I create a space in which these aspects of our experience can be recognized and worked with as needed.
Training
I am certified through the Coaches Training Institute, a leading International Coaching Federation-accredited school. I incorporate tools and approaches from other certifications that include Human Systems Dynamics, Authentic Leadership, Deep Democracy and The Work that Reconnects.
What have others said about their coaching sessions with me?
“Working with Olive is a remarkable experience. She provides a safe and open environment that allows me to ask myself real questions and feel completely engaged and open to exploring all possible responses.”
“Entering into the coaching process with you has been an outstanding experience for me – in the true sense of the word. I both think and feel that we worked together to bring me back to myself.”
“Olive’s coaching session with me was incredibly helpful. She was professional and helped me determine what was really underlying things by asking the right questions of me at each step along the way. In the end I was able trust those knowing places in me I had abandoned some years ago.
“I feel more whole after the coaching session. I got to places I wouldn’t have gotten to on my own, even though I’ve thought about this issue a lot.”
“Olive is skilled, transparent, wise, loving, authentic and compassionate. Having her support on such a regular basis is a blessing.”
Curious?
Schedule a sample session to help you discern if coaching is a fit for you at this time.
I am currently accepting up to two new clients. Get in touch to find out about a sample session.
Contact
Interested in working together? You can reach me here or at shiftcollaborative.ca.