Suggestions
Lizzie Shupak
Female Founder | Author | Award-Winning Facilitator and Coach | Exploring ways and means that help us make our livings alongside all other living things.
I've been facilitating collaborations, joining dots between people and ideas for over 20 years. Working with the leadership teams of charities, NGOs and Public Sector organisations, including Comic Relief, WWF, A New Direction, the UN and BBC Studios, I also have deep experience working with private sector leaders including those at Accenture, Bang & Olufsen, VIVOBAREFOOT and Universal Music.
I'm passionate about creating collaborations built on trust, communication and deep respect for each person participating. My work focuses on surfacing the narratives that help us create more humane organisational cultures that recognise individuals as people rather than units of production, balancing their needs with those of other critical stakeholders.
My special skills include:
- helping people to do things they never believed they could, bridging the gap between talk and action
- facilitating difficult conversations among senior stakeholders
- creating spaces and structures where people feel able to think and behave more freely
- making connections between thought, feeling and action (head, heart and hands)
- joining dots between people and ideas, in ways that are both new and useful
I am also well-versed in more practical things including:
- Brand & creative strategy
- Service design
- Facilitation
- Sustainability and Regenerative enterprise
- Coaching (individual and team)
- Diversity and Inclusion
And more holistic things including:
- Breathwork
- Somatic coaching
- Art therapy
I'm listed as one of Women Beyond the Box's 2022 Neurodivergent Leaders, a WACL member, a Fellow of Included VC and a Mentor at Abbey Road Red.
My work has been recognised through two Health Service Journal awards (Digitising Patient Care and Primary and Community Care Innovation) and I was an inaugural winner of the IPA and Campaign Magazine's Women of Tomorrow competition.
I'm currently doing an MA in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, exploring ways we can relate better to one another, and to the natural world around us.
Highlights
This is a curious time, and I'm reminded of something John Elkington said at last year's Garden of Tomorrow Festival, hosted by House of Hackney. He observed that people and organisations collectively will start to wake up to the myriad of interconnected challenges we face, and go one of two ways. They will begin to actively explore genuinely regenerative practice that responds meaningfully to the climate crisis, or they will dig in and cling on to the status quo. And, all of us who are privileged to be part of the Schumacher College community are witnessing this "digging in".
It's been an extraordinary year in the life of an extraordinary place, that has, for decades, brought to life the vision of Satish Kumar and so many other incredible teachers. It's been a space for learning like no other, nurturing deep connection to people, to place and to endless possibilities for mutually assured thriving. And, at the same time, it has been entangled in a governance and financial structure that fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents its work.
Which means it's time for something new to emerge. Something that honours the past, supports the students (including myself) in the chaos of this present moment, and recognises the potential for new opportunities for many more people to access this incredible learning community.
Whether you've always wanted to go, but have never been able, have lived in residence for months on end, or are hearing about the college for the very first time, please know, or remember, that the work Schumacher College does is needed. The cultivation of radical love for this earth that we call home, reminding us that we are enough, that we don't need to exploit human-beings or the more-than-human world around us to be safe and secure, and that we have agency and can choose a better next step.
As Dr Hinemoa Elder puts it, "Tini whetū ki to rangi, he iti te põkēao ka ngaro. A small group can overcome the multitude, can overcome a myriad of difficulties." 🌱🌏💚
Jay Tompt, Joe Culhane, Ali Sheridan, Jemima Robertson, Mona Nasseri, Hubert Fonteijn, PhD, Louis Alderson-Bythell MRSS, Ruth Potts, Adam Garfunkel, Andy Thornton, Dr Robert Phillips, John V Willshire, Will Brown, Saurav Roy, Jayn Sterland, Nikki Trott, Michelle Sutherland, Jonathan Wise, Marcello Palazzi, Jennifer Crowley, Deborah Szebeko, Galahad Clark, Ashley Pollock, Giles Hutchins, Alexandra Pimor 🌻🌍, Tessa Wernink, Tess Wehmeyer, Sara Heitlinger
https://lnkd.in/e2HxVPGQ
Friends, tonight on BBC2, John V Willshire will be on Gardeners' World, sharing the re-wilding of his own garden and some thoughts about what that might contribute to a wider discussion of our relationship with the natural world just beyond our doors.
Seeing as it isn't every week that one of us is on TV, we thought it would be a lovely excuse for a semi-spontaneous gathering of The STEPS Collective next Friday afternoon, for a conversation about gardens, community and what exploring these particular spaces might provoke in us all 🌱🌻🦉.
John V Willshire, Dr Robert Phillips, Andy Thornton and I would love to see you. Link to RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/enBBiWXU
(Will Brown - you might have much to contribute to this one! And Carolyn Sweet – if you aren't deep in dissertation world!)
