Systems Change Coaching

Jennifer has worked in a variety of settings over the past 25 years as a community organizer, philanthropic advisor, leadership coach, and curriculum designer for transformative learning journeys. Most recently, Jennifer was the Director of Training and Partnerships at the Garfield Foundation, where she founded several communities of practice for consultants, funders, and changemakers working in complexity. She is an experienced facilitator with applied experience in large multi-stakeholder projects, a certified leadership coach, and Zen practitioner. She is passionate about supporting the internal and external change needed to create a more vibrant, relational, and joyful world.

Jennifer on LinkedIn

Jessica has been working at the frontiers of positive change as a storyteller, communications strategist, program manager, and curriculum designer for over a decade. A skilled facilitator, she brings extensive experience designing and delivering strategic initiatives and transformative learning opportunities—including graduate-level courses focused on systems and complexity theory and leadership—in her previous roles at the RE-AMP Network, the Blekinge Institute of Technology, the School of Systems Change, and, most recently, the Garfield Foundation. While with the Foundation, Jessica contributed to its collaborative networks portfolio and stewarded a community of practice for grantee partners leading large, multi-stakeholder projects focused on equitable climate change, public health, community development, and food solutions.

Currently, Jessica supports purpose-driven people and organizations in a consulting capacity with coaching, facilitation, and strategy in the realms of leadership, storytelling and communications, organizational learning and development, and program design.

Jessica Conrad on LinkedIn

Sarah Ely has worked in the systems change space for over 35 years at both micro and macro levels. She is deeply informed from years of working in multiple sectors: nonprofit community service agencies, corporate/manufacturing, K-12 public, and higher education. As an organizational development expert, she focuses on convening stakeholders and collaborative meeting design. She helps equip members and facilitators with meeting agendas and activities to save time, get better results, and experience authentic collaboration by virtue of how the meeting unfolds. Planning change and improvement together is a liberating, highly effective method to move the needle on a challenge in a world where top-down or only a few are involved.

Sarah on LinkedIn

Pennie's bio

Naava L. Frank, Ed.D. is a nationally recognized, published expert, with 20 years of experience in the use of communities of practice (CoPs) and networks for non-profits. Naava consults to foundations and organizations to launch and support the growth of communities of practice and networks to foster learning, provide moral support, and effect systemic change.

Naava on LinkedIn

Brendon Johnson has over 15 years’ experience co-designing and running programs that amplify local and systemic impact through communities, networks, and multi-sector partnerships. He has advised, trained, and coached 40+ organizations and networks across 50+ countries on topics such as collective leadership, participatory learning, and decentralized decision-making. Brendon is an expert facilitator, having designed and led hundreds of workshops and events around the globe. Currently, in addition to consultancy work, he runs a network of over 100 communities, movements and networks from around the globe who unite for collaborative learning and collective advocacy.

Brendon on LinkedIn

Parallel Solutions is rooted in Traverse City, Michigan and primarily serves people and places in the Great Lakes region by:

• Guiding strategic planning and decision-making
• Providing organizational development coaching, advising, and training
• Helping clients plan for and manage changes in leadership, funding, programs, and partnerships
• Supporting collaborative efforts within teams and networks, between entities, and across sectors
• Facilitating and designing meetings and community engagement processes

The firm’s diverse mix of federal, state, and local government, private, and nonprofit sector clients invest in downtowns and neighborhoods, build housing, run cooperatives, develop and maintain trails, protect and restore rivers, create and manage public parks, protect drinking water, address homelessness, support food security, steward wildlife habitat, nurture connections with nature, create and promote the arts, educate students, design and manage transportation networks, and support individual and community health.

Founder Megan Motil has a particular passion and strength in guiding clients as they set direction and make strategic decisions while navigating uncertainty, confusion, tension, or conflict. She’s passionate about coaching clients who are working to address complex issues that do not have easy or formulaic solutions. She operates from a position of experience in the nonprofit world of time and resource constraints. As an advisor she shares caring and candid observations, and empowers clients to explore new ideas, perspectives, and processes with directness, empathy, and insight.

Prior to launching Parallel Solutions in 2014, Megan worked for seven years at the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, serving simultaneous roles as Associate Director and Director of Development. From 1999-2007, Megan was a community planner, then Regional Planning Director, at Networks Northwest. Megan wrote her undergraduate thesis on food systems and holds a master’s degree in organizational management.
 

Megan on LinkedIn

Curtis is a Senior Associate with the Interaction Institute for Social Change and an independent coach. Much of Curtis’ work entails consulting with multi-interestholder networks and collaborative efforts to strengthen and transform food, public health, education, and economic development systems at local, state, regional, and national levels.

Some of his current and past clients include: DC Legal Aid Transformation Network, Food Solutions New England; Right from the Start (CT), InFACT at Ohio State University; Hunts Point (NY) Resiliency; Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network; National Parent Leadership Institute; Partnership for the Future of Learning; New Technology Network; Cancer Free Economy Network; Collaborative Action Newark (NJ); Community Practitioners Network (New Hampshire); and Social Impact Exchange.

Curtis is originally from Flint, Michigan and did his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He now lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, three daughters, a dozen chickens and a lionhead rabbit.

Curtis on LinkedIn

Nick on LinkedIn

Tanja Sarett, M.A., CFRE, CVF, ACC, is a nonprofit and fundraising consultant, facilitator, trainer, and executive leadership coach. Her consulting work and fundraising experience has focused on major gifts, institutional giving, advanced prospect research, wealth and philanthropic screenings, moves management, campaigns, fundraising events, board development, and donor cultivation and stewardship.

Tanja brings to her work with professionals and nonprofit organizations a wide range of collaborative and creative techniques and tools from IDEO Design Thinking, Liberating Structures, the Technology of Participation, and the Agile community.

Tanja is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), an Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Master Trainer, a Certified Virtual Facilitator (CVF), an International Coaching Federation accredited Associate Certified Coach (ACC), an International Association of Facilitators (IAF) endorsed Facilitator and a 21/64 Multigenerational Giving Advisor.

Tanja on LinkedIn

Rachel Sinha is a systems change practitioner and coach who works with leaders to troubleshoot the real-world challenges of driving change, whether that’s communicating complex work clearly, structuring new partnerships, or building programs from the ground up. With over 15 years’ experience co-founding and scaling initiatives like The Finance Innovation Lab and The Systems Sanctuary, she brings a deep toolkit of frameworks and strategies, drawing on them when they serve the moment but always staying grounded in the immediate needs of the leader and their context. Rachel has coached and collaborated with changemakers across sectors and geographies, helping them navigate complexity, unlock new opportunities, and sustain momentum for lasting impact.

Rachel on LinkedIn

Jeanie has been leading and working with groups for over 20 years as an educator, a trainer, an executive director, a presenter, and a facilitator. She specializes in group dynamics, experience design, learning, and listening. She creates environments that allow people to be themselves, get honest, and see what is ready to be seen. Her customized approaches draw from many sources, including ecology, experiential learning, somatic listening, Liberating Structures, and Theory U. Jeanie is a certified life coach, a dancer, and a naturalist. Jeanie lives in Suttons Bay.

Jeanie on LinkedIn