COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION FOR SHARED PROSPERITY, EQUITY & SUSTAINABILITY
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WHAT OTHERS SAY
Collaborative Innovation
Feedback
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CoCreative has played a huge role in helping us grow from what was initially just an idea into a collaborative social enterprise with growing momentum and widespread buy-in from a range of key players. I have been enormously impressed by Russ' ability to get real traction in a short space of time, while fostering a sense of calm and coherence. And his personal commitment to our purpose has shone through in many ways, from putting in extra hours to helping us make the right funding connections. I couldn't recommend him more highly.
Anne-Marie Brook
Co-founder, Human Rights Measurement Initiative
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Russ Gaskin and his team at CoCreative Consulting are a dream to work with. They help you figure out, and accomplish, what seems impossibly tangled and unmanageable. I’ve been in the fields of corporate responsibility, progressive economic development, and social investing for a quarter century now, and I’ve worked with and met a lot of consultants. CoCreative is, hands down, the absolute best at supporting large-scale system change.
Marjorie Kelly
Senior Vice President, The Democracy Collaborative
I’ve participated in a number of multi-stakeholder meetings on these issues, and a lot of them were led by well-known institutions, but we’ve accomplished more the last day and a half than we did in six months of those meetings.
Kellee James
CEO, Mercaris
CoCreative helped our network of stakeholders create a powerful framework for shared action in our community. Your team's facilitation, wealth of knowledge, and creative approaches helped our coalition of the willing find common vision across our diverse ideas and interests. It was exciting to see a shared understanding of system gaps and stakeholder needs emerge and inform the design of Stone Soup Makers--our new Collective Impact capacity building program for the Lehigh Valley. I highly recommend CoCreative to anyone seeking to co-create from vision to action.
Marci Ronald
Executive Vice President, United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley
This innovation network approach is really powerful and we’re getting a lot done, but honestly the most valuable part of it for me is that I’ve learned so much about how to run my own business better. Your approaches actually work to get people focused on big goals and moving fast.
Greg Likteig
Senior Director, The Scoular Companies
I just want to say again what a wonderful job you did yesterday at the network meeting. Your presentation was spot on, compelling delivery. Really well done. And in the 24 hours since, I've heard nothing but great feedback on your facilitation. It was truly amazing to see you develop deep engagement from such a diverse group.
Alisa Gravitz
President & CEO, Green America
Collaborative Strategy
Feedback
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We are an international, non-profit made up of global companies and NGOs dedicated to responding to humanitarian crisis and disasters around the world. We needed to restructure to stay agile and flexible, but also wanted to maintain our culture of inclusion and engagement, so we reached out to CoCreative because of their expertise in bringing people together around common values. They quickly helped us find a path that was respectful of the history of our organization, sensitive to the (many) members of our Board, and aligned with where our organization needed to go. The experience was truly inspiring and our entire team wants to work with CoCreative again!
EJ Ashbourne
Executive Director, Partnership for Quality Medical Donations
You may be pleased to know that our board said they only want to use CoCreative for our planning from now on. They love how you help us work fast and design big plans that actually work.
Hilari Varnadore
Director, LEED for Cities & Communities, US Green Building Council
I honestly can’t believe what you accomplished with our board in a half day. As you know, half of them weren’t even convinced that we needed that meeting at this point, but by the end they were really excited about our new mission and objectives and agreed that it was exactly what we needed.
Hans Theyer
CEO, Fairtrade America
Your work with our leadership team has really changed the way we think about our role in making DC the country’s most sustainable city. Instead of trying to do everything ourselves, we now focus on our unique strategic role as ‘Catalytic Shepherds’ (and we still love that term, by the way!).
Brendan Shane
Chief, Office of Policy & Sustainability, District Department of the Environment
Collaborative Leadership Training Feedback
Russ and Heather took the time to deeply understand the complex tensions at play in our organization – from the participants themselves – and then crafted an excellent, engaging, and just plain useful program for us. I could not be happier with this engagement.
Dawn Denvir
The Nature Conservancy
CoCreative provided an amazing experience for our team here at WFF. It was an engaging and informative session that will significantly advance our work as critical thinkers and strategic learners.
Matthew Carr
Strategy, Learning & Evaluation Director, Walton Family Foundation
Given our role as catalysts in creating a world where all lives have equal value, the methods, approaches, and most importantly in-the-trenches experience of CoCreative are invaluable to our mission. Your fantastic facilitation and generosity of spirit left an incredibly positive mark with our colleagues and will make a real difference in our work over time.
Chris Ernst
Global Head, Leadership & Organization Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Collaborative Innovation training has served us very well. We followed the process pretty closely and it really reenergized these educators and helped the group work together beautifully and thoughtfully. Speaking for myself, the training had a lasting impact on my thinking and facilitation. Hopefully, we’ll be able to attend another training in the future.
Jennifer Johnston
Program Manager Healthcare Workforce & Transition Projects, Highline College
Simply the best session I've ever attended, hands down.
Session Attendee
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
I’ve been doing professional development workshops for 20-plus years. This one stands out. It’s not too much to say that it’s already changed my perspective forever.
Session Attendee
UN Development Program
I should have learnt this 5 years ago. I feel like we wasted a lot of time and energy without this.
Session Attendee
New Zealand Institute of Management
This training was priceless! CoCreative gave us a practical process, step-by-step, for collective impact. They took a cerebral concepts and made them applicable to daily work. Their blend of techniques and actual work products will change the way we do collaboration.
Marian Kaanon
Chief Executive Officer/President, Stanislaus Community Foundation
Public Speaking
Feedback
Russ and Cliff really blew the conference away. You were up against some heavy hitters this year—Peter Block, Peter Senge, and Margaret Wheatley, and the numbers tell the story: Attendees gave your talk a 4.9 out of 5, the highest rating we've seen in the history of the Systems Thinking in Action conference.
Mark Alpert
President, Pegasus Communications
Fabulous, inspiring and practical session! I went away feeling I had picked up a new and practical tool for both self-reflection and working with a group. Very well worth attending.
Session Attendee
Keynote, OD Forum (New Zealand)
I have been attending this conference for almost two decades. Your keynote was the best I have experienced. I’m excited about the potential for my work, and the many possible applications for the students, teachers, and administrators who were in attendance as part of our team. We have continued to talk about the presentation over the past few weeks. It has truly changed the way we see the ‘problems’ before us.
Mary Scheetz
Program Director, Waters Foundation K–12 Educational Partnership
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