Reintroducing ReThink Resilience
ReThink Resilience isn’t new. As the founder of this consulting practice, I’ve been offering support for non-profit, faith-based, and government human service providers since 2007. But this season I am rebooting the practice with a new website and a renewed vision for what we might be able to accomplish together.
With that in mind, I thought I’d take a moment to reintroduce myself. Perhaps that will help you decide whether ReThink Resilience is a good fit for your needs. I offer a range of services, from system and program design to training to professional writing. I ground my work in two key principles:
Will the people we serve want to use these services?
Will it do any good?
That’s what I do. However, I’d like to share with you who I am, as that informs what I do.
Educator
I have spent over twenty years in higher education as an adjunct, full-time social work professor, and Dean of a college. I love teaching. I first started teaching as a service to the field: I am committed to preparing people to do the real work in the field. I retain that commitment. But I’m also a bit of a nerd. I love digging into the research and discovering more about what has been done before, what worked and what did not, and how we might learn and apply this. When I provide training, I am always thinking about how we can do more than provide information. I want people to learn skills, which means I will use a variety of interactive teaching methods to reflect different learning styles and incorporate practice in our time together. I am mindful of who my audience is. I also want us to have fun together. If you are bored, I haven’t done my job.
Innovator
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?” I’m a starter and not a maintenance person. I think about what is possible - based on a good understanding of the research. I want to build things that make a difference in people’s lives, and I want to help you do that. Too often when we are developing (or continuing) human services, we reach into our existing tool bag and pull out the same three tools. Sometimes those are great tools, but sometimes they are not the tools we need. I believe that we need to ask the right questions first. Who are we serving? What do they want? Why would they use this service? How will it lead to better outcomes in their lives? When we center our design on the people we intend to serve and the outcomes that we hope to create, we will open ourselves to more possibilities. That excites me.
Articulator
Writing and public speaking come naturally to me. As your partner, I want to help you tell your story well. I believe that there are many ways to do that, including words but also visualizations. Quantitative data helps, but human stories (qualitative) are what people remember. I believe (and the research tells us) that good design is grounded in good assessment. I love conducting assessments for programs and systems that include a variety of methods, to help you clearly identify your challenges and opportunities, leading to clearly articulated goals and objectives. I have developed system assessments and plans. I have written a wide range of curricula. I also have over thirty years of successful grant writing experience. Across all of this, telling your story requires a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities, of what the research and community members tell us will make a difference, a vision for what success looks like, and meaningful strategies to achieve that. Ultimately this requires that we build a meaningful relationship.
