Joyful, welcoming, wildly engaging workshops to help groups and teams learn and grow in community.

My years teaching English literature in college classrooms are behind me, but I’ve never stopped getting people together in special rooms to make meaning together. It’s one of my favorite things to do! I plan every workshop or meeting in close collaboration with the folks who are hosting it, so my facilitation is deeply attuned to the unique dynamics, context, and goals of each group.

Recent workshops

• Homeownership advisors are on the front lines of the fight for economic justice — but almost nobody understands what they do or why. At the Minnesota Homeownership Center’s 2024 annual gathering, I helped advisors from all over the state use simple, powerful ideas to communicate the value of their work to the people in their communities.

Reaction to the session was overwhelmingly positive. Ash was able to get attendees out of their day-to-day heads and appreciate the real-world differences they were making for clients as the trajectories for their families changed for the better. — Bill Gray, engagement director, Minnesota Homeownership Center

• Neurodivergent people (like me) often end up in the nonprofit sector — by noticing what others don’t, thinking about the world in countercultural ways, and stubbornly insisting that the world can and should be better. But our potential for leadership often goes untapped. At the 2023 Minnesota Council of Nonprofits leadership conference, I got to facilitate a boisterous, thoughtful, and sometimes emotional conversation about how people with unusual brains can and do lead.

Popular topics for training

Worldbuilding for do-gooders

When it’s your mission to solve problems that haven’t yet been solved, you have to convince other people to imagine a better world that doesn’t yet exist. To craft messages that mobilize durable support for your mission, you need to help others imagine new worlds. And to do that, you need the powerful conceptual tools of science fiction and fantasy. Originally developed for St. Olaf College’s Social Impact Scholars, this workshop brings together the fictional worlds your team already loves with real-world success stories. Together, you’ll create some brand-new worlds that you can use right away to communicate in visionary new ways.

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DEI from the inside out

If your organization’s approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t achieving the liberating outcomes you were hoping for, it might be time for a radically different approach. This warm and inclusive workshop will give your people a powerful new framework for anti-oppressive organizational culture — starting by changing the culture within themselves. Your team will learn simple, powerful tools for communicating and acting that aim toward healing and liberation at every scale: individually, as an organization, and in the world.

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Communication as poetry

“We need better messaging.” “We’re always talking past each other.” “Our pitch just doesn’t connect.” When your team is having trouble communicating, among each other or externally, you need practical communication skills you can use right away. In this fun and engaging workshop, customized for your unique community and context, you’ll learn and practice the most powerful communication skills in human history: the tools and techniques of poetry.

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