About Us
We have been friends for many years, initially brought together by a number of mutual passions: for life-long learning, for the capacity and potential we see in the online medium, by our belief that conversation is the key to social transformation, and by our deep love for the Earth and the natural world. We have each been pioneers in bringing the heart and energy of the communities we represent (the Art of Hosting for Rowan and Mary Alice and the World Cafe for Amy) into the online environment, developing online spaces for community development and online trainings to support hosts of all methodologies in continuing to develop their practice.
Rowan Simonsen
Rowan is the founder and director of Upstream Consulting. He is driven by a fascination with new media and an ongoing commitment to host conversations that matter in order to help people and organizations learn and grow.
Amy Lenzo
Amy founded weDialogue to expand what is possible online, where she delights in creating opportunities for deep engagement, learning, and connection – to ourselves, each other, and the rest of natural world.
Mary Alice Arthur
Mary Alice is a Story Activist, using story to help create positive systemic shift and for applying collective intelligence to the critical issues of our times. Her art is in creating brave and transformational spaces where people can find and live into the stories that take them to their most flourishing future. Building the capacity for participatory practice supports people to take back the power of their stories so they can make wiser choices together.
Our Collaborators
We are delighted to be collaborating with these amazing practitioners, helping us make our courses both deeply relevant, based on diverse real world experience and very beautiful and engaging at the same time.
Viola Clark
Viola es supporting our learning processes with realtime digital graphic recording. She creates incredible beauty that helps us all learn by seeing a visual synthesis of what we are talking about.
Chris Corrigan
Chris is our thinkning partner key contributor to many of our courses, bringing a special balance of theory and practice to our work, allowing our courses to bring food for both head, heart and work for the hands.
MartĂn Castro
Martín brings his Argentinian passion and many years of experience with participatory processes in Latin America to our work as a key collaborator for our Spanish-language courses.
Zulma Patarroyo
Zulma brings her creativity, energy and beautiful drawings to our signature invitational videos and works with Viola to provide digital graphic recording for many of our online programs.
