Everything is a practice, and practicing in collective is how we cultivate positive change. As a consultant, I help orgs with strategy, to develop internal and external communities of practice, and implement product discovery and stakeholder-centred design. I work only with values-aligned projects. As a founder, I’m creating the containers for collectives and communities to foster belonging and deep connection. Everything I do rests on the idea that belonging = freedom = accountability. I grew up feeling like an outsider. As an adult, I learned that belonging can’t be conferred upon me; it comes from finding it in myself. And yet, there is no belonging without interdependence and accepting others. When we offer belonging to others, we find it in ourselves. When we own our own experience, we make it safe for everyone to show up with and to us. In creating a new company, we walk the walk and co-create our own sense of belonging. That means distributed power, operating with trust and trustworthiness, and opening the door to respectful disagreement in service of a common goal. Our current social technologies aren't made to support real belonging. "Posting" is not a conversation. "Liking" isn't understanding. And centralized networks don’t see the unique needs of autonomous groups. This requires a paradigm shift, not a tweak. I coordinate the Belonging Builders collective. I'm a board member of the Prosocial Design Network and Tech Fleet, a steward at the Collaborative Technology Alliance, a past Fellow of the Integrity Institute, on the steering committee of the Council for Technology for Social Cohesion, a mentor with All Tech is Human, Mentor Me Collective, PDXWIT, and Lenny Rachitsky's community, and a contributor to a number of groups and communities of many kinds. I teach on the UX of Community and product discovery and run facilitated experiential learning groups. In addition to holding leadership roles in several startups and previously in indie film, I've been a speaker and panelist at a number conferences and events, including SXSW, Grace Hopper Celebration, Mind the Product Leadership Forum, Innovate/Activate, Product Camp Seattle, Product Tank PDX, The Conversation, Hot Docs, IFP Doc Labs, SF Film Society, and Independent Film Week. I'm an organizer of ProductTank PDX and Portland Brain Science Seminar. I write things at questioning.ca and on Substack. If you invite me to connect on LinkedIn, please remind me how we know each other or tell me what is calling you to connect. Please don't connect to sell me things.