Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD Leadership Development Specialist Organization Development Specialist Seasoned Nonprofit Leader/Manager Founding Principal
My Story
As a nonprofit leader, I worked with a number of consultants who helped my organization reach the next level of effectiveness. How many ways they opened our eyes and helped us see new possibilities, our own strengths, and new ways of doing things! After working with entrepreneurial nonprofits for 15 years, I continued to be inspired by the passion and determination of the nonprofit sector. I had a dream to become a consultant and make a difference for groups and their constituents by helping them achieve their big dreams.
I returned to school for my second graduate degree, this time in Organization Development. This opened my eyes even more to the skills and awareness that are so useful to leaders, organizations, and initiatives. I learned many ways to foster hope and skillfulness among those passionate about their work, no matter how big the challenges, nor how vast the new horizons.
Today I have worked with dozens of individuals and groups, placing my coaching, consulting, facilitation, consensus-building, and capacity building skills in their service. Given today's need to bring human choices in line with a sustainable way of living on the planet, the role of nonprofits and cross-sector initiatives is vital. If your group has big dreams, big challenges, and big opportunities, I am happy to offer Opening Creativity's services to help your nonprofit or multi-sector team (bridging arenas such as business, government, academe, and civil society) reach its highest potential.
My Style Listening is the centerpiece of my way of being with others, and people seem to respond well to this and open more fully to their own potential. Many strands from my background weave listening into my work. For example:
+ Intercultural Partner. For more than a decade, I supported innovations in sustainable national planning in developing countries, where there is great need to listen to experiences, worldviews, and visions, and to draw on the gifts of different cultures.
+ Nonprofit Leader/Manager. For fifteen years, I sought and integrated input from colleagues, beneficiaries, stakeholders, partners, and donors into the strategy, funding, programs, and operations of diverse nonprofit organizations, balancing short- and long-term considerations, and developing win-win-win solutions for challenging organizational, social, economic, and environmental situations.
+ Consulting Partner. As a consultant and coach for the last five years, I have developed relevant and timely projects with clients seeking to learn and grow while addressing critical business, leadership, and organizational needs. By building a partnership with client system members, our work has involved listening deeply to what is happening across the organization so we can address issues at their root cause.
+ Somatic Practitioner. For fifteen years, I have been practicing a Japanese form of energy work called Reiki, which means "universal life force" and involves listening through the hands. This experience strengthens my ability to be intuitive and responsive when listening to clients and providing an outsider perspective on the dynamics, patterns, and strategic possibilities.
+ Student and Teacher of Literature, Culture, and Language. In my earlier incarnation as a professor-to-be, during graduate studies in Spanish language and literature, I listened to the voices of countless writers not only in their word choices, but also in the structure and rhythm of the narrative and historical context. This experience of reading literary texts, as well as teaching language, amplified my ability to sense and communicate clues about the dilemmas, patterns, and potentials with a group.
+ World Traveler and Learner. My travels have taken me to more than a dozen countries, and my thirsty mind has drawn me to dozens of workshops, conferences, collaborations, and professional development experiences, where I met and listened to diverse and brilliant people from all over the world.
My various backgrounds weave together many experiences, identities, and skill sets to provide a strong, flexible, and multi-layered intellect and intuition which I place in service to your organization's or initiatives challenges, opportunities, and goals. My Values
I choose to work primarily with nonprofit organizations and with cross-sectoral initiatives bringing people together from business, government, academia, nonprofits, and from diverse cultures and disciplines. I choose to put my skills in service to initiatives, social entrepreneurship, and partnerships that are co-creating a sustainable future for human civilization and all life on the planet. We need to listen to each other across boundaries and help each other experience our systems as fractals (e.g., where patterns in one small part mirror patterns in the whole, and vice versa) so that wisdom, compassion, empathy, and understanding can guide our choices. We need to practice creating safe spaces and building trust so that we (humanity) can feel relaxed and skillful enough in our collaborative work to tap into our deepest creativity, and innovate to create a sustainable civilization, one project at a time.
Nourishing my Work
Some ways that I nourish myself to be my best self for working with you are to practice Iyengar Yoga, learn/play in my community garden patch, engage in creative cooking experiments, attend music and dance concerts with my significant other, and cheer my eight-year-old friend at his soccer matches. I love any chance to speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French, and also love reading the news for signs of hope (small or large) in our complex, emerging world.
Positions Held
Organization Development Specialist & Principal | Opening Creativity Vice President for Operations | Millennium Institute Co-Director | Bridges Project for Education Development Director | Rocky Mountain Youth Corps Grant Writer |Taos Art Association Writer/Editor | Millennium Institute
Formal Degrees and Studies
M.S., Organization Development | American University/NTL Institute Doctoral Studies, Spanish | University of Wisconsin-Madison M.A., Spanish | University of Wisconsin-Madison B.A., Spanish | Mary Washington College
Key Competencies Communication, Difference, and Inclusion Employee, Board, and Stakeholder Engagement Succession Planning | Executive Transition Experiential Learning | Participatory Processes | Consensus Building Fundraising | Business Development | Social Entrepreneurship Innovation | Strategic Visioning Leadership Coaching | Development Nonprofit Management and Governance Organization Development | Capacity Building Planning | Implementation | Evaluation Research | Analysis Socio-Technical Systems | Knowledge Management Strategic Assessment | Organization Assessment Workshop Design | Facilitation | Evaluation Selected Methods Action Research Appreciative Inquiry Complexity Science Cultural Transformation Tools Open Space Technology Polarity Management Presencing | Theory U Process Consulting Systems Thinking World Café
s u p p o r t i n g s a f e s p a c e s a n d t r u s t - b u i l d i n g f o r p o w e r f u l r e s u l t s
