Jessi Bellama

Jessi Bellama is a strategy and design leader with 20 years’ experience creating direction from uncertainty for growing and changing organizations using Human-Centered Design and a shared value lens. She deeply believes in creating a world where organizations embody human and societal thriving to achieve purpose-driven goals. Jessi has crisscrossed the private, public and nonprofit sectors – and the world – which has enabled her to develop a well-rounded and diverse skill set to facilitate the design and implementation of action-oriented strategy, building values-aligned cultures, and guiding teams through growth and change. She has a particular knack for cultivating and strengthening teams, partnerships and networks to build momentum across cultures, as well as across sectors that may speak different languages such as healthcare, financial services, and sustainable development. Her career journey has included: developing an independent business model for LAUNCH, a partnership between Nike, NASA, USAID and the U.S. Department of State to support system-disrupting entrepreneurs in sustainability; spearheading a practice to drive corporate reputation through social impact at Booz Allen Hamilton; launching Wellington Management Company’s first global employee engagement program with 700 employees in the first year; developing an employee engagement strategy for a recognized fashion brand to launch and embed a newly developed purpose-driven mission; designing and delivering a course on human-centered project management and consulting for an African start-up technology design firm; and embedding a circular economy nonprofit’s organizational values by aligning operations, processes and behaviors to build the desired culture through a period of rapid growth. As a ‘Third Culture Kid,’ Jessi appreciates the opportunities to be found in ambiguity. She grew up in Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, and South Africa and has direct cross-cultural work experience in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Belgium and Georgia. She speaks (to varying degrees of fluency) and has worked in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Bangla and Georgian. She also speaks German, though has never lived or worked in Germany. Jessi holds an MBA in global strategy from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an BA in Sociology and International Studies from Kenyon College. She is a level 2 certified CrossFit Coach, because she believes in fostering physical, mental and emotional wellness in all our human realms.

Geographic experience

North America, Latin America (Central and South America), Africa, South Asia, South-East Asia, Eastern Europe (Republic of Georgia)

Languages

English, Spanish, Portuguese

Experience as a coach (formal/informal)

20 years

Experience as a facilitator

20 years

Sector(s)

Environmental sustainability, Education, Skill development and employability, International development, Entrepreneurship, Corporate responsibility, shared value, innovation

UFacilitate exists to coach leaders so they can create the conditions that are needed to drive inclusion and collaboration.

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Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira

Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships

Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira (she/her) is a collective intelligence enthusiast, master facilitator and technical strategist with over 25 years of experience designing and facilitating participatory meetings and convenings for high-performing teams and organizational collaboratives including FHI 360, Ipas, MSI Reproductive Choices, the Urgent Action Fund, the World Health Organization and UNFPA among others.

Prior to consulting, Alex spent 11 years advancing access to safe abortion at Ipas where she partnered with global teams and led organization-wide initiatives as a Senior Advisor for Technical Innovation and Excellence, the Associate Director for Community
Engagement and Policy Advocacy and as the Senior Advisor for Organizational Learning. Alex has also served as the Philanthropic Partnerships Officer for the Astraea Foundation, as a Global Research & Policy Advisor for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (now OutRight Action International) and as a Program Fellow with the Global Fund for Women. She has served on the board of directors of the Safe Abortion Action Fund (UK), The Stone House (NC), the Third Wave Foundation (NY) and Resource Generation (NY).

Alex has designed and led over 70 high-stakes participatory workshops, retreats and convenings for over 2000 stakeholders across Africa, Asia and North America. She is among the most seasoned facilitators, globally, of Abortion Values Clarification for Action & Transformation (VCAT) Workshops where she has led community members, activists, health care providers, ministry officials, multilateral donors and embassies—all with wide ranging positions on abortion—through a process that shifts their orientation from one of contentious debate to an opportunity for empathy and principled collaboration to advance bodily autonomy. She has trained and mentored over 150 emerging facilitators

and team leaders globally on designing and facilitating inclusive, liberatory and participatory meetings.

With two decades of experience advancing equity and justice through philanthropy and global health programming, Alex approaches facilitation as a strategic opportunity to practice high-impact, equity-based collaboration skills that live on beyond our convenings. Alex brings skillful attention to transforming personal, interpersonal and systemic barriers to meaningful participation. She is passionate about helping groups connect, navigate principled disagreement, prioritize, focus, and align towards powerful actions that advance justice, joy and wellbeing in the world.

Alex is a recipient of the Wildacres Leadership Initiative William C. Friday Fellowship (2014-2016), holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and French Literature from Connecticut College and a master’s degree in International Affairs with a focus on gender, sexuality and international human rights from Columbia University. As the first member of her family to attend university, she is humbled to stand on the shoulders of self-taught entrepreneurs, savvy dissidents, survivors of Portuguese dictatorship and lovers of learning. She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, in the Southeastern United States, in a beloved cross-class, multi-racial intentional community of gorgeously imperfect humans trying to build deep interdependence.

Hi There! Subscribe now and get a free download of the PDF “The 8 Points of Effective Facilitation”.

Hi There! Subscribe now and get a free download of the PDF “Next-Level Meeting Prep Guide by UFacilitate”.

Venezuela

Nathalia Pérez Serrano

Pakistan

Muneeb ur Rehman

Netherlands

Liesbeth (Liz) Kieboom

Italy

Uri Noy Meir

Community Building

Canada

ZOË DAVID-DELVES

Spain

Mira Bangel

South Africa

Colin Skelton

Sylvia Wambui

Barbados

Julie Turney

Shane Howell

Brazil

Sarah Forrester-Wilson

Systems change

Stephan Dohrn

Caribbean

Nathalia Pérez Serrano

Colombia

HECTOR ARISTIZÁBAL

Anamaria Aristizabal

Carlos Gaviria

Cote D’Ivoire

Astou Dia

Strategy, Culture change, Teambuilding

Nabou Fall

Angela Eni

Germany

Pragya Mishra

Teambuilding

Jessica Brockmann

Jordan Namerow

Ghana

Nana Yaa Boakyewaa Amoah

India

Anuj Kothari

Innovation, Product or Service design, Teambuilding

Sumangal Haldar

Teambuilding

Samantha Batista

Kenya

Mary Njenga Murimi

Culture change, Teambuilding, Change management

Pamela Yoga – Yieke

Culture change, Teambuilding, Change management

Uduak Amimo

Culture change, Teambuilding, Change management

Lara Konditi-Rabala

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, CHANGE MANAGEMENT, CULTURE CHANGE TEAMBUILDING

Ciku Kimeria

Mexico

Annabel Membrillo

Strategy, Systems change, Change management

Jesus Hernandez

Product or service design, Innovation, Systems change

Ana Lucia

Conflict resolution

Alejandra Ortiz Medrano

Lorena Tamayo

Nicaragua

Karla Bojorge Melendez

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Liesbeth (Liz) Kieboom

Nigeria

Harouna Abdolaye

Strategy Culture change, Teambuilding

Kingsley Atang

Panama

Fernando Carcache

Peru

Paola Pioltelli

Change management, Culture change Strategy

Senegal

Simon Lazarre-Badiane

Teambuilding, Culture change

Switzerland

Nadene Canning

Thailand

Jenn Weidmann

Strategy, Teambuilding, Conflict resolution, Product or service design

Uganda

Norah Bwaya

Culture change, Teambuilding Change management

Sam Bwaya

Change management, Culture change, Teambuilding

United Kingdom

Joey Leskin

Virginia Cinquemani

united States

Andres Marquez-Lara

Founder & CEO

Adam Schmidt

CEO & Principal Coach​​Smart Summit Coaching, LLC

Alex Handfinger

Culture change, Teambuilding, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Beth Kanter

Culture change

Brooking Gatewood

Systems change, Culture change, Product or service design

Judy Watts

Teambuilding

Mara D’Amico

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Teambuilding Culture change

Michael Brouri

Culture change, Teambuilding

Nate Stephens

Systems change, Culture change, Teambuilding, Product or service design

Paul Tevis

Product or service design, Innovation, Teambuilding, Culture change

Steve Brigham

Culture change, Teambuilding, Change management

Virginia Lacayo

Conflict resolution, Systems change Culture change, Change management

Yolonda Thomspon

Culture change, Teambuilding, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Malcolm Glover

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Conflict resolution

Matt Orr

Product or service design

Rachael Reichenbach

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Systems change, Change management, Culture change

Bridget Brown

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

James Gutierrez

Change management, Cultural change

Crystal White

Strategy Change management, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Teambuilding

Julianne Dunn

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Corita Brown

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Change management; Culture change; Strategy; Teambuilding

Deborah Bilek

Gloria Alvarez

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, STRATEGY SYSTEMS CHANGE, PRODUCT OR SERVICE DESIGN

Hillary Trudell

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, STRATEGY

Angela Carlberg

Chris Clark

Dave Chandrasekaran

Diana Pasquali

Kari Kwinn

Kim Sescoe

Michael Randel

Robin Sweet-Ransom

Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

Ted Kniker

Jennifer Berman

Dr. Elizabeth Speck

Emeobong “Eme” Martin, MPH

Rizwaan Akhtar

Alejandra Ortiz Medrano

Rita Alma

Marta Agnieszka Bednarczyk

Diane Garza

Cari Caldwell

LaShauna Austria

Jeremy Blanchard

Jason Biehl

Darren Jones

Jessica Brockmann

Jomil Bell

Jessica Fan

Keesa V. Johnson

Beatriz Coningham

Cherice Hopkins

Cheryl Shah

Joseph McIntyre

Brian Zuluaga

Lorena Tamayo

Paul Kuhne

Alexandra (Alex) Gaspar Martins Teixeira

Jessi Bellama

Carlos Gaviria

Katy Mamen

Laura Ines Romero

Dr. Kerriann Peart

Mark Hecker

Carmen Franco

Gabe DeRita

Anaitée Mills

Angela Umoru-David

Dee Dee Mendez

Deirdre Maloney

Gabriel DeRita

Jenifer Gager

Julian Johnson

Mara D’Amico

Mia Y. Anderson

Michelle Helman

Nina Bhatia

Nischa Pieris

Stefanie Singer

Steven Hart

Ángel Zambrano

COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
CARACAS, VENEZUELA

Ángel Zambrano Cobo is Communications Specialist at UFacilitate. As a communicator and cultural manager based in Caracas, Venezuela, he collaborates with groups and organizations that seek to build community and generate change through projects of social innovation, cultural action and human rights.

 

He is also a founding member of Ciudad Laboratorio (@ciudlab), a civil association that seeks to influence urban experience and transformation through observation, art and pedagogy. In 2017 he was part of the founding team of Labo Ciudadano, a social innovation lab focused on human rights, social fabric and nonviolent mobilization. Until mid-2022 he was co-general coordinator of this organization, and today he is part of its advisory board. 

Leigh Terenz Soltis

PROJECT COORDINATOR
ILOILO, PHILIPPINES

Leigh has an extensive experience in business process management. She has worked with BP and KPO business that caters to international professionals through identifying methods to discover, mode, analyze, measure, improve, and optimize business processes.

She started as a customer care representative while studying in college and after earning a bachelor’s degree in business management from Central Philippine University, Leigh worked as a virtual assistant to US professionals. By this time, she already assisted top-tier management with company materials, workflows, training and finance. Working her way up to the management level, Leigh handled different teams in fields like real estate, medical, construction and cleaning.

Leigh also has experience working with sales and marketing as a sales executive closing service deals and also had experience working as an events support generalist to a KPO company that provides shared services across the globe.

Aparna Bhat

Chief Operations Officer

Aparna is Chief Facilitator Builder at UFacilitate, helping to select and onboard high-quality facilitators to the UFacilitate family. For the last 7 years, she has been working with early growth stage impact startups across India, South Africa, and Latin America, helping them identify the business models and value propositions, create a growth strategy, raise funds and measure their impact. During her time working with education nonprofits in India, she learned about the critical role that good facilitation plays in ensuring meaningful engagements and also got trained by the Facilitators Network Singapore. While working with an accelerator in Latin America, she created a facilitator’s handbook for online and offline engagements, equipping the reader with the basic tools and thinking steps.

Aparna’s aim through UFacilitate is to take the simple handbook many steps ahead and help leaders in the impact space innovate effectively, make decisions, and build projects that involve multiple stakeholders and have large-scale impact.

Andres Marquez-Lara

FOUNDER & CEO

Andres Marquez-Lara is the Founder and CEO of UFacilitate, a global facilitation company that makes cross-cultural collaboration work! They help high-performing teams deal with the “messy human stuff”—egos, cultural differences, miscommunication, conflict—that creates silos that put their mission at risk. They break down barriers to collaboration across people, departments, and organizations. They’ve worked with groups like the World Food Program, The Nature Conservancy, Easterseals, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and many others.
 
He teaches leadership development in various executive programs at Georgetown University. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership (CEPL) at George Washington University. He is also an Advisor at the Emergence Project for Purposeful Entrepreneurship at Stanford University.
 
He has been recognized by Ashoka and the American Academy of Certified Public Managers. He earned a BA in psychology from Duke University, and a graduate degree in clinical community psychology from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas, Venezuela. He lives in the triangle area in North Carolina with his wife and two young children.

Hi There! Subscribe now and get a free download of the PDF “The 8 Points of Effective Facilitation”.