Katy Mamen is a creative and collaborative systems change consultant and facilitator helping leaders, organizations and networks find strategic clarity and build collaborative leadership. Recognized as a highly effective and culturally competent facilitator, systems change capacity builder, and nonprofit & philanthropic strategist with a track record of success working with diverse stakeholders to design aligned strategies for an equitable and regenerative future. Katy is principal and founder of Water Bear Collaborative, a consultancy that supports leaders in the climate change, food and agriculture, and water sectors to envision and implement system-informed strategies in service of social justice and ecological health. Katy is particularly skilled at cultivating the wisdom of the whole, whether that’s an organizational team or leaders spanning a field, creating the conditions for all voices be heard and honored while tending to power dynamics, group culture, and results. Her clients in the philanthropic sector have included Water Foundation, the Energy Foundation, UNFI Foundation, Garfield Foundation, and Lumpkin Family Foundation.
Katy is a Fellow of the Academy for Systems Change and previously managed multi-stakeholder policy roundtables and led the California Food System Alliance Network as Director of Programs at Ag Innovations. Before turning to process work, Katy studied emergence in complex systems and the role of traditional knowledge in sustainable agriculture while pursuing her MSc in the UK. She also worked with an international think tank researching the impacts of the international mining sector on indigenous communities and supported traditional agrarian communities in Central and South America, Asia, Europe and North America. Katy currently lives in a rural, consensus-based intentional community in northern California, where she honed her group process skills over the past 20 years.
