take a stance
make it happen
With a trauma-informed toolkit, we facilitate the process of conversation, collaboration, and collective action to build community into and through your work.
Co-conspiring with stance//happen will take the happenstance out of your work.
Get in touch today to find out how we can work together!
WHAT WE DO
meeting design & facilitation
When meetings are facilitated by a professional, they engage the imagination, generate energy, and build ownership across an organization. They're less likely to feel like a waste of time.
When meetings are designed through a trauma-informed lens, they establish the physical and psychological safety for your group to consider bringing all of their intersecting identities into the work.
We design purposeful and intentional agendas that move your group through activities towards the desired outcome. We believe that attention to process, space-making, and content is equally important to the ultimate goal.
Facilitators bring a toolkit of methodologies and strategies that help teams work well together. Your meeting might require brainstorming activities that move the group from divergent to convergent thinking to identify solutions to problems. Because our work is trauma-informed, we cultivate safer spaces that encourage active listening to create an inclusive and productive environment, balancing participation among diverse personalities to ensure all voices are heard and understood.
Our techniques help to break old patterns and create new ones; providing a fresh perspective from your existing team.
Meeting design includes a plan to harvest information throughout the meeting so that the group’s work can be taken forward. Moving ideas from the meeting into action items and next steps shows your team that something is going to come from their contributions.
Design ranges from in-person meetings to online platforms, or a combination of both, to ensure remote workers are able to participate fully.
Organizational Change and Development
With decades of experience in the nonprofit sector, we bring a unique and holistic perspective to the organizational development of socially responsive and responsible workspaces.
From a whole-systems and systems-change framework, we analyze day-to-day protocol, review existing policies, and work collaboratively to better align your practice with your core values.
When organizational trauma or pain is present, innovative and adaptive work typically suffers.
With specific expertise in trauma-informed and trauma-responsive work, we are especially useful as an outside actor when addressing collective trauma among your group, helping you to work forward with empathy and understanding.
training and skill development
Our expertise in work with victims and survivors of trauma allows us to offer basic training on the neurobiology of trauma and how you might embed that understanding into your work, both internally and externally.
With more than 15 years in service to under-resourced communities, we have pushed many institutions to move toward an empowerment model that puts the person first. This mindset helps organizations support their staff in thoughtfully supporting the communities they work with.
If you are looking to build a sustainable, nurturing workplace, we can help your leadership and Human Resources department understand how to support a wide range of employees in a trauma-informed, culturally-responsive way. This pairs well with Organizational Change because your policies must match the trauma-informed practice you seek to build.
Community engagement and listening sessions
Bringing in a professional to facilitate hard conversations for your staff, community group, or constituency improves your access to important input.
As facilitators, survey designers, and focus group hosts, we ask important questions. Creative questioning allows a collective picture of the group to emerge before any strategy is proposed.
This listening prepares decision-makers to act with knowledge and skill that is truly rooted in community data. It is often easier for an external facilitator to ask the common-sense or hard questions that a group needs to discuss or address without further activating any existing power struggles.
While an outside facilitator will never be entirely neutral, it is generally an advantage for the person steering the discussion to not be personally-invested in the group's work. Our relative neutrality can make it easier to capture traditionally unheard voices and potentially point out any missing perspectives.
Don't see what you need?
This list is not exhaustive and we have cultivated a wide network of experts. It's the greatest part of being community builders.
We may be able to help or point you toward someone who can!
WHO we are
trained in technology of participation
and facilitative leadership for social change
Principal: Nicole Weiler
Nicole is passionate, engaged, and known for her smile.
Building on years working with communities experiencing homelessness, domestic and sexual violence, Nicole blends trauma-informed advocacy and a whole-systems change framework to interrupt destructive and oppressive patterns at the individual, organizational, community, and policy levels.
She plans, implements, and facilitates community gatherings, multidisciplinary meetings, and skill workshops ranging from individual behavior to interactive complex systems.
With a big picture mind and action-oriented attention to detail, she weaves big dreams into strategic vision, management, and evaluation.
She is constantly asking challenging questions that spark new ideas.
Work examples
Consulting means that we help people collectively design and do their work.
We do not own the work, we inspire the work.
Testimonials
My experience working with Nicole has been that she is an endless resource of creativity, generosity, and positive energy. No matter the area of need, or what complexity may arise, Nicole will have solid strategy and
ideas on how to address it! This comes from a place of being deeply grounded. She is a beautiful spirit and an unapologetic warrior for justice. Her passion is people, and she has a unique ability to connect, challenge, empower and defend all of us on our path to become our more enlightened selves.
Adria Husband
Founder and CEO of shifting Hearts and minds
Nicole has distinguished herself in the field of advocacy as both a friend and colleague. Her creative energy, fueled by a deep well of intellectual curiosity, makes her an excellent collaborator and fierce advocate. I am impressed by Nicole’s ability to think holistically, always seeking to elevate marginalized perspectives and question taken-for-granted assumptions in her work. Nicole gets to the core issues and holds an unwavering dedication to social justice. It is a pleasure to work with her!
Sam Schmitt
Minnesota Coalition Against sexual assault
Nicole was a fantastic facilitator and has such a skill to be able to evoke multiple voices and energize colleagues about the work. Nicole is extremely organized and fully prepared us ahead of time for each monthly meeting, where she would lead structured activities that helped us work towards our goals. Nicole provided direction, guidance, technical support, and a safe space for professionals from multiple disciplines to come together to discuss issues related to services and justice for victims. Thanks Nicole for making each of us feel welcome and heard, and for your energetic and inclusive leadership.
Chloe Vraney
Aurora Center for Education and Advocacy
Nicole's facilitation... allowed me to bear witness to what makes Nicole shine: an unwavering ability to get people to focus on the real issues, willingness to ask tough questions, and ability to knit together professionals who have historically had challenged relationships. I won't ever forget the optimism that Nicole's work instilled in me. I hope I have the opportunity to work alongside her again
Stephanie Dutenhafer
Hennepin Assault Response Team at Hennepin Health
Nicole is one of the most passionate professionals I have met... I am still in awe by how easily she facilitates any group full of professionals from various backgrounds (advocates, attorney, law enforcement, and more). Her great facilitation skills may be due to her strong ability to communicate with any group, her open-mindedness, her amazing active listening skills, her ability to remain neutral, and her organizational skills.
Scarlett Gonzalez Mejia
Dominican Haitian cultural center