Lyn Wiltse
Lyn is the founder and president of PDSA Consulting, Inc. She has over 25 years of experience facilitating public meetings with diverse stakeholders who have conflicting interests. She believes that true consensus can unlock creative solutions that benefit all over the long term. Her consulting experience includes strategic planning, collaborative problem solving, team building, conflict resolution, and productivity initiatives in public and private sectors. Her style is highly energetic and infused with humor, creating a safe environment for considering new ideas.
Lyn has developed and presented interactive courses in the areas of leadership, process improvement, systems thinking, communication styles, facilitation, and teamwork. She also leads retreats in the areas of strategic planning, leadership, and teambuilding. She is dedicated to helping others discover better ways to work together.
Lyn co-authored the article “FERC Relicensing: Working Together to Determine the Best Use of a Public Resource” published in Hydro Review Magazine in 2011. She is a graduate of Willamette University and holds a Master’s degree in Educational Policy and Management from the University of Oregon.
Jamie Marie Riche
A member of the PDSA team since 2004, Jamie provides ongoing resource group facilitation to support the implementation of a local hydro project FERC license. She is a skilled and experienced facilitator who has worked with community and agency stakeholder groups, governing boards, public forums, focus groups, citizen committees, and management teams. Operating on a collaborative model, she balances the need to attend to the relationships in the room with the need to move the group’s agenda forward.
Well-versed in systems thinking and systems dynamics, Jamie understands the nature of change and is comfortable working with groups holding diverse or competing interests. She is a respected communications trainer, frequently presenting at state and national public sector conferences on topics including communication in leadership, strategic planning, crisis communications, listening and feedback, cultural competence, and community engagement. Jamie is also the founder and principal consultant of Ideal Communications with more than 15 years’ experience helping organizations build and nurture meaningful relationships through thoughtful communication and engagement activities.
David Roberts
For 30 years, David’s environmental work has focused on finding solutions and moving people and organizations to action regarding complex environmental and land use decisions. David has worked with all levels of government, tribes, non-profit organizations, and businesses on environmental issues.
David possesses a deep knowledge base in watershed planning, habitat protection and restoration, resource management, and environmental remediation. He has extensive experience in large and small group negotiations, consensus building, and planning efforts throughout Washington. He is currently owner and President of Kulshan Services.
Lori Sortino
Lori has over 25 years of experience in operations, business analysis, process improvement, and whole systems problem solving, with experience specifically in inter-department communications. Her experience with converting legal contract language into administrative function with customer focus coupled with her ability to listen and ask the right questions make her a valued asset when the goal is to avoid mistakes, foresee the things that will trip the system, and see the human behavior patterns in the system.
As facilitator, Lori focus’ the team energy on the priorities and making positive progress in systems based change and business process improvement. Lori has a deep awareness of communication with an emphasis on intent and she helps her clients listen and inquire beyond the words. She is deeply committed to personal and professional growth and inspires her clients toward their own improvement by example, both in and out of the projects they work on together. She enables the individuals on the team to support each other by becoming self-managing and learning when and how to ask for help. She teaches circle meeting structure to support better collaboration among peers and then coaches individuals as needed to support their self-leadership.
Lori is a photographer, a consultant and facilitator, and Lori and Lyn developed a workshop (playshop) called Playful Inquiry, which also lead Lori to contribute additional blog posts and interviews on the concept of work and play.
Helena Schoetzow
Helena is an organizational effectiveness consultant with over 30 years’ experience helping individuals and teams develop the methods and processes to achieve results-driven performance. Her expertise in leadership development, team development and facilitation, relationship building, change management, conflict resolution, and personal growth and development is highly valued by leaders, teams and individual contributors.
As a facilitator, trainer and coach, she listens for the underlying drivers of surface symptoms and asks pointed questions that get to the heart of the matter. She helps clients distill the complex into its essence so it becomes both meaningful and actionable. She facilitates the clarification of goals and interests, and integration of business and work force needs through active team member involvement. Helena’s approach results in clients developing and executing practical action plans to accomplish personal and professional goals. Her supportive and direct style helps create an environment of openness and trust. This allows people to identify and energize their talents and abilities to expand their influence.
Jennifer S. Arnold, Ph.D.
Jennifer has 15 years of experience in facilitation, research and skills training focused on collaborative approaches to conservation and community development, including an emphasis on equity. She specializes in launching new collaborative efforts, supporting organizations through transitions, managing conflicts productively, and engaging diverse stakeholders. She integrates training and mentoring into her facilitation practice to build the collective capacity of the groups she works with. She enjoys helping people grapple with complex issues and building momentum to advance a collective vision.
As owner of Reciprocity Consulting, Jennifer serves government agencies, foundations, non-profits, universities and community-based groups. Her work spans both urban and rural issues, including agriculture, food justice, environmental education, active transportation, outdoor recreation, forestry and wildlife management. Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida with an emphasis on planning, conflict and collaborative process design. She is fluent in Spanish.
Hilary Wilkinson
Hilary Wilkinson, Principal, Veda Environmental, is a certified facilitator and stakeholder engagement/public outreach expert with over 15 years of experience helping advance ecosystem conservation efforts in the Salish Sea region and beyond. Her work spans a variety of issues and geographic areas, from improving elk herd management in the North Cascades and restoring tidal estuaries in the Skagit delta, to addressing contentious water rights issues in major watersheds and prioritizing actions to address oil spill risk in the transboundary regions of British Columbia (BC), Washington and Alaska. For the past five years, she has served on the Executive Coordinator Team for the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force (www.oilspilltaskforce.org) where she leads transboundary coordination efforts and helps support entities focused on boater education and clean marina certification.
Hilary has a BS in Political Science from Occidental College, a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from Indiana University, and a Masters of Science in Environmental Science (MSES) from Indiana University.
Sarah Brace
Sarah Brace, Principal, Veda Environmental, has a background in natural resources and has spent over 20 years managing and facilitating environmental and urban planning projects. For the past two decades, she has worked with resource managers, planners, engineers and scientists to engage and inform the public on complex urban infrastructure projects addressing water quality, oil spill prevention, stormwater management and contaminant cleanup. She has also facilitated workshops throughout the Pacific Northwest focused creative solutions for farmland preservation, water quality, community forest planning, and recreational shellfish harvest. As a facilitator, she helps conduct meaningful and effective meetings, workshops and public events, where actionable outcomes is focus and productive engagement is key.
Sarah holds a M.S. Degree in Forest Ecosystem Science from the University of Washington, and a B.S. degree in Biology from Smith College.
Dave Nave
Dave’s extensive improvement methodology, coaching, and contextual thinking experience ranges across production, process architect, to Management Engineer. He has designed assembly lines in the automotive industry, accelerated process improvement in the aerospace/defense industry, and is Chairman of The Deming Cooperative. He goes past the obvious and beyond improvement, to create a structure which prevents problems.
Dave’s unique combination of engineering, operations, and management perspectives is featured prominently in his practice of creating the appropriate strategy, culture, structure, processes, and values needed to produce dynamic and meaningful change.
Dave holds a MBA in Management Systems (Deming Scholars Program) from Fordham University and a BS in Manufacturing Engineering Technology.
He was one of only 12 people worldwide selected by The W. Edwards Deming Institute® to reconfigure Dr. Deming’s famous “Four Day Seminar” into the 2.5 day seminar “Out of the Crisis” and subsequently named as a training representative. He is also on the ‘Board of Advisors.’
Dave is the co-author of a book titled A Guide To Balanced Hoshin A Better Way to Plan and Execute Strategy, Amazon, 2017 (website), and authored several articles: Improvement Triad: Processes, Products, and Management Practices, Winter 2008 SAVE International – Value World, How To Compare Six Sigma, Lean and the Theory of Constraints: A framework for choosing what’s best for your organization, March 2002 ASQ – Quality Progress, and others.
Candace Wilson
Candace has over twenty years of experience in group facilitation, working with diverse groups to achieve both short-term and long-term goals. Skilled at building rapport, she establishes strong connections with group members to strengthen communication and understanding.
Candace has a strong background in communications, and is the founder of LifeWoven Memoirs and co-founder of BlogPudding. An experienced teacher, she has led retreats, classes, and workshops on a variety of topics such as conflict resolution, letter writing, effective newsletters, and memoir writing. She is a professional writer and communications and content marketing consultant, working with business and school district clients to ensure their print and online communications are relevant and effective.