Turning Working Groups Into Living Systems
I guide high-stakes group processes where traditional approaches fall short and I also create light, fun, unforgettable team celebrations and powerful, networked conferences. My range as a facilitator is extensive because over two and a half decades I’ve facilitated thousands of events across government, corporate, academic, union and community, helping groups achieve breakthrough strategic clarity, restored team cohesion, and sustainable conflict resolution by accessing their collective intelligence.
My approach integrates rigorous process design with arts-based methods that reveal insights linear thinking cannot access. As a practicing visual artist and poet I bring pattern recognition skills that help me track what’s emerging in group dynamics. People are often surprised by how precise my emotional timing can be. This multidisciplinary foundation allows me to work with how power must move through systems while creating conditions for more voices to be uplifted.
I design experiences that honor different ways of knowing while maintaining clear focus on the group’s objectives. I track energy patterns, surface underlying tensions, and redirect maladaptive conversations using creative interventions that untangle the knots that groups get tied up in.
What distinguishes my work is how artistic practice directly informs facilitation outcomes. The same attention to emergence and pattern that shapes my paintings helps me sense when a group is ready for breakthrough. My deep research on the nature of time gives me sophisticated tools for working with timing and rhythm in organizational change. This is a methodological integration that produces results that traditional approaches tend to miss.
My facilitation helps transform groups into vibrant, connected systems capable of giving and receiving real feedback while staying inspired by shared purpose.
My processes are deep, fun, and unforgettable.
What I Offer
Event Facilitation
Creating conditions for emergent group wisdom
I guide meaningful gatherings where purpose meets possibility. Whether you need conflict resolution, strategic planning, team building, or community engagement, I create environments where every voice contributes to collective wisdom. My approach balances clear structure with responsive flexibility, helping your group navigate complexity while building genuine connection.
I facilitate:
- Strategic Planning Sessions – Helping organizations chart direction while honoring diverse stakeholder perspectives
- Team Retreats – Building cohesion, resolving tensions, and rekindling shared purpose
- Conflict Resolution – Transforming workplace conflicts into opportunities for deeper understanding
- Community Consultations – Creating inclusive processes where quieter voices and essential resistance can rise up
- Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues – Navigating competing interests to find collaborative pathways forward
- Innovation Workshops – Unlocking creative thinking when groups feel stuck
- Board Retreats – Supporting governance bodies in clarifying vision and improving decision-making
From intimate team gatherings of 8 people to conferences of thousands, I bring warmth, insight, and practical expertise to each unique context. I also have access to a wide global community of highly trained and trusted co-facilitators I can bring into more complex or long term experiences.
Approach: I design each session specifically for your group’s needs, blending arts-based activities with structured dialogue, creative problem-solving exercises with strategic frameworks. You’ll get both breakthrough moments and concrete next steps.
Conference Hosting & Design
Transforming conferences from information delivery to living networks
I design and host conferences that participants remember for years. My approach treats conferences as ecosystems where meaningful relationships and unexpected collaborations can emerge.
Services include:
- Full conference design and facilitation
- Keynote MC/hosting
- Participatory Engagement
- Creation of “unconference” spaces within structured programming
- Support for organizing committees in shifting from traditional to transformative formats
Some recent conference work:
- Oxfam Child Care for All: Advocates and stakeholders gathering for strategic direction (emcee)
- Global Fellowship Forum: Multi-day international gathering bringing together diverse stakeholders for strategic planning (design and facilitation)
- McCall Macbain Scholarship Foundation: Yearly academic retreats focussed on creating collaborative inquiry and deepening relationship (design and facilitation)
- Loran Scholarship Foundation: alumni retreat (emcee)
- Commercial Drive Car-Free Festival: Community festival celebrating culture while addressing systemic challenges (founding member and poetry stage host)
What makes my conference hosting different: I track vibrance and cohesion and help the collective intelligence of the room emerge through creativity.
Mediation & Conflict Transformation
From impasse to understanding
My approach to mediation draws from my post-grad diploma in Dialogue and Negotiation, my training in Deep Democracy and my long experience with arts-based methods that help people move beyond entrenched positions.
I have worked with:
- Workplace conflicts between team members, departments, or leadership
- Partnership breakdowns when organizational collaborations hit crisis points
- Board disputes where governance tensions threaten organizational stability
- Community conflicts involving multiple stakeholders with competing interests
Succession planning tensions when organizational transitions surface hidden dynamics
My mediation process:
- Creating safe containers where difficult truths can be spoken
- Using strength-based approaches to find hidden resources in the conflict itself
- Employing creative interventions when verbal dialogue reaches impasse
- Supporting parties in moving from blame to curiosity
- Building agreements that honor everyone’s dignity while addressing real concerns
Not your typical mediation: I’m comfortable with intense emotions and complex power dynamics. I’m not always smooth and it’s not always pretty, but I can usually help groups transform conflict into deeper understanding and more sustainable relationships.
Group Training & Skill Development
Building your team’s capacity for complexity, creativity, and care
I specialize in facilitator development. I think it would be hard to find someone with more experience training community facilitators. I’m particularly skilled at helping facilitators maintain their personal style while pushing themselves to train right at their learning edge. Each training is tailored to your specific context and can range from intensive workshops to ongoing developmental programs that evolve with your organization’s needs.
Some Popular training topics:
- Advanced Facilitation Skills – For experienced facilitators ready to handle complex dynamics
- Intervening in Complex Group Dynamics – Internal and external shifts so that resistance becomes the site of transformation
- Strength-Based Leadership – Finding and leveraging hidden resources in your team
- Navigating Difficult Conversations – Tools for addressing conflict and giving and receiving feedback with dignity and creativity
- Creative Problem-Solving – Arts-based approaches to unlock stuck thinking
- Reading the Room – Developing sophisticated awareness of group dynamics
- Inclusive Facilitation – Creating conditions where all voices contribute
- Interrupting with Grace – How to redirect without breaking connection
- Systemic Dynamics in Practice – Moving beyond theory into embodied organizational change
Possible Training formats:
- Half-day to multi-day intensive workshops
- Ongoing learning cohorts (meeting monthly over 3-6 months)
- Train-the-trainer programs for scaling facilitation capacity
- Custom programs designed for your organization’s specific needs
What participants say:
“The Knotty course is a masterclass of not only intervention into complex situations, but of facilitation period. Nadia models and invites expansive ways of facilitating and being that are immediately transferrable to my own practice.”
– Johnathon Reed, Director of Programs, Next Gen Men
One-on-One Mentorship & Coaching
Deepening your unique facilitation practice
Personalized mentorship provides space for reflection, growth, and practical problem-solving. Together we’ll explore your unique gifts and challenges, developing approaches that align with your authentic style. I do this both one-on-one and with small teams that work together.
I support facilitators with:
- Designing complex events and multi-day processes
- Navigating specific group dynamics
- Integrating creative methodologies
- Developing personal facilitation style and philosophy
- Working through challenging client relationships
- Building confidence for high-stakes situations
- Debriefing difficult facilitation experiences
- Long-term professional development as a facilitator
Session formats:
- Single consultation sessions
- Ongoing mentorship packages
- Intensive design support for major events
- Pre-event preparation and post-event debriefing
Who this serves: Experienced facilitators, organizational leaders, teachers, therapists, and community organizers who want to deepen their practice with personalized guidance from someone who’s been in the field for 26 years.
What coachees say:
“I wanted to say thank you for the gift that is your facilitation mentorship for so many, and all the embodied wonder of your creativity. I have been absolutely showered in compliments about my trainings the last two weeks, because of what I have learned with you. People are coming to me saying it’s the best facilitation they have experienced, they feel like they are coming back to themselves, they are finding themselves emotional/near tears during creative exercises. Thank you thank you, for all you’ve done to help me grow, dear Nadia!” –
– Barb Danielewski,
Kingston ON, Canada
“Nadia creates a supportive space to ask questions and practice skills. She embodies the skills she practices, like taking a strength-based approach. I went to Nadia for coaching with little professional experience facilitating and for help planning a series of workshops, feeling nervous about the unknowns. Nadia helped me understand my unique strengths as a facilitator, shared a replicable framework to approach facilitation and a rich set of tools and lessons that I continue to explore, and helped me develop a facilitation plan for my workshops. I left feeling excited and empowered to continue to explore facilitation!”
– Marisa Fulper,
Visual Designer and Project Manager,
Big River Analytics
“Nadia was instrumental in helping me embrace who I am as a creative person. Through powerful questions, fun and deep exercises and being held in a container of rich curiosity, I was empowered to see myself and my creative self in a different light. I highly recommend working with Nadia if you want to ignite (or reignite) the artist within.”
– LS, Hamilton Ontario
Nadia’s coaching presence is passionate, engaged, generous, and inspiring. We get real, we get curious, and we dig into the areas of my practice where I’m longing to stretch and grow. I emerge from each session with practical tools and insights that help me prepare for and navigate complex group dynamics with greater creativity and competence. I’m grateful for the deeper self-knowledge and trust in my intuition as a facilitator that has come from working 1:1 with Nadia.
– Pam Tzeng,
Artist, Facilitator,
Somatic Coach & Conflict Practitioner, Canada
“I go to Nadia for one-on one coaching because Nadia has a way to trigger imagination with her powerful questions. It has helped me spot important opportunities as well as gaps in my approach. She has a way to help you get to underlying assumptions and make better decisions. The experience leaves me energised, curious and confident.”
– Shalini Menon,
Learning Advisor & Facilitator
Working with Nadia is grounding, encouraging, and whimsical . Before our work together I was self-guessing and unsure of my vision but now I can confidently put forward my ideas and facilitate with my own panache!
– Dona Nham | 任清梅, Dancer & planter of seeds,
Watcher of growth in between the weeds
Organizational Development
The messy, essential work of becoming the organization
you’re meant to be
I specialize in helping orgs develop adaptive capacities through creative methods.
I have extensive experience supporting organizations through transformation. This means looking honestly at how power moves through your systems, where communication breaks down, and what patterns keep you stuck.
I work with organizations on:
- Team dynamics and communication patterns
- Organizational culture shifts
- Strategic direction and vision clarification
- Innovation and creativity
- Conflict resolution at systemic levels
- Governance restructuring and decision-making processes
- Integration of equity and inclusion principles into daily operations
- Leadership development and succession planning
- Collaborative models and partnership building
My approach: Testing what works for your unique context. I’m here for organizations ready to do the deeper work of aligning how you operate with what you actually value.This isn’t for everyone: If you want quick fixes or are looking to avoid difficult conversations, this isn’t the right fit.
Vishal Talreja testimonial:
I’ve had the privilege of working with Nadia Chaney since 2010 through Dream a Dream, where she’s been so much more than a consultant, facilitator, or curriculum designer — she’s been a true thought partner and companion on our journey.
From the very beginning, Nadia seemed to get us — our purpose, our values, and our quirks. She brought a rare mix of depth, creativity, and emotional intelligence that helped us reimagine what learning and transformation could look like — both for young people and for ourselves as an organisation.
Whether she’s designing life skills curricula, facilitating leadership reflections, or holding space for difficult yet necessary conversations, Nadia does it with immense grace, clarity, and care. She has this wonderful ability to hold complexity lightly — to make people feel safe enough to explore uncertainty and brave enough to imagine new possibilities.
What I love most is that she doesn’t “consult” from a distance. She walks alongside you — listening deeply, asking thoughtful questions, and always reminding you of your own wisdom. Working with Nadia has made our work more human, more reflective, and more joyful.
She’s been a trusted ally in helping Dream a Dream grow from a small program-driven organization to one that influences systemic change in education. And through it all, she’s remained grounded, kind, and endlessly curious.
If you get a chance to work with Nadia, take it. She will challenge, nurture, and inspire you in equal measure.
– Vishal Talreja
Co-founder, Dream a Dream
Keynote Speaking
Transforming how teams think about group dynamics
I transform how organizations think about group dynamics, drawing from 25 years facilitating high-stakes conversations across government, corporate, and community sectors worldwide. As a practicing artist and community researcher, I share stories from the field, lived experiences, and insights about emerging patterns that help teams and leaders see breakthrough possibilities.
Keynote topics include:
- “From Conflict to Transformation: Working with Resistance as Resource”
- “The Facilitation Artist: Why Creative Approaches Unlock What Logic Can’t”
- “Reading the Room: Pattern Recognition in Group Dynamics”
- “Strength-Based Leadership in Complex Times”
- “Beyond Safety: Creating Conditions for Courageous Transformation”
- “The Art of Interruption: Redirecting Groups with Grace”
- “Power, Voice, and Dignity: Inclusive Facilitation in Practice”
- Custom topics designed for your event’s specific themes
What makes my keynotes different: Known for my engaging, playful approach to complex topics, I create energizing experiences where audiences discover concrete tools rather than just hear inspiring stories. Expect arts-based elements, audience participation, and insights you can actually use when you return to your teams.
Keynote formats: 30-90 minutes, can include interactive elements, and can be paired with workshops for deeper learning.
What People Say
Transforming how teams think about group dynamics
“Learning from Nadia is like discovering electricity. Once you start, you know nothing will ever be the same.”
— Jonathon Reed, Director of Programs, Next Gen Men
“Nadia skillfully supported me to be able to clearly recognize and articulate some patterns in my teaching approach, including some dynamics that I had not fully understood before that were causing me to feel burned out by the end of each semester.”
— Natalie Cohen, University Professor
“The Knotty course is a masterclass of not only intervention into complex situations, but of facilitation period. Nadia models and invites expansive ways of facilitating and being that are immediately transferrable to my own practice.”
— Johnathon Reed
“For the past 2-3 years I had been looking for a space to further develop my facilitation practice and was about to give up finding something that really suited where I am in my development journey. It’s still hard to believe that I found all of that in the Knotty Groups, so beautifully held by Nadia.”
— Elis Motta, Facilitator and Trainer, Brazil
“I am deeply grateful for Nadia’s expertise in facilitating group dynamics, which has created a healthier and more comfortable environment where everyone feels heard. Her guidance has sparked significant positive changes back home, leading us to become healthier, more compassionate individuals.”
— Michael Pom Preston, Community Leader and Filmmaker