The Faculty
of the Facilitative Leadership Training Institute
Jean Watts
Jean has had a unique career in organization transformation and community development. Much of her career involved developing curriculum and group facilitation methods for organizational transformation, community development, and collaborative leadership training programs with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), an international non-profit organization concerned with the human factor in world development. She worked with ICA in Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Hong Kong, Paris, Brussels, and Vienna prior to moving the New Orleans.
She is a certified mentor trainer of professional facilitators, executives, community leaders, and managers in the Technologies of Participation® (ToP®).
In her consulting and group facilitation with diverse groups, organizations, partnerships, and coalitions, Jean uses highly participatory techniques for systems-based strategic planning, creative thinking, and consensus-based decision making that create practical visions, clear goals, broaden perspectives, open lines of communication, and motivate people to adapt to change while honoring the cultures, perspectives, talents, and diversity of all involved.
Jean is a founding member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) serving for many years on its Board of Directors while co-chairing IAF's Research and Publications Task Force, coordinating the Research Think Tanks, and serving on the Editorial Board of Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal.
She has a BA degree in Math, Biology, and Chemistry.
Contact Jean Watts by email or call the Facilitative Leadership Training Institute at 504/913-7028 to discuss your organization's facilitation or training needs.
Erness Wright Irvin
Erness Wright-Irvin, MHA, brings a unique combination of 6 years of professional practice in group facilitative processes and 26 years of health systems operational management experience to her consulting and facilitation practice.
Her professional practice in Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) ToP® group facilitative methods assists interdisciplinary teams and collaborative partners to engage in strategic planning, problem solving, action planning and implementation tracking processes that also foster development of trust relationships among the parties. These ICA international best practice methods generate ownership, create clear goals, open lines of communication, broaden perspectives and motivate people to adapt to their changing environment while honoring the cultural traditions and diversity of all involved. She received her Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA-USA) designation as a qualified trainer for Technology of Participation (ToP®) methods in 2005. Since that time, she has applied these methods to community engagement in land use planning processes, recovery planning, and collaborative, multi-sector initiatives where the participants desire to achieve community transformation and substantive systems change. At the core of her work is a passion for creation of partnerships among diverse stakeholders to achieve value-based, mission-driven objectives.
As a member of Facilitative Leadership Training Institute in NOLA, she was engaged in the design & assembly of a 24 member facilitation team for the kick-off public meeting of the Unified New Orleans Recovery Plan (July, 2006). She worked with H3 Studio (St. Louis, MO) to assemble a Lower Ninth Ward (District 8) community stakeholder group, and facilitated both public and stakeholder meetings to arrive at consensus on recovery plans for this hurricane devastated three (3) sq. mile area – www.unifiedneworleansplan.com (2006-2007). Subsequently, she was contracted by Concordia Planning to facilitate four (4) community-wide meetings of the School Facilities Master Plan Process (Nov. 2007). Her consulting practice includes collaborative initiatives undertaken by entities such as the Region’s Coalition for Children & Families; Louisiana Bucket Brigade; and the Greater New Orleans Disaster Recovery Partnership. She joins Jean Watts in conducting FLI training workshops in group facilitative methods & advanced facilitation techniques for participatory meeting design, conflict resolution and strategic planning.
Before establishing EWI HealthCare Consulting in 2002, she served in senior administrative roles in academic urban centers of MetroHealth Systems (Cleveland, OH), Charity Hospital (New Orleans, LA), and state-wide partnership development for the LSU Health Care Services Division. Her health systems experience encompass management issues in primary care & sub-specialty clinics; trauma, emergency & ancillary services, and the negotiation of operational linkages between hospitals and community-based primary care sites that result in easier access to needed services for the uninsured.
A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, she has a Masters in Hospital Administration from Tulane University School of Public Health, and a BA in Sociology and Communications from the University of New Orleans.
Contact ewirvin@facilitativeleader.com by email or call her at 504/259-4219 to discuss your organization's facilitation or consulting needs