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Cultivating connection to each other, the environment, and ourselves is core to thriving in a participatory world. As we find abundance in our relations, we can and will end poverty. My life mission is to advance relational ways to organize.

I have had a very lucky life. I grew up in California and NYC, worked in multiple industries, cultures and worlds, been wealthy and poor, abled and disabled, have worn many hats. I was raised Irish-American, German and Chinese. I started work very young, first in my family’s manufacturing company started in a garage, then in Jewish theater in L.A., directing and performing in musical productions, 8 shows a week for five years.  In my 20′s in New York City, served on the startup team of National Business Network. NBN was a trailblazer in media which aggregated over 100 grassroots B2B publications, empowering grassroots media to compete with national media. Our team sold NBN to 3M, moved to California and formed Dow Harris, to consult on the paradigm turn from traditional media to networks. In 1994, I founded The Empowerment Place, a continuing education company, which served thousands of professional adults in mid-life transition, funded by a marketing network of small businesses.

A teacher at heart, I facilitate both very large events and small transformative groups for change agents. In recent years, I  facilitated groups for Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Interpersonal Dynamics and Women in Management. Concurrently, for twenty years, I have coached mid-career leaders and consultants driven to meaning and purpose.  Steeped in East Asian practices from the age of 19, mentored by Wataru Ohashi, who brought Zen Shiatsu from Tokyo to Europe and US,  I use physical practices in guiding people to new understanding.  My doctoral research was a critical look at institutional forms of knowledge and how relational somatics can support innovation in social organization.

In the late 1990′s, I faced my biggest challenge, a life-death encounter with Ulcerative Colitis. This experience of “disability” with having been grounded in somatics led me to challenge mental models about Organization Development and the people side of the sustainability – how we engage diversity and enable all to participate in the economy.

Since 2006, this inquiry has brought me to designing social software, applying social sciences and arts-based research. Along the way, I completed a BA in Cultural Anthropology at University of California, an MA in Organization Development and a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems at Fielding Graduate University.

I often am knee-deep in several projects. Most recently, I founded Dreamfish, a global work community of which I am honored to be a part. If you would like to work together, please join Dreamfish as there are many fantastic projects in the network to realize.

Cheers to the livingness of life!

-Tiff

Networks I swim in: