Grounded in Change
Working for community autonomy and direct democracy
Services
Meeting Facilitation
I provide expert facilitation for high-stakes assemblies, board sessions, town halls, and internal team decision-making groups (including nonprofits and worker cooperatives). My process ensures both inclusive participation and decisive outcomes. This is achieved by fluently navigating a variety of decision-making models to match the right method to your group's unique culture and goal.
Crucially, I maintain an Embodied Presence, using deep empathy and somatic exercises to gauge the group's mood and energy, which keeps participants present, engaged, and focused throughout the duration. This commitment to Group Empowerment means rejecting the "transmission of content" method; instead, the agenda and solutions are derived from the group itself, guaranteeing deep ownership of the outcome. The result is that feeling of decisive accomplishment: clear next steps achieved through mutual respect and collective intelligence.
A strategic plan is not just a document. Its creation is an act of collective power and cultural commitment. I help worker cooperatives, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations design a strategic roadmap that is both ambitious and rooted in shared values.
This service ensures your operational decisions are always flowing from your mission. I co-create a process that synthesizes diverse input, prioritizing and finding consensus on the path forward while integrating the unique perspectives of all team members. This approach moves beyond one-off planning to create durable systems, implementing ongoing social change and culture-shifting practices. Finally, I translate that shared vision into action, utilizing tools like SWOT analysis and SMART goals to produce a clear plan.
Strategic Planning
My 90-minute facilitation training will equip your team with the process for achieving collective decisions with power evenly distributed across the group. This empowering process instills structure and clarity, fostering genuine self-governance and autonomy. Using a popular education model, the training draws directly upon your team's experience, ensuring the learning is immediately relevant, engaging, and actionable.
Facilitation Training
The Foundational Work: Governance, Decision-Making, and Points of Unity
Many community groups and new formations are rightly eager to jump into the work, often delaying the crucial process of laying the foundation. I help organizations get going by establishing the essential internal architecture needed for long-term health.
The questions are fundamental: What is your decision-making process and governance structure? What are your Points of Unity?
Setting this foundation—though it may feel formal—is the single most effective way to ensure everything else flows smoothly and to avoid predictable pitfalls later on. I walk your team through these essential organizational set-up processes, providing the clarity and structure necessary so you can dedicate your full energy to organizing and achieving your mission.
Organizational Set-up
I, Hanna Pesha (They/them), am an agent of social change working in the San Francisco Bay Area. The works of adrienne maree brown, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon inspire me with their liberatory praxis. The Black Panther Party adopted the phrase "Each one, teach one" as a core part of its pedagogy, reflecting its commitment to community self-education and empowerment. I grew up partly in Oakland, CA, the birthplace of the Panthers, and I enjoy nothing more than sharing skills to empower communities. This land, the unceded territory of the Lisjan Ohlone people, who are the original inhabitants of the East Bay area, is the source of my power to do this work. I would have nothing without the place-based energy consisting of the liberatory struggles that have come before and surround me. I am a queer disabled survivor and ground my work in my own struggle for disability justice and trans liberation. I would be honored to be part of your change-making.