I am a facilitator, trainer and coach for individuals and relationships of all shapes and sizes. My work is about creating containers where discovery and growth can happen. I am always focused on building the capacity of the person or people I’m working with to do the work they want to do.
My approach is wholistic, and invites the wisdom of the whole person, including the body, to lead the process of discovering what each of us needs to thrive, as individuals and in relationships and groups. And while the work is sometimes slow and done in small steps, it is always focused on transformation, not on incremental change.
Background
I am a certified, professional co-active coach*, and have spent nearly 40 years as a facilitator of learning, growth and change in a wide variety of settings. Whether in a preschool classroom, a nonprofit board retreat, a band rehearsal, a coaching session, or a coalition meeting, my role has always been to facilitate a process that encourages people to discover what they need to discover and makes positive change possible.
*I did my coach training at CTI. You will find more details on my work with organizations at the About Me page on the OD side of my website.
I am a student of yoga, nonviolent communication, the Alexander Technique, Voice Dialogue, InnerDialogue, and the wisdom of connecting with felt experience and with the natural world. All of those disciplines inform my work. I am also a step-parent, grandparent and auntie, and now a care partner for a person with Parkinson’s Disease and elderly parents, and so continually gain new insights and tools from those experiences.
I am a bisexual, European-American, cis-gendered woman (she/her pronouns), who gets frustrated by people’s assumptions that I’m straight because I’m married to a male. I grew up in “racially” and economically diverse neighborhoods and schools in Chicago and Brooklyn in the 1960s and 70s, where my father was a community organizer and my mother a preschool teacher. There I wrestled first hand, and with much more awareness than most “white” children, with the impacts of the construct of “race” and “whiteness” and the damage that they do, and the parallel impacts of sexism, and later (in my awareness) homophobia.
Why I do this work
The work I do has grown in no small part out of my determination to support my own capacity and that of others to stay open and curious when faced with differences, uncertainty, and fear. It is my belief that this capacity is central to our ability to solve challenging and complex problems and build an inclusive and sustainable society.
Other things about me
I am a musician and a writer. (You can find my band at www.kendalin.com.) I am a cat person who also enjoys other people’s dogs. I grew up walking everywhere and get cranky if I have to spend too much time in the car. I can’t imagine living somewhere that doesn’t have a big lake or rivers.
I live in Portland, Oregon, with my composer-arranger/music teacher husband, Shawn Orpinela, three fabulous cats, and a garden that has learned to put up with a lot of benign neglect.
If you want different details, you can also view my LinkedIn profile, or my organizational-development focused bio on that side of my website.
Please feel free to call, 503-788-2333, or email me with any questions you may have.