Our Team
Facilitators
Juliana Tafur
Juliana’s thoughts:
“List(e)n revealed how by ‘seeing’ our ‘enemies’ eye-to-eye, our judgment can dissolve, and we can heal our divides and mend our hearts. Listen Courageously, in turn, has shown that our perceptions don’t identify us, and that as humans we can strive for meaningful connections, regardless of what may ‘separate us’. Recognizing that the ‘us vs them’ mentality hasn’t served us is the first step to long-lasting change.”
Megan Briggs
Megan’s thoughts:
Doak Bloss
Doak Bloss is a trainer and facilitator who has worked extensively with students, health and human service professionals, governmental agencies, and community organizers across the U.S. Most recently he has coordinated Michigan Power to Thrive, a new network of local health departments and community organizing groups working together for health equity. Doak has facilitated over 200 community dialogues on a range of topics. He has been a frequent presenter at conferences on the use of dialogue as a vehicle for social change.
Doak’s thoughts:
“My work has focused primarily on the effective facilitation of dialogue, especially on issues of privilege, oppression, and equity. This discipline is different from the art of listening, although the two overlap considerably and are mutually complementary. My interest in listening is centered on the question, “What are the conditions that must exist in order for authentic listening across differences to occur?”
Carlton Evans
Carlton Evans is a facilitator, with over 17 years of experience, specializing in social justice issues. The tool he uses is dialogue, highlighting commonality of purpose, multiple solutions with an emphasis on listening. Some of his clients have been Community Mental Health, United Way, Ingham County Health Department, Michigan Health Department, Michigan Public Health Institute, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Carlton’s thoughts:
“Any oppression works on four different levels: 1) the personal via our thoughts, feelings and beliefs; 2) the interpersonal, as in ‘how those beliefs play out in our dealings with others’; 3) the institutional, with written and unwritten policies and procedures; and 4) the cultural, with ‘what we deem as beautiful, right, and normal’. Dialogue coupled with courageous listening works at the personal and interpersonal levels — or in other words, at the ‘people level’. It can change the person, and therefore one’s interpersonal actions and relationships. Everything is about relationships, or critical connections. What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.”
Jennifer (Jennie) Grau
Jennifer’s thoughts:
“Listening is a powerful skill set that enhances relationships and productivity, while enriching life. If listening were a new technology, with buttons to push and screens to touch, Venture Capitalists would be falling over one another to invest.”
Valerie Smith
Valerie’s thoughts:
Advisors
Corine Jansen
Corine Jansen is an acclaimed speaker, advisor and trainer in the field of listening. Her work is at the intersection of listening and healthcare, where she’s had tremendous impact serving a variety of populations ranging from cancer patients to terminally-ill individuals. As a result, she specializes in opening conversations with people with a broad, nondirective invitation to speak. During the last eleven years, she has trained in listening to both content and form, to be aware of genre, diction, metaphor, time and space, tone, and mood – in order to follow complicated stories as they are being told. Corine is also an active member of the International Listening Association, with a CLP certification from ILA.
Corine’s thoughts:
“While it is important to listen attentively and actively, it is also necessary to understand that even when we pay full attention to someone else’s story, people listen to different types of information differently. To become a really good listener, we need to develop self-awareness around our personal listening filters.”