Cultivating Transformation & Connections
SOIL is a premier coaching and consulting firm dedicated to collaborating with leaders and organizations, fostering transformative environments in personal and professional spheres.
Leveraging years of collective experience and expertise, the SOIL team specializes in enhancing leadership efficacy across diverse sectors. With a strong emphasis on reflective practice and awareness building, we empower businesses, organizations, and movements to fully actualize their potential, making a profound impact in fulfilling their missions.
The SOIL Approach
At SOIL, we employ an inquiry-based methodology that emphasizes learning, reflection, and well-being. This approach has been refined and iterated over two decades through our deep and extensive work with thousands of leaders around the world.
Who We Serve
- Social Sector Executives and Leaders
- Educators
- Administrators
- Business Owners
- Special Event Planners
- Non-profit Organizations
- Colleges and Universities
- Fellowship Programs
- Bilateral/Multilateral Organizations
- Municipalities
- Facilitators
Our Philosophy
Our coaching and advising strategy is informed by our collective experiences as entrepreneurs and leaders who have navigated the complex and often challenging landscape of leading organizations, managing teams, fundraising, strategizing, and decision-making. Despite our successes, we have also faced failures and setbacks, which have significantly shaped our understanding of leadership dynamics.
As a team, we bring diverse perspectives and a nuanced appreciation of how to foster inclusive relationships and challenge deeply ingrained assumptions about power and cultural norms. Our goal is to cultivate an environment of leadership that is connective, meaningful, creative, and kind—qualities we believe are essential for impactful leadership globally.
SOIL Clients:
SOIL offers expertise in five core areas:
Learning Strategy Design for Organizations and Institutions
SOIL has refined approaches to individual and organizational development that emphasize reflective practice, collaborative learning, inclusive participation, and human-centered design. We help our clients to incorporate clearer and stronger approaches grounded in the purpose and mission of their work.
SOIL can help you with:
- Strategy formation
- Program design
- Program evaluation
- Curriculum design and development
Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Team Development
At SOIL, our work is rooted in the generation, in every environment, of an ethos of radical welcome that not only embraces diversity and advances equity, but actively builds a sense of shared care, interconnectedness and belonging.
All work at SOIL has the design and facilitation of inclusive programming and curricula at its core. Our expertise–online and offline–grows from our deep experience in global, cross-cultural and multilingual settings. We have a distinct expertise in “holding the space” for courageous and conscious conversations that inspire greater connection and understanding.
SOIL can help you with:
- Recognize, name and process challenging and/or problematic group dynamics
- Evaluate existing programs and policies
- Facilitate collective and challenging conversations
- Design inclusive experiences that prioritize meaningful connections
Digital Transformation
SOIL works with clients to create a “Slow Digital” experience that focuses on enhancing the richness of human connection in our schools, conferences, and workplaces. Slow Digital is a design principle focused on the creation of virtual spaces that inspire deeper connection between people and their surroundings. These connections go “beyond the screen” and prioritize relationship and process as being equal or greater to task and outcome.
Going hybrid, or moving fully online, requires a strategy and thoughtful design. So many organizations were forced to adopt digital approaches in haphazard ways and without a true plan. Now is the time to remedy and revise your approach to ensure you have the tools to best support your intentions and your communities. The slapdash move to digital has left too many people with a sense of disconnection and dissatisfaction with most virtual meetings and conventions, eLearning offerings, and digital experiences.
In short, digital interactions are leaving people feeling more distanced from each other than ever. There is a better way. We are experienced designers of transformational learning experiences, expert facilitators, and seasoned practitioners. We design digital experiences that leave you feeling energized, excited, and accomplished. Meaningful connection through digital experiences is possible, people need access to the right tools, used the right way, to realize their hoped-for outcomes.
SOIL can help you with:
- Program design
- Program evaluation
- Curriculum design
- Faculty, teacher and facilitator training
- Conference/convening design
- Technology selection and technical assistance
Executive Coaching for Leadership Development
SOIL has worked one-on-one with thousands of executives around the world. Our years of experience founding and building organizations, leading teams, forming strategy and raising resources offers a grounded perspective to our advisees.
SOIL can help you with:
- Overall leadership development for executives
- Advising and strategy
- Fundraising and development
- Course design
- Social entrepreneurship
- Board development and management
Facilitation Training
SOIL offers customized trainings in the essential principles required to create safe and generative spaces for transformative learning and leadership. Highly experiential and practical, the trainings focus on the structure that provides for and encourages learning and deeper connections between people, whether they be colleagues, students, clients, or community members.
Core Themes of Our Approach
Through our collective approach, SOIL supports leaders in developing practices that not only address immediate challenges but also contribute to their long-term well-being and effectiveness.
Accompaniment
We view ourselves as peers on the leadership journey. Our team’s extensive background in founding and managing various enterprises provides us with the empathy and insight needed to relate deeply with the leaders we support, helping them feel understood and less isolated.
Inquiry
We believe effective leadership stems from the ability to critically assess situations. Our inquiry-based problem-solving encourages embracing multiple perspectives, aiming to uncover and utilize the inherent wisdom and purpose in each leader.
Learning
Leadership is a continuous learning journey. We approach each coaching session as an opportunity for growth, aiming to make our engagements with leaders both clarifying and expansive, encouraging the exploration of new ideas.
Practice
We advocate for regular practices that enhance a leader’s capacity for awareness, resilience, and active engagement in the world. These practices, whether kinesthetic, emotional, spiritual, or creative, are designed to promote ongoing well-being and robust personal leadership.