People

Chi Hin Cheong

Lindsey Randol

Casey Steele

Erin Kassis

Karl Steyaert • Founder & Steward
Karl is passionate about supporting people & organizations to fulfill their highest potential to contribute to the well-being of all life and a thriving planet Earth. For over 25 years he has facilitated community building, group process & conflict transformation in Asia, Europe and North America, including years of living and working at communities such as Findhorn Ecovillage (Scotland) and Auroville (India). A Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication, Karl also facilitates Internal Family Systems, Restorative Justice, Process Work, and other transformational modalities. He has Master’s degrees in Anthropology and Environmental Policy (University of Michigan), and a Nidan (2nd degree black belt) in Aikido (a Japanese martial art).

Aimee Ryan • Co-Founder & Steward 
Through her years of experience in conflict transformation, organizational development, and facilitating collaborative processes, as well as non-profit administration, communication skill building and training, and professional/life coaching, Aimee loves helping individuals and groups move beyond the challenges of “either/or” and into the creative possibilities of “both/and.” 

Leonie Smith • Steward 
Leonie is founder of The Thoughtful Workplace, where she helps organizations and their leaders transform perceived difficult conversations into opportunities for building a shared vision around work. She also supports groups to create systems, based on what people need, to do great work by integrating principles that invite every voice to matter.

Marcia Christen • Steward
A Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication since 2011, Marcia enjoys companioning individuals, families, couples, children and youth in compassion, self-empathy and honest, caring expression. She continues to seek ways to practice, learn, and share Nonviolent Communication consciousness and skills.

Chi Hin Cheong • Catalyst 
Chi is a mindfulness and Nonviolent Communication trainer, coach, facilitator, and community organizer. He is also the founder of Nonviolent Communication Hong Kong.

Jeff Brown • Catalyst 
Jeff supports nonprofit organizations and groups of seminar leaders with marketing, event planning, and administrative support from his home in Ithaca, NY. In his work, he uses an approach that he calls Cultural Architecture, by connecting the dots between things ordinarily seen as being unrelated and stitching together a polarized world so that everyone can thrive. A Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication since 2005, he also served as the Executive Director of the Compassionate Communication Center of Ohio from 2009-2015. Jeff has led, co-led, or hosted 800 days of Nonviolent Communication events in 30 U.S. states and 9 countries including South Korea, Japan, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, and the U.K.

Lorraine “Rain” Warren • Catalyst
With a PhD in Depth Psychology, Rain has trained over 34,000 youth world-wide in peace-building, dialogue & conflict mediation through Global Youth Village, Legacy International, and other programs. She conducted her doctoral research in Rwanda interviewing survivors of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, exploring the role of listening in trauma healing.

Chris Moore-Backman • Catalyst
Chris is the author of The Gandhian Iceberg: A Nonviolence Manifesto for the Age of the Great Turning and the producer of the radio documentary series Bringing Down the New Jim Crow. He has served on peace teams in Colombia and Palestine and is currently part of the core team at East Point Peace Academy, a nonviolence training organization that works in prisons and jails in the San Francisco Bay Area. Chris is part of a national coalition of change-makers working to launch a yet-to-be-named network of direct action teams positioned at the intersection of racial healing and climate justice. He is a loving father. He adores the wilderness, playing his guitar, and chasing after a soccer ball.

Dan Mahle • Catalyst
A storyteller, group facilitator, and leadership coach, Dan is building a world of fierce love and compassion by living courageously from his vulnerable truth. Dan is Head of Story & Culture at Avanoo, a startup company in Boulder, CO. Prior to Avanoo, he served as Program Coordinator at the Whidbey Institute, a center for transformational leadership in the Pacific Northwest. Dan founded Wholehearted Masculine in 2014 to support men in sharing their stories, questioning cultural norms, and exploring the power of healthy vulnerability. He is passionate about gender equity, conflict transformation, and harnessing the power of storytelling to bring people together across lines of difference.

Lindsey Randol • Catalyst
Dr. Lindsey T. Randol is a Licensed Counseling Psychologist in the UK and a registered psychotherapist in the State of Colorado. Lindsey  has been practicing counseling and psychotherapy since 2009. Her clinical specialties include anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, life transitions, student life and career, mind-body challenges, personal development, couples counseling, and meaningful living. In addition to private practice, Lindsey is core faculty at Naropa University in the Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Counseling Master’s program. She also serves as a visiting professor at the Royal University of Bhutan.

Tsuyoshi “Go” Goto • Catalyst
Go is a passionate explorer of wholeness and aliveness, having spent a lifetime integrating the essence of various paths of spiritual and personal development, including Nonviolent Communication, Internal Family Systems, Process Work, and Nonduality. He is a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication.

Donal Gannon • Catalyst
Donal is a nomadic catalyst for personal, relational and cultural transformation, striving to take small (and sometimes big) steps towards a world that works for all. Since 2003, he has travelled the world providing public and private training, facilitation, consultancy, system building, mediation, and coaching. In these, he uses an extensive tool kit from various modalities, to support individuals and groups to develop skills in conscious communication, effective collaboration, authentic relating, community/team building, shared leadership, as well as personal and relational healing. He continues to collaborate as a Certified Trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC), Creative Director of HeartSpace Collective, and a member of the School of Consent and Arise to Succeed. Learn more about Donal and his work at www.donalgannon.com.

Jocelyn Ames • Catalyst
Jocelyn is inspired by the transformational potential of communities based on a culture of trust. With a love for supporting individuals and groups to gain the skills and consciousness for a truly life-serving collaborative culture to emerge, she offers workshops, courses, 1-on-1 sessions and mediations based on Nonviolent Communication and inspired by Internal Family Systems. You can read more about Jocelyn at www.becomingtogether.net.

Christine Lutz • Catalyst
Christine has a big dream for a healed earth, where we can be alive, free, peaceful and loving with each other and our planet. She is a whole-hearted co-creator, caretaker and space-holder. As a curious researcher, she loves to explore – and also to inspire. She is very passionate about creating a new culture using Nonviolent Communication, Internal Family Systems and community circle methods like Forum. She is a freelance Designer, an Art Therapist and co-created an NGO doing educational projects about food waste in Berlin.

Casey Steele • Catalyst
Casey has worked for a decade as a Master’s level social worker in schools, hospitals, and communities to aid clients experiencing physical and emotional challenges. She is honored to be a caretaker and steward of others’ healing paths. Her own experience with lifelong chronic illness and lived experiences of trauma inform every facet of her life and work. She currently works as a health coach: limbic system healing consultation and guidance and in healthcare navigation/advocacy supporting folks in need. Casey is proud to identify as Highly Sensitive Person and leads from the heart in her life and work with this as a compass. She continues to lean into learning and living by Nonviolent Communication principles and utilizing the Internal Family Systems modality in her health coaching and intrapersonal healing.

elizaBeth Simpson • Catalyst
elizaBeth Simpson has been a facilitator and consultant for grassroots social justice organizations for 24 years. She specializes in strategic planning, collaborative decision-making, conflict resolution/transformative justice, and anti-oppression initiatives.Her doctoral work emphasized collaborative problem-solving strategies and anti-oppressive decision-making practices. elizaBeth incorporates Theater of the Oppressed and other popular education techniques to facilitate participatory workshops around the U.S. on social justice issues. In the time of COVID-19 elizaBeth has been a national innovator in developing adaptive measures to move collaborative and trauma-informed, embodied practices into virtual spaces.

Jay Corrales • Catalyst
Jay is an artisan, guide, and community builder focused on building healing villages that are socially, culturally and ecologically restorative. He has a broad interdisciplinary background in leadership, team building, and coaching in businesses, non-profits and cooperatives in areas of technology, real estate, and sustainable development. Jay brings a strong passion for guiding personal and group transformation to co-create a more healthy, just, and beautiful world that works for the benefit of all life. He currently resides on Huichin territory, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, aka Berkeley, CA.