OUR FACILITATORS

Elizabeth Robinson, MA

Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.A.

• Leadership development
• Emerging leaders
• Experiential learning
• Facilitator development
• Coaching

PL work
Elizabeth designs and facilitates leadership programs that result in transformation. She integrates Personal Leadership as a catalyzing ingredient that fosters the leadership “in-sight” needed to create new realities. Her programs’ participants consistently lead positive change in the communities or systems in which they work.

Other work
Elizabeth has worked all over the world.

Her leadership work began with a 16-year career at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. There she developed and led five innovative USAID-funded work-force development and leadership programs for emerging leaders in Central America and for university faculty in East Timor. During her tenure at Georgetown, almost 3,000 youth leaders from Central America completed degree and certificate programs at U.S. community colleges.

She then designed and led The Hope Fellowship Program, a women’s leadership program in Kosovo following the 1999 conflict. In Kenya and Palestine, she developed the capacity of staff in youth programs to deliver leadership programming.

For the United Nations, she designed and facilitated management-development programs throughout the world. The programs increased the leadership capacity of U.N. managers to influence positive change in the U.N. system. Recently, for the global microfinance institution FINCA International, she has served as the Director of the FINCA Development Academy (FDA).

Elizabeth is known as an innovative designer and compassionate teacher and coach. She uses positive change technology in her work, which incorporates Appreciative Inquiry, Personal Leadership, the principles of learning organizations, and generative and experiential learning formats.

She believes when more institutions are equipped with state-of-the-art practices that encourage leadership to emerge, the world will be supplied with the resources it needs to discover new possibilities and find solutions for the challenges of our time.

Personal background
Elizabeth grew up in a family with a keen sense of service for the common good and the community. A strong belief that has guided her work is the principle that everyone is born with unique gifts that are remedies for the world. When an individual gives his or her gifts, deep needs in a community are fulfilled, perhaps even inadvertently. Personal Leadership is the art of calling forth one’s unique highest and best moment by moment—and in so doing taking action to create the common good with others.

Academic
Elizabeth holds a BA in Spanish from the University of Maryland, and an MS in Organizational Development from The American University in Washington D.C. She has completed the Newfield Certified Coach Training, and is pursuing coach certification.

Other interests
Besides empowering leaders to discover leadership within, her other passions include tree preservation, hiking, and yoga.