INNOVATION WORKSHOPS AND MASTERCLASSES

SUMMER 2018

IFC Asia, is a conference famous for resource mobilization. Although it's inspired by it's well known Netherlands based model, the Asia format was designed for the regional context. The 2018 theme was all about leveraging ecosystems for social good. For my second year in a row I was able to bring these concepts together for a masterclass on scaling impact. This year I invited Amani Institute's Roshan Paul to design and deliver. Our boot camp brought together practitioners, thought leaders and connectors in the sector to learn and exchange the latest cutting-edge tools, trends, opportunities and failures. Participants walked away with an action plan for how to leverage their work and innovation ecosystems for systems change that accelerates impact and co-funding. Our session included a high-level overview of the latest regional and global trajectories, a moderated panel discussion with regional leaders (Viria Vichit-Vadakan and Melina Chan), and a guided workshop.

SPRING 2018

Frontier Innovators, an Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) innovationXchange Program, was on a mission to find the most compelling and innovative market based companies that were delivering impact through their work that supports the Sustainable Development Goals. Across late 2017 and early 2018 they received nearly 1000 applications from various organizations- and only 15 were selected to receive up to 100k AUS in funding. As a kick off to this award, the finalist and our team gathered in Singapore to generate a capacity accelerating design workshop to ensure that the boutique funding would be issued in the most dynamic and useful way. Across 4 days I MC'd, moderated a panel and co-lead various problem solving and innovation works with the cross-functional team from various organizations.

SPRING 2018

WEDU, a social enterprise dedicated to investing in and supporting the next generation of female leaders, is a great example of a growing team that takes reflection and iterative innovation seriously. In their most recent team retreat I built a session that allowed their team to leverage the existing data they had already collected about their 'customers' and convert it into a creative learning and ideation experience to test assumptions and thing big. The capacity building training leaned on design thinking methods like persona builds and journey mapping to better understand how their internal systems, tools and interactions could be optimized.

WINTER 2017

For their 10 year program anniversary, the UPEACE Asia Leaders Program, funded by the Nippon Foundation, was striving to generate a reunion that would also activate an engaged alumni network. For their Bangkok based reunion, gathering dozens of alums from around the region, we created a session that was anchored in design thinking our way through this creative (and fun question). Part of the training was capacity building focused while small groups worked and cross-pollinated ideas using creative story boarding.

SPRING 2017

UNDP Thailand had worked diligently for several months collecting insights and research from various social impact oriented organizations as they were set to launch their Social Innovation facility. Yet the question became, how do we promote, unify and coordinate all the different social innovation initiatives taking place across the country, while also building the capacity of youth in Thailand to create social enterprise start-ups, and connect promising initiatives to a funding/investment platform so they can scale up. Myself and DSIL Cofounder Katy Grennier stepped in to design and co-facilitate a workshop that brought together 80 stakeholders for a 'meeting of the minds'. We used the design thinking process to facilitate outputs that were creative ideas about possibilities for the UN's next steps for effective engagement.

SPRING 2016

In this open enrollment workshop we explored innovation leadership by diving deep into tactical methods from the THNK School of Creative Leadership and the fields of Human-Centered Design Tools and Organizational Design Frameworks from various schools of thought such as MIT, IDIN, THNK and the d.school. It was designed for those ready to innovate their creative process, organization or business model and experience transformational reframes to be able to apply the workshop experience to projects- at the personal, team and organizational level. Participants brought their real-world team challenge or learned from other participants as they walked through various tools that could be leveraged and applied to their daily work as well as the design of a team and startup/scaling organization. This was a co-led collaboration between myself (as DSIL), Dr. Paul Hangvongse and Viria Vichit-Vadakan from G-Lab, School of Global Studies, Thammasat University.