Speaking and training topics include:
Empowering Communities
Ellen makes the case for redistributing decision-making power to populations most impacted by decision outcomes. She trains public officials, nonprofits, and others in practical strategies they can apply to forge partnerships with community members that lead to trust and more impactful and equitable results.
Community Meetings that Don’t Suck
In this popular talk and training, Ellen takes a candid look at why both government officials and community members hate traditional community meetings with such fervor. She provides new models of community meeting design that position officials and community members as equal partners in a common cause and meld the best of professional expertise and lived experience.
Navigating Power
Power is always present in community and economic development, and it can be a force for positive change. However, power’s shadow side is also there, impacting who has access to opportunity, resources, and influence. In this talk or training, Ellen works with leaders to address their power deliberately and strategically, so that they can disrupt patterns that sustain an inequitable status quo.
Why Local Matters and How to Go Local
How to build economic vitality and resilience by supporting locally-owned businesses and shifting public policy to growing economic strength from within. Ellen provides the economic arguments as well as hands-on tools for making the Localism shift.