Resilience Planning is an award-winning firm coaching and collaborating with clients to cultivate the strengths of communities and teams so they can have greater social and environmental impact.
You're doing everything right. So why does it still feel like something's missing?
You're a nonprofit leader who cares deeply, works hard, and believes in your mission. But the gap between the culture you want and the one you actually have keeps growing — and you're not sure why.
Does this sound familiar?
Your values look great on paper, but they don't quite show up in the room
You're losing good people and you can't figure out why
You find yourself working harder to hold things together instead of leading forward
You suspect the problem is bigger than any one person — but you don't have the language for it yet
What if it's not you — it's the system?
Patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, scarcity thinking: these forces don't stay outside your organization's doors. They quietly shape your culture, your policies, and your leadership… often without anyone naming them.
When you can finally see the system clearly, everything changes. You stop blaming yourself. You stop losing your best people. And you start building something that actually holds.
See it. Shift it. Sustain it.
A Six-Month Leadership and Culture Transformation for Nonprofit Leaders
SEE IT — Months 1 & 2 Name the gap. Understand the root causes. Build systemic awareness and find your community of practice.
SHIFT IT — Months 3 & 4 Have the courageous conversations you've been avoiding. Move from scarcity thinking to strengths-based leadership.
SUSTAIN IT — Months 5 & 6 Replace extractive policies with relational agreements. Build systems that hold the culture long after the program ends.
WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH
This isn't just leadership development. It's organizational transformation.
By the end of the program, you will have:
A clear diagnosis of the gap between your stated values and your lived culture
A systemic map of the forces quietly shaping your organization
A strengths inventory of every person on your team
Staff-co-created agreements replacing top-down policies
A feedback loop that includes your most vulnerable voices
Metrics, momentum, and a community of practice that carries the work forward
You'll leave as the leader your mission needs — one who sees the systems, shifts the culture, and creates the conditions for everyone's gifts to fuel the work.
About me
As a coach, community planner, and facilitator with over 20 years of experience, my work sits at the intersection of coaching, planning, and equity. Partnering with nonprofit and local government leaders, I bring curiosity, honesty, and deep care to every engagement — along with an awareness of who is not in the room.
As a white settler working on unceded Indigenous territories, I bring my identity and responsibilities to this work with intention, examining how colonial systems shape our institutions and communities, and how we can do better together.
A Certified Executive Coach and member of the International Coaching Federation, my ongoing learning in Indigenous allyship, equity, Deep Democracy, and dignity work informs everything I do. I am a Certified Executive Coach and I am a Registered Professional Planner with the Planning Institute of BC and the Canadian Institute of Planners..
What My clients are saying…
“Lisa has a wonderfully calm but direct style. She knows just what to ask to help get to the root of the issue and has a knack for drawing out key patterns from our conversations that dig deeper into important questions for self-reflection. She helped me to explore my core values and how to use them to guide decisions that align with what I truly want. Most importantly, Lisa kept me accountable and empowered to take action!”
- Director of Housing, local government
“Lisa is one of the best group facilitators that I have worked with: amongst other things, she exacted a vision and objectives statement from a disparate group of people, some of whom were not supportive of the project. No matter what the group threw at her, she always managed to take us forward.”
- senior engineer, City of Surrey
"...[Y]our presentation on Co-developing an Indigenized Data Collection Framework was groundbreaking. It really opened my eyes as to how we as planners can hack the engagement model to share power, practice reciprocity, and build capacity amongst communities, rather than being extractive."
- SCARP Symposium Committee member
READY TO LEAD DIFFERENTLY?
The culture you want is possible. Let's find out where to start.
A Leader Shift Session is a free, no-obligation conversation to explore what's getting in the way and whether this program is the right fit for you.
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world.
In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”