Design Convo LLC

Something really serendipitous and wonderful happened recently…. Someone from a company called Shippo reached out on LinkedIn. At first, we thought it was one of those messages where someone is trying to sell you something. But we took a moment and actually read it and it said “hey, we heard about DesignConvo at a conference and we are wondering if you might be able to run a leadership development session for our upcoming retreat in Phoenix!” We were so delighted and surprised because we had no idea how they heard about us and from whom, but it must of been good if they reached out!! 😍 So, this month, we are so excited to share 2 of our favorite workshops with Shippo: Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) and Storytelling! To whoever is in rooms we are not and sharing our names in positive ways…WE THANK YOU! 🎉 #consulting #leadeshidevelopment #storytelling #visualthinkingstrategies #workshop #retreat #yesand #wordofmouth #thankful Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

This week, we were able to attend the Storytelling Event: In Your Own Words put on by the Phoenix Legal Action Network and it was…..incredible!! Over the past few weeks, we have been working on the weekends with a group of incredibly immigrants through a series of storytelling workshop to suport them in crafting their stories, identifying their takeaway messages, and practicing their delivery so they would feel confident when they shared their stories in front of 100+ people. And we are happy to share…that they were phenomenal! Stories about resiliency, mindset changes, braking generational norms, advocacy, family, grief, support, and the power of a great teacher really resonated with the audience and highlighted the broad and rich spectrum of the immigrant experince. Storytelling is one of our favorite workshops to host to help with public speaking, influencing, sharing complex messages, & connecting and being able to collaborate with Phoenix Legal Action Network was such an honor! #storytelling #event #workshop #immigrant #influnece #connect #communicate #consulting #publicspeaking #leadership Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

Being able to help make the Leading with Kindness program kick-off happen in September was such a special thing for us! 72 leaders from 31 health organizations across the state of Arizona! WOW! What an incredible initiative by the Wellbeing Collaborative of Arizona and what an incredible program crafted by Steve Swensen! We were able to partner with the wildly talented Bryan Pentecostes yet again to make this highlight video from the kick-off and I wanted to share it with you! https://lnkd.in/ggFVNPUY Enjoy! #wellbeing #health #leadership #development #kindness #arizona #healthecosystem #kickoff #highlight #consulting Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

We started this week in the best way possible…collaborating, facilitating, and making an impact! We got to team up with the brilliant Renee Bhatti-Klug, Ed.D. with Culturally Intelligent Training & Consulting (CITC) to design and facilitate an interactive and inspiring full-day forum for the Office of Inclusive Excellence at ASU! Taking the vision set by the Vice Provost and her team, we were able to engage a brilliant and passionate group of faculty and staff leaders to learn about each other, learn from each other, and collaborate on emerging priorities and opportunities. Using stories, sticky notes, colors, clustering, themeing, reflecting, and a whole lot of other engaging techniques, the time flew by! My favorite comment of the day came from a participant who said “I normally don’t like ice breakers but I really loved and appreciated the Why Story activity. I haven’t thought about my Why in that way or expressed it like that before.” 🥂 Cheers to the power of stories, intentional collaboration design, and inclusive excellence! #consulting #collaboration #facilitation #braveconversations #storytelling #inclusive #excellence #desing #humancentered #yesand #fun #success

Recently, we had the opportunity to design and facilitate a retreat for executive stakeholders across ASU and Phoenix Children’s Hospital focused on building relationships, identifying potential priority areas, and crafting commitments that promote a positive and productive collaboration. As always, the main challenge was time….we only had 2.5 hours to accomplished these retreat goals. So naturally, we included one of our favorite go-to collaboration acitivtes such as: ✅Moments of Joy ✅Guide to Me ✅Future Vision ✅Challenge, Opportunites, Needs ✅Collaboration Agreements And to get these 22+ leaders through this short time, we used sticky notes, small group sharing and big group consensus. 💡Was it perfect? No…nothing ever is! 💡Did folks feel a bit rushed? Probably…. 💡Did we through it and was it interactive? Yes!! Two pieces of feedback we received at the end that happens to be our favorite are: “Thank you for a productive afternoon!” “That was so well done and given the time crunch, I think we got through all we could.” Time is always a challenge…but if you are intentional and thoughtful in your design, you can do a lot in a short amount of time! 😊 #consulting #collaboration #faciltiaton #executive #partnership #opprtunities #communication #relationships #timecrunch #yesand #stickynotes

We are returning from an incredible trip to Columbia, Missouri where we have the absolute pleasure of running a workshop for the Strategic Proposal Development Service (SPDS) team at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Not only was workshop a success with so much wonderful feedback, but WOW is Missouri gorgeous! And not just Missouri but the Mizzou campus! 😍 Maybe it’s because we are desperately waiting to fall to finally start in Arizona but we were in love with the trees, colors, and the cooler weather. As we were siting down to celebrate after the session with delicious fish tacos and Moscow Mules, we realized that since we started Design Convo LLC we have now traveled from coast to coast and internationally as well! 🎉 Feeling so thankful and full of gratitude and joy to be able to do what we do, make an impact, and see a bit of the world at the same time! #consulting #travel #workshop #highered #thankful #design #teambuilding #leadershipdevelopment #humancentereddesign #facilitation Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

Starting tomorrow, we will be hosting a series of storytelling workshops in collaboration with the Phoenix Legal Action Network to support a fantastic group of storytellers that will be preparing for a story showcase. But this isn't your average story showcase, this is going to be a showcase of local immigrant stories! Over the next few weeks, we will be hosting multiple storytelling workshops using the The Storytelling Leader program to help these storytellers identify, craft, share, refine, and practice the stories they will be sharing to create lasting impact with their audience and communities. The story showcase IN OUR OWN WORDS will be on Wednesday Oct. 23 from 5pm-7pm. We would love to invite you all to attend to hear these incredible immigrant stories, be moved, be inspired, and cheer on the brave storytellers. https://lnkd.in/g8VFcg4Q Given our rich history with immigration, this is near and dear to our hearts and we are so excited and honored to collaborate on this effort! #stories #collaboration #immigrant #showcase #impact #learning #community #leadership Anca Castillo Cary Lopez, PhD

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hosting a Strategic Storytelling + Applied Improvisation Workshop for the brilliant Embark STEM Fellows at ASU! Through interactive improv games and the Storytelling Leader framework, the fellows honed their ability to think on their feet, communicate clearly, and embrace the unexpected—skills that will directly enhance their confidence as they prepare for their research poster presentations. At the end of the workshop, participants shared some incredible reflections: 💬 "I am committing to embracing being uncomfortable and taking time when I speak." 💬 "I feel my confidence building in spontaneous speaking and active listening." 💬 "These skills aren't just for students! We should do this with faculty, staff, and leaders!" A special shout-out to the incredible Johnny Kalita who collaborated with us on this workshop and led the improv activities. We can't wait to see how these skills help the fellows shine at their upcoming presentations! 🌟 #Storytelling #Improvisation #STEM #Leadership #Confidence #PublicSpeaking #Research #Fellowship Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

Today, we were able to launch the “Leading with Kindness” program as a collaboration between The Wellbeing Collaborative of Arizona and Dr. Steve Swensen. This 6-month program focuses on cultivating effective wellbeing-centered leadership behaviors and participative management skills. We had 75+ health leaders across Arizona from 32 different organizations represented in this cohort and the energy and excitement in the room was vivid! It was been so wonderful to collaborate with brilliant folks like Steve Swensen Florence Spyrow MSN/MHA, JD Michelle Villegas-Gold Ph.D., MPH, MC, RYT Teresa Bertsch MD Nika Gueci, EdD, MA on this program! The way we have worked on this both online and offline has been so seamless, easy, and fun. And that is hard thing to say about collaboration sometimes! Planning events has never been our most “favorite” thing to do: it’s stressful and anxiety inducing. But as we were reflecting post-event we said… “We are either getting better at this or this event was an outliner because this was much easier and fun!” So thank you! Thank you to everyone that helped make this happen. And thank you to everyone that intentionally took the time out of their busy schdule to be there today! #leadership #program #cohort #launch #leadingwithkindness #collaboration #health #ecosystem #learning #community #event #consulting #planning #impact Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo

Our last day in Costa Rica was incredible! Not only did we finish up an incredible 3-day design kick-off and got wonderful feedback on our facilitation and activities…but we got to spend the day exploring! We visited the Hacienda Alsacia #Starbucks Coffee Farm and took a coffee tour learning about the entire coffee process (and having the BEST cup of coffee EVER might I add…) We also got to visit an active volcano, play around a gorgeous waterfall, eat authentic food at restaurant on a hill, and make wonderful memories with an incredible group of people. We cannot wait to come back to Costa Rica 🇨🇷 And cannot wait to see what other travels this incredible consulting life has in store for us! #consulting #faciltiation #design #international #semiconductors #engineering #business #entrepreneurship #travel #fun #yesand #puravida Cary Lopez, PhD Anca Castillo