Facilitator
Laura Fallon has facilitated hundreds of hours of organizational change management, group interpersonal dynamics, and individual personal development conversations.
Most recently, Laura spearheaded an organization-wide cultural change management strategy, interviewing over 30 senior executives and leaders across siloed departmental verticals, enrolling extended-executive sponsorship including Founders, C-level individuals, and Board members, collating and synthesizing key takeaways from the data gathered, and co-facilitating a summit experience obtaining consensus-based awareness and buy-in around the themes presented.
At the outset of the pandemic, as a People Partner in the organization, Laura launched a program to hold space for anything arising for staff as the organization had to cancel a multi-million dollar source of income for the first time in the institution’s 30+ year history. With the layers of experience over the course of 2020, she facilitated over 25 weeks of these listening circles supporting a range of topics, thoughts, and feelings from rapid transitions to remote working, layoffs, wildfire impacts, and a swell of awakening to systemic oppressions.
In the summer of 2020, and in the wake of George Floyd's murder, Laura kicked-off and facilitated a series of conversations in the predominantly white organization, opening up its ability to be in active dialogue about room for improvement regarding becoming an anti-racist organization, and be with the discomfort necessary for such growth. She continued support in that organization as part of an internal group that plans and co-facilitates organization-wide introspection in topical conversations regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a Board member of a separate white-led Bay Area non-profit, Laura has volunteered time facilitating a six-month series of learning spaces, bringing white leaders across the organization along an initial anti-racist learning curve.
Laura also has years of managerial and project-level experience leading initiatives through turnaround and crisis conditions. Honing in from the organization-wide, department or team, and group-level to the immediate interpersonal, she has direct experience facilitating employee relations conversations in extreme environments.
Coach
Laura has simultaneously maintained a healthy practice of private 1:1 coaching clients as they traverse significant professional leaps. Former clients include: a senior Silicon Valley technology company executive during transition to their own practice, an energy startup co-founder as their company was acquired, a lawyer through initiation of an independent journalism career, and an investor as they broke out and founded their own real estate venture.
Laura's experience stems from interpersonal dynamics and organizational behavior curriculum at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Participating in the school’s renowned T-Group program and inaugural Leadership Coaching course, she went on to obtain certification as a Co-Active Coach or Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) through the Coaches Training Institute now Co-Active Training Institute (CTI), one of the longest-running and stated rigorous coach training programs at an international level, accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the industry's premier accrediting body.
This formal training is underpinned by direct personal experience with undertaking significant life changes. Laura has relocated over 10 times in 10 years - moving between red states, blue states, swing states, and outside the US - made bold industry and job changes - switching from engineering, supply chain, and operations in the healthcare industry to human resources, people operations, and organizational development in the arts, with roles in marketing and fundraising in between - and embarked on a major life dream of a DIY van conversion. These changes have included shifts back and forth between for-profit and non-profit companies, as well as between working within organizations and working for herself.
At the individual level, Laura is passionate about supporting folks in taking and navigating their own versions of deeply-held professional and/or personal leaps. At the interpersonal level, she is committed to creating space for the reality of the human experience present in group dynamics, building trust through the authenticity of that shared understanding, and enabling sustainable collective forward movement.
On the whole, Laura is interested in the rich interstitial liminal space of possibility available in transitions for people to rediscover, deepen, or expand their relationships with freedom and joy.