Welcome to the new site for Opening Space and thank you for visiting!
We will be all setup soon, but in the meantime, please contact Lisa Heft here.

I work and teach internationally.

If you are a conference coordinator, business, governmental or community leader, meeting planner, facilitator or educator who would like facilitation, consultation or training about engaging groups in dialogue and knowledge-sharing...

If you wish to learn more about my background and experience facilitating in many cultures and countries...

If you wish to reach me to discuss my facilitation services or the workshops I offer...

I welcome you to contact me.
I have facilitated, consulted, given workshops and collaborated in learning exchanges in Spanish and in English in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Mozambique, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zambia... and maybe next, in your part of the world.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Lisa Heft
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
President Emeritus, Open Space Institute US
Fellow, Columbia University Center for Conflict Resolution

This is what I do:

Facilitate
  • small, large and very large groups
  • dialogue-based task work, planning, product and program design, strategic planning
  • knowledge exchange and interaction
  • interdisciplinary thinking
  • understanding across diversity and differences
  • conferences, meetings, retreats and forums

Consult
  • design interactive conferences and interactive plenary sessions
  • include participant voice and interchange in conferences, forums and summits
  • analyze a meeting or conference’s objectives, desired outcomes and other elements for right-fit interactive process to maximize engagement and productivity
  • review and evaluate invitation and other messaging and meeting process for face-to-face or online events in advance, for maximum diversity, access and inclusion
  • explore, teach and reflect on face-to-face participant and facilitator dynamics of interaction and inclusion for those who design and invite online meetings
Teach and mentor, offer feedback and support
  • to seasoned and newly-emerging facilitators, educators and subject matter experts
  • about Open Space Technology and other facilitation processes, pre-work for face-to-face dialogue events, the facilitator’s role, interactive learning design (how to teach without lectures) and other topics of interest for people who convene groups

Host
  • conversations
  • conferences
  • learning opportunities
I specialize in face-to-face dialogue processes that
  • scale up (only one facilitator needed for a group of 5 or 3000+)
  • work across country and culture (without requiring participants to learn someone else’s vocabulary; without working through the facilitators’s own cultural filter)
  • where participants frame their own experience (rather than the facilitator doing so)
  • inform the design of successful online meetings that are inclusive and accessible to diverse participants