I’m Anna Sims Bartel. I am committed to figuring out how our learning, practices, and passions can be put to use more effectively to help heal the world. I hold degrees from Princeton and Cornell, including a PhD in Comparative Literature, and most of my career has been spent weaving together higher education and community interests. I grew up in Austria, because of my father’s work with the United Nations, so I’m a third-culture kid; I belong to 72 acres of Northern Allegheny Plateau outside of Ithaca, NY; I write poetry; I’m a survivor and bring a trauma-informed as well as anti-supremacist approach to my work. I’m a mom of humans and canines, an ecosystem steward, and I’m happiest in, on, or near moving water. I’m in constant awe of the power and beauty of our natural world and the capacity of humans to learn and grow with it.
More specifically for my business, I’ve spent a couple of decades helping nonprofits and higher education be more useful in the world, by nurturing the spirits and practices of the people who make it so. How do I do that?
- By working with teams, departments, issue-oriented groups, etc. to build a shared sense of purpose and a common vision, and then to live into those…
- By analyzing, listening, and refining the practices we use — whether that’s through grantsmanship, learning design, anti-supremacist communication, or heck, even meeting agendas…
- By helping people advance participation in their good work, deepening community engagement and mutual understanding, using participatory and reflective approaches like Liberating Structures, Art of Hosting, deliberative dialogue, appreciative interviews, and a lot more…
- By helping people, groups, and institutions understand the kinds of impact their work has, through democratically-engaged assessment.
They say vocation is the thing you can’t not do…for me, that’s helping brilliant, generous people make the most of themselves, their sense of calling, and the change they want to see.
Anna Sims Bartel, Ph.D. 