National league of cities: Facilitating six city teams through design training & strategic planning
My Role
I co-designed and co-facilitated the workshop in collaboration with the founder of WERK Strategies.
About
The National League of Cities provides technical support to cities addressing complex challenges.
Skills
Facilitation | Workshop Development | Human Centered Design | Civic Innovation
Context
Addressing localized challenges
The National League of Cities supports cities across the country in their endeavors to improve the lives of residents.
Six cities were selected to participate in a recent initiative to address basic needs to improve post-secondary and workforce success. Each city team had representatives from higher education, economic development, and city hall. As a co-facilitator, I assisted in the design of materials for the workshop as well as facilitation of the 2.5-day workshop.
Project scoping + workshop development
Applying a human perspective to data
Each city had a strong foundation of data outlining the specific challenges and opportunity areas for their city to address basic needs to improve post secondary success. The workshop needed to equip teams with design methods to fill in details of the challenge from a human-centered perspective and create an actionable strategic plan.
Image description: Room of people sitting at tables with papers on tables and post-its on the windows around the room.
workshop features
Systems Mapping
Ideation
Evaluation
Strategic Planning
Image description: People collaborating around a table and moving post-its on a wall
Image description: Whiteboard titled ecosystem
Image description: Two women standing near a NLC podium