Board of Directors

Audrey D. Jordan, Ph.D.

Chair of the Board

Audrey is currently an independent consultant with her own practice – ADJ Consulting and Coaching. Audrey’s consulting areas of expertise are in capacity building for constituent-centered, place-based community change; cultivating community democracy; strengthening organizational and collaborative partnership capacities for learning and accountability; and teaching about and facilitating conversations to promote racial equity and social justice. Two examples of her recent work include: Development evaluator and Facilitator/Documenter for The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative (6/18 – present); and Co-Team Leader for the Partnership Support Team for the First 5 LA funded Best Start initiative (4/16 – 12/18). Audrey is also the Jerry D. Campbell Professor of Civic Engagement at Claremont Lincoln University, and is a certified executive life coach, focused on “accompanying social justice leaders and teams to unchain power for transformation.”

Before moving to California seven years ago, Audrey served in various staff roles in academia, philanthropy and community development, most recently in Boston and Lawrence, Massachusetts (2010-2013), and before that for twelve years at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, MD. Before her stint in philanthropy, Audrey accumulated more than fifteen years of work experience in participatory evaluation research in public agencies, non-profits and in academia in Virginia. She was director of Community Evaluation at the Center for Public Policy’s Survey and Evaluation Research Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has an M.A. in Social Psychology from The University of Virginia’s Social Psychology program, is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Master of Social Work program, and a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University doctoral program in Social Work and Social Policy. Audrey currently lives in Fontana, CA and enjoys the company of her siblings and their spouses, her son and daughter, nieces and nephews, and the most recent family addition - her amazing grand-niece, Eloise.

Heather Berthoud

Board of Directors

Heather Berthoud has practiced organization effectiveness for more than 30 years. She currently leads Berthoud Consulting, a trusted partner to organizational and community leaders that encourages organizations to experience, understand, and self-direct enterprises that are life-affirming in their means and ends. She combines a passion for social justice with a focused practical results-orientation so leaders and organizations accomplish their goals, learn, and enjoy. Clients and colleagues describe her as insightful, fun, straightforward, challenging, and supportive.

She has been faculty for the American University Masters in Organization Development and is a member of NTL Institute, and the Gestalt International Study Center. 

She earned her MS in OD from American University. She completed the first International Gestalt Organization and Leadership Development (iGOLD) program is 2015, the Art of Transformational Consulting, and is certified as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher. Otherwise, she hikes.

Robin Chanay

Board of Directors

Robin Chanay, a nationally-known expert in partnership building to improve watershed health. Robin Chanay has over ten years experience in organizing and coordinating efforts to improve watershed health. She is a board member of CRUW, the Coalition for Restoration of Urban Waters. She has worked with many national groups including includes River Network, Adopt-A-Watershed, The Nature Conservancy and EPA. She has special interest in combined sewer overflow (CSO) and urban stream restoration and brings experiences from her work in Atlanta and with the Anacostia River restoration project in Washington.

Her work focuses on partnership building amongst diverse interests to achieve watershed protection and restoration, bringing together grassroots groups, community leaders, governments, schools, underserved communities and other stakeholders in the process. Ms. Chanay believes success can only be achieved when all the community is involved; when the community is informed; and when everyone works in partnership.

Glenda Eoyang, PhD, HSDP

Board of Directors

Dr. Glenda Eoyang works with public and private organizations to help them thrive in the face of overwhelming complexity and uncertainty. She is a pioneer in the field of human systems dynamics (HSD), which she founded. Through Human Systems Dynamic Institute, Glenda uses her Models and Methods to help others see patterns in the chaos that surrounds them, understand the patterns in simple and powerful ways, and take practical steps to shift chaos into order. Her clients include Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oxfam International, Canada School of Public Service, Cargill, Fraser Health Authority (BC), and Roche/Genentech.

Glenda’s latest book, with co-author Royce Holladay, is Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization (Stanford University Press, April 2013).

Susan Misra

Board of Directors

Susan Misra is the former Co-Director of Change Elemental. In shared leadership with board and staff, she quadrupled the size of the organization, transformed the business model and brand, and developed new thinking around movement networks, building power for systems change, and racial equity. Susan was also the Associate Director of Program/Grants Management and Capacity Building at TCC Group. At TCC, she designed, managed, and evaluated several multi-million dollar, multi-year, national initiatives with regranting, capacity building, and learning community components. In addition, Susan has been a long-time volunteer organizer around issues like global justice, living wages, the environment, immigrant queer rights, and electoral politics.

Susan holds a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she gained advanced skills in strategic nonprofit management, leadership and political organizing, and economic development. She has been trained in transformational consulting, emergent and peer coaching, and diversity and equity facilitation. When not working, you can find Susan volunteering her time on local economic justice and political campaigns and reading revolutionary young adult fiction.

Susan is also a thought leader who generates innovative ideas and works with others to turn them into reality.  For complex and emergent systems change, Susan developed the “Systems Grantmaking Resource Guide,” has coached philanthropists on investing in movement building, co-wrote “Influencing Complex Systems Change,” and worked with community leaders on equitable systems change.  For shared leadership, Susan has modeled shared leadership as a Co-Director at Change Elemental, co-wrote “Doing More with More: Putting Shared Leadership into Practice” and “Emergent Coaching: Becoming Nimble in Complex Times,” and has guided many networks and organizations on developing leaderful cultures and structures. For strengthening organizations and building power, Susan helped develop the Core Capacity Assessment Tool as an Associate Director at TCC Group, advised on integrating equity and networked ways of working into the Organizational Mapping Tool, and co-wrote “Essential Capacities for Building Community Power.”

Jon Stahl

Board of Directors

Jon has over 25 years of experience delivering innovative tools and strategies at the intersection of social impact and technology, with experience at Salesforce, Philanthropy Northwest, and Groundwire. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington and a B.A. in Political Science from Williams College.

Bill Traynor

Board of Directors

Bill is a partner in Trusted Space Partners, a national training and consulting firm dedicated to helping community institutions develop a new and effective networked approach to resident engagement for 21st Century neighborhood life. In this role, Bill provides technical assistance in resident engagement and community building to community-based organizations and foundations across the United States.

Bill also serves as a strategic adviser to Lawrence CommunityWorks Inc., (LCW) where he worked as executive director from 1999 to 2011. LCW is an initiative working to rebuild the struggling city of Lawrence, Mass., which is also his hometown. During his tenure with LCW, Bill led the organization’s transformation from a staff of two (and a financial deficit) to a staff of 45, an operating budget of more than $2.3 million, a membership of more than 5,000 residents and more than $60 million in new redevelopment and community building efforts in the city.

Bill has more than 30 years of experience in community development and community organizing in urban areas throughout the United States. He began his professional life in 1979 as a community organizer for Mass Fair Share. He then served as the first executive director of the Coalition for A Better Ace (CBA Inc.) in Lowell, Mass., where he led a $20 million redevelopment effort and various community organizing efforts throughout the 1980s.

From 1991 to 1999, Bill founded and served as the president of Neighborhood Partners and the Neighborhood Partners Fund, which assisted more than 200 community development efforts nationwide with technical assistance and leadership development grants. In 1998, Bill was awarded a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) and during that time developed the strategy, initial resources and the team to launch Lawrence CommunityWorks Inc.

Bill received a master’s degree in management from the Heller School at Brandeis University in 1983. He also has an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and later served as adjunct faculty in the school’s sociology department. Bill received the Francis Cabot Lowell Alumni Award from the University of Massachusetts in 1996.