Public Engagement and Facilitation
Rural and remote futures
As co-facilitator of the Far West Texas Community-Building Summit, I led a group of 50 regional stakeholders through an intensive collaborative process to identify shared challenges and develop cross-community solutions for this unique borderland region.
Our work made the news in two countries!
Video: Rio Grande - Río Bravo del Norte - U.S. Mexico border cinematography by ChrisThe summit convened nearly 200 regional leaders and decision-makers from Alpine, Fort Davis, Marfa, Presidio, Marathon, and surrounding communities at The Granada Theatre, anchored around speaker Doug Griffiths presentation 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. This gathering addressed the distinctive needs of our remote desert region, where communities face both geographical isolation and shared economic and social challenges. I contributed:
Facilitation
I designed and led structured ideation sessions that enabled participants to move beyond traditional siloed thinking toward regional collaboration.
Systems Thinking Application
Applied my expertise in complex systems to help participants identify interconnected challenges across communities and visualize cascading impacts of potential solutions.
Consensus Building
Guided diverse stakeholders through potentially contentious political topics to find common ground and shared priorities.
Methodology Design
Created a facilitation framework tailored to our region's unique context, incorporating elements from organizational design, leadership development, and strategic foresight methods.
Impact and Outcomes
The summit generated concrete action plans addressing critical regional needs:
Economic Development: Strategic initiatives to address shared business vacancies and create a cohesive regional economic identity
Cross-Community Collaboration: Framework for a potential regional chamber of commerce to strengthen the collective voice of Far West Texas
Critical Infrastructure Solutions: Targeted approaches to regional transportation challenges and childcare shortages
Educational Integration: Innovative partnerships engaging Sul Ross State University students in community development projects
Regional Context and Significance
The Trans-Pecos region of Texas represents one of America's most unique and challenging environments for community development. With vast distances between population centers, proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, and resource contingencies, our communities must innovate beyond traditional development models.
This summit marked a critical shift from community-specific planning to a truly regional approach, recognizing that our remote communities can achieve greater impact through strategic collaboration than through individual efforts.
Continuity and Follow-Through
Rather than a one-time event, this summit initiated an ongoing regional dialogue. The design the follow-up framework included community video presentations of Doug Griffiths' presentations across multiple locations and structured implementation sessions to maintain momentum.
This project exemplifies what I think is a wise approach to complex regional challenges: bringing together diverse perspectives, facilitating productive dialogue, and creating actionable paths forward that honor local context while embracing innovative solutions.
Facilitators, Steering Committee, Board
This project was a direct result of the work and expertise of facilitators Liz Miller Grindstaff, Danelle Smith, Malinda Veldman; Steering Committee members Chris Cornell, Robert Halpern, Kirsten Moody, Jeanine Southerland; Alpine Community Projects Board members Abbey Branch, Scarlet Clouse, Kirsten Moody, Heather Haynes Smith; and speaker Doug Griffiths from Edmonton, Canada. I played just a small part. Thank you for the opportunity and for your trust.
Challenge: Overcoming fragmented development approaches across communities in the Trans-Pecos region to address shared economic, infrastructure, and social challenges through regional collaboration… and despite geographical dispersion, limited resources, and diverse political interests.
Methodologies: Strategic facilitation of multi-stakeholder dialogues, systems thinking frameworks, consensus-building techniques for politically diverse contexts, custom facilitation blending organizational design and leadership development, and strategic foresight, community coalition development
Connected Projects: Leadership Big Bend board service, regional economic development initiatives, international border collaboration networks
Insights: Remote communities achieve greater impact through strategic regional collaboration, development challenges require solutions across municipalities, community dialogue reveals shared priorities, sustained engagement frameworks produce more lasting impact than isolated events, rural collective intelligence, more work needs to happen to engage and include all members of community across race/socioeconomic groups.
Outcomes: Established economic development initiatives addressing regional business challenges, created foundation for potential regional chamber of commerce.
Applications to future work: Facilitation methodology, systems thinking approach transferable to complex organizational challenges, consensus-building techniques valuable in politically diverse environments, framework design expertise applicable to organizational transformation, multi-community coordination strategies relevant to regional development initiatives.
Themes: Regional collaboration, facilitation consensus building, rural innovation and resilience.