Let’s shift ideas into action…
Develop skills…
Graphic Facilitation Workshop
May 1-2, 2025, Winnipeg, Canada
Design your own
What clients are saying…
Relevant to most areas of life
I found Michelle’s graphic facilitation workshop not only applicable to my work (which I initially wondered about), but also relevant to most other areas of life. As a research manager, I’ve been less confident working with my right brain despite knowing how helpful those right-brained tools can be for public engagement. Michelle provided me with strategies, templates, and a graphic toolbox to assist in conveying sometimes complex research foci to broader audiences. I quite highly recommend this workshop to anyone organizing team meetings, engaging with the public, participating in education activities, or even helping your children with their homework. I’ll be taking it again when offered!.
Morgan Sternberg
Research Scientist, Morrow Bioscience Ltd, workshop participant 2019
Diverse Skills
Michelle worked in the Global Forest Conservation Programme of IUCN for four years (2003-2007). Her diverse skills were proven with the variety of assignments she undertook from designing the first system to encourage the flow of knowledge across IUCN’s forest portfolio, proposal writing, strategic communications, policy assessment and project management. Her knowledge of community building, networks and ability to see the bigger picture were instrumental for facilitating lessons learning and scaling up innovation across our programme. Michelle is an energetic problem-solver, professional, self-motivated and excels under pressure. I would not hesitate to recommend Michelle as a leader and team player to anyone working in the field of environment and development.
Stephen Kelleher
Former Deputy Director – Forest Conservation Programme, IUCN-International Union for the Conservation of Nature
Training for all skill levels
The ‘Engaging Beyond Words’ training was highly engaging, fun and wonderfully facilitated by Michelle! I have a background in graphic design and Michelle’s training was a great refresh on simple visual techniques to help audiences understand key concepts quickly. It provided practical details on how to expand my visual communication approach. On top of the toolkit offered, during the training we collaborated on real-life engagement challenges that were informative, invaluable and inspiring. I highly recommend this training for all skill levels as there was so much to learn.
Marina Nagibina
Design CoCreate
A Strategic Mindset
Michelle brings skill, a strategic mindset and leadership to the projects she works on. Improving program evaluation and aligning to country strategy, designing stakeholder engagement, and facilitating for improved collaboration between development agencies are some of the highlights from our work together in Kyrgyzstan. I highly recommend Michelle if you are looking to add value to your team.
Dr. Dorjee Kinlay
FAO Country Representative, Kyrgyz Republic (2012-2018)
Instrumental Support
On behalf of Engineers Canada we are pulling together a session for the World Engineering Congress in Geneva Switzerland which will be held in 2011 September. The theme for our session is Climate Proofing Civil Infrastructure and builds on the work that has been ongoing within Engineer’s Canada for the past five years originating from the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee.
The World’s Engineering Convention attracts engineers from around the world. Our session at this conference is meant to raise the profile of risk assessment, as well as adaptation and mitigation strategies for civil infrastructure.
Michelle has been instrumental in helping our steering committee pull this session together. She has helped us in liaison with the organizing committee from the conference, has researched a potential list of speakers, has contacted and gained commitments from all speakers and in general has helped gather together an entire program for our session including keynote speakers and panelists well ahead of the conference timelines.
Her skills are perfectly suited to the role of secretariat and she has consistently exceeded the needs of our steering committee. She has very strong skills in problem solving and has a focus on action and results. She brings an efficient set of facilitation skills to our team and a full range of leading ideas to add interest to our session. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Michelle Laurie for a similar role. I am looking forward to the opportunity to working with Michelle again in the future.
Paul Fesko
Former Manager of Strategic Services, City of Calgary and World Engineering Convention 2011 Session Chair
Expert Advice and Support
Michelle has provided expert advice and support to assist the Columbia Basin Trust (CBT) to be a leader on challenging and innovative projects/processes for more than a dozen years. In the early 2000’s when climate change was starting to be understood by governments and the scientific community Michelle designed multi-year strategic initiatives with more than twenty local governments and communities to help these communities understand what climate change is, how it may impact local communities and what type of actions these communities should consider to be more resilient or adapt to a range of future climate scenarios. Related to international water policy, Michelle helped develop cutting edge processes to help develop the capacity of community leaders, elected officials and staff to both understand the range of issues they were facing, how these impacted their various areas of authority and what tangible actions they could take.
Michelle has worked collaboratively with CBT and others and is willing and generous in sharing her skills. She has been supportive of CBT staff and the many partners our organization works with. She demonstrated great skill and knowledge in working with a variety of partners groups (including NGO’s, local governments, provincial governments, first nations and federal governments). She creatively designed and facilitated hundreds of meetings to strategize, learn together and engage people on tough topics. Additional highlights include facilitating the kick off meeting of government, utilities and First Nations where they agreed (for the first time ever) to work on reintroducing salmon to the Columbia River, assisting CBT staff to design a new organizational department for the Trust, and assessing long standing initiatives for learning and their evolution. She brings a broad wealth of skills and experience adding value to any team. Michelle is especially skilled helping to think through very complex multi layered issues and lay out very practical and useful frameworks for addressing this complexity. If you need help solving interesting complex problems Michelle Laurie is the person for your job!
Kindy Gosal
Executive Director, Special Initiatives, Columbia Basin Trust
Learning along the way…
Reflective practice is a part of our DNA.