Testimonials
“Wow, how to start. After four days of ‘Focus’ I am completely saturated with ideas and inspiration! Imagine 200 people coming together to explore their focus and to take initiative.”
– Pieter Ploeg (Co-Organiser, International Youth Initiative Program [YIP], Sweden) on ‘Focus’ International Initiative Forum, Switzerland, 2010.
“The fine attention to detail that occurred at ‘Focus’ fed me on multiple levels and I think that has also made a huge impact on me (and my peers). At ‘Focus’ there was care for the details of logistics, care for the beauty of the spaces we worked in. And the dialogue and group conversation that was possible hinged on the acute attention paid to the vision of the whole process.”
– Meaghan Witiri (Co-Founder, Think OutWord) on ‘Focus’ International Initiative Forum, Switzerland, 2010.
“Katie Dobb has helped organizing manifold conferences and meetings. Katie Dobb is a socially gifted and capable person, who can work together with people from different backgrounds and is able to guide a problem solving process.”
– Paul Mackay (Co-Founder, Triodos Bank – Winner of the 2009 Financial Times ‘Sustainable Bank of the Year’ Award).
“After having worked with John Stubley developing a national conference/event and observing him in subsequent years in other key roles I can recommend him, without reservation, to any organisation that seeks the services offered by this brilliant young man. John is a creative thinker, able to engage quickly with the essential, motivating ideas in any context and develop them with enthusiasm and precision, always with a strong sense of the wholeness of a group. He has humour and warmth, shows enormous tact, and is someone who holds the trust of all members of a group. People trust John because he works with complete integrity for the greater good and without personal egotism.
He is able to carry a big vision as well as attend to the smallest details of its realisation. John has a prodigious capacity for work and is highly competent in a wide range of organisational tasks: leadership and vision, coordination, marketing, communications, mentoring. In particular, his spoken and written works are inspired and inspiring. They evoke a deep and committed response from people in different spheres of life because John is able to articulate what is universally human.”
– Jennifer Kornberger (Co-Founder, Creativity Consultants Worldwide; award-winning and published poet; adult educator).
“I have known Katie Dobb and worked with her on a personal and professional level since 2008 on various projects and initiatives. Katie is a dynamic and experienced leader, mentor, teacher and facilitator, always exploring innovative ways of working socially with others. An active listener, she is able to reach diverse individuals and working groups with a depth, attentiveness and authenticity that not many have. A creative-minded do-er, she works well both in a team and on her own, easily accomplishing and exceeding all expectations, while pushing the boundaries and constantly creating the new.”
– Ani Hanelius (Co-Founder, International Youth Initiative Program [YIP], Sweden).
“I have had the privilege to work together with Katie Dobb since 2009 on various social projects and have always experienced her as being a very capable and committed woman. She has great observation capacities and has a lot of insight in social and individual processes. This clearly is reflected in the way she works – always with a lot of attention and awareness for the people and the process. Katie has also taken on a role of mentoring for me and I have found in her a great listening quality and a lot of warmth and integrity. Katie has the ability of keeping a holistic overview and bigger picture and simultaneously being able to focus on specific parts. She has an understanding of social movement and breathing, and is not afraid of acting upon her intuition and insights in healthy and unhealthy (social) processes. Katie deeply understands the creative process and is an active contributor towards shaping a new, holistic and truly sustainable social and cultural life.”
– Melanie Lauwaert (Co-Founder, I-Sculpture Individual Learning Journey Program).
“John Stubley is one of the rare artists in the sphere of social process: someone who understands the social life as an encompassing artwork in need of continuous innovation. He is a thinker whose worldwide vision translates seamlessly into local action and a writer whose concerns are party to a global future. Above all John has a unique gift to design processes that improve human interaction and to facilitate constructive change.”
– Horst Kornberger (Founder, School of Integral Art; Co-Founder, Creativity Consultants Worldwide; published author; adult educator).
“I have had the great pleasure of working with Katie in designing, setting up and running an international conference in the US. In all our interactions both in preparation and at the event Katie was conscientious, professional, reliable, bright and creative. She has considerable intelligence and personal presence, is calm, cheerful, warm and assertive, and resilient when she needs to be.”
– Marjatta van Boeschoten (Director, Phoenix Consultancy).
“Katie has been a colleague and good friend for four years – I worked directly alongside her for three of those years. She brings so many valuable skills to the table: innovative ideas and initiatives, practical and emotional support, facilitation, research, ideation, mentorship…. the list goes on.
I learnt so much from her, and value her leadership, her sharing and teaching, as well as her colleagueship and friendship. Now that I am not directly working with Katie I recognise and appreciate her skills even more. She is someone who holds the perspective, the vision and the possibility, and at the same time is able to practically facilitate and contribute in constructive and clearly helpful ways. It is work that creates so much value and warmth that I really notice and miss her work even more when she is not around. Katie is the person who moves a task from good to brilliant, from normal to exceptional. She is the person who will take the project that extra mile to give it that sparkling extra touch.”
– Silvia Zuur (Leading New Zealand Change Maker and Social Innovator).
“I have worked for several years with John Stubley and Katie Dobb in the international youth-movement: Youthsection in Switzerland. In this time we achieved a lot on many different levels: Organizing international meetings, traveling around the world to participate in conferences, working with themes within the team of the Youthsection, to mention some.
Their commitment, their enthusiasm, their knowledge, their artistic approach, their will to take responsibility and their warmth brought our work many steps further and involved many hundreds of young people from all over the world.”
– Elizabeth Wirsching (Ex-Section Leader, Hochschule am Goetheanum, Switzerland; Social Innovator Oslo, Norway).
“Over the past years I have gotten to know Katie Dobb as someone who inquires thoroughly into any social system she is part of and can recognize the ‘acupuncture’ points that can be levered towards healing and transformation. In the work that we have done together she has shown a deep sense of social cohesion and inclusion. She understands any social situation quickly and also knows what she needs to reach a next level of understanding. Her gifts are expressed in the way she facilitates and hosts spaces of transformation for individuals, smaller and larger groups and organizations. She is an excellent and gifted facilitator and at the same time entrepreneurial and a life-long learner. She acts from an understanding of living systems and an interconnected worldview and is very good at what I call ‘backstage networking’, connecting people that in the future will collaborate. She sees potential and knows which small steps can be taken for that potential to manifest itself.”
– Pieter Ploeg (Co-Organiser, International Youth Initiative Program [YIP], Sweden).
More testimonials will be appearing soon.