Clients: Testimonials

“Laurin has brought her extensive nonprofit experience and cross cultural competencies to bear in facilitating a number of our program staff retreats. Building rapport that engenders trust, openness and expansive thinking, she keeps us mindful of how our individual stories season the challenging decisions we make in our strategic approach to health philanthropy.

Her methods are organic, sprouting from and adapting to the group. Participants are artfully led toward the goal of the meeting in a way that feels effortless and genuine.  

Staff leaves our retreat a closer group, feeling rejuvenated and invigorated, with strategies in hand to meet the year ahead.”

—Cristina M. Regalado, Vice President of Programs, The California Wellness Foundation

“The Strategic Plan, adopted by the Board of the Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project, Inc. in 2009, was the culmination of over 18 months of working with Laurin Mayeno. Throughout that time, Laurin was patient, professional, invested in our work and consistently pushed our group to new insights. As an organization, we are confident that we will reach our organizational goals because of the stability and direction provided by our Strategic Plan.  Not only are we proud of the final product, but of the process of developing the plan; Laurin was a critical component of this process.”

—Norma Dominguez, President, Board of Directors, Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project

“Our agency had attempted several times to address out effectiveness in working respectfully and effectively with families and among ourselves. Repeated efforts at one-time trainings had led to frustration and, if anything, made people more wary of talking about culture and power and their influence on our work and lives. We formed a Task Force for Cultural Responsiveness to address these issues, but soon realized that we couldn’t “do therapy on our own family.” 

We had heard of Laurin’s work from other ‘satisfied customers,’ and from the first interview, it was clear that she and her colleague had the experience, insight, commitment and organizational skills to help us traverse new territory. She listened to our concerns and hopes, and reflected back a clearer version of them. They interviewed staff members in all our programs and at various levels of hierarchy, and worked to understand stated and unstated goals and obstacles. She and her partner designed a series of workshops for the entire staff and provided leadership training for management and for task force members. In all of their work, they provided content and process instruction and listened to us.

When there were some difficulties at an initial workshop Laurin dropped everything to come to a Task Force meeting to problem solve. This was a crucial turning point, and modeled not only practices of accountability, but also a commitment to the long-term work and relationship—building required for multicultural institutional change. They earned the trust of our leadership team and of the staff, as they continued to meet with us, and to provide consultation behind the scenes. 

In staff meetings, they gathered our thoughts and feelings, organized what they heard and came back to us with ideas for action. This listening, this powerful ability to reflect and organize information, and this very practical action orientation provided just what we needed to get “un-stuck’ in our work around power and culture. And of course, getting unstuck in these conversations, and making policy to allow for more accountability to the families we serve and to ourselves, have enriched us as an agency. We have more tools to deal with those issues that too often are left out of dominant discourse, and more energy to treat each other well. The CVC continues to work to live up to its values, and is on course due to the foundation that Laurin’s skills and vision brought.  We cannot thank her enough!”

—Lisa Berndt, Task Force for Cultural Responsiveness and Accountability, Center for the Vulnerable Child, Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland

"Laurin Mayeno led and facilitated a communications workshop with La Peña staff with deep sensitivity, respect, and attention to details particular to our organization. The questions posed and exercises and conversations we engaged in were to the point and expanded our understanding of what communication is.  All of us learned from the workshop, and we left with a deep commitment to putting into practice the lessons learned. We would, without hesitation, recommend Laurin Mayeno to others who seek to improve their inter-personal and/or organization's communication skills."

—Nadine Ghammache, Director of Individual and Community Giving, La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley

"Laurin's candid, creative, and deeply informed consulting approach has been instrumental in CompassPoint's work to become more fully multicultural. Our partnership with her has resulted in meaningful improvements to how we work together as a staff as well as to how we serve the nonprofit community.  She helped our team look into diverse ways of defining leadership as we developed a program for next generation leaders of color. She worked with us to create a space for collaborative and self-reflective learning about one's own leadership framework and its relationship to working within teams, organizations, networks, fields and the broader social system. She establishes an authentic place for learning and making our values visible."

—Jeanne Bell, CEO, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services

“Laurin has contributed much to the well-being of the Alameda Health Consortium in our quest to strengthen our effectiveness as a team and improve communication among staff members.We hired Laurin to lead us through the challenging work of addressing issues of race, power and hierarchy in our organization. Laurin developed the workshop materials and facilitated the staff retreats. She exercised sound judgment, patience, integrity and respect. We are grateful to Laurin for providing us with the skills and structure so that we can continue this ongoing process on our own.”

—Lois Bailey Lindsey, Alameda Health Consortium

"Laurin worked with us at United Advocates for Children of California during the start-up phase of the Statewide Family Network National Technical Assistance Program. She built our staff capacity in organizational and program development to support 43 Statewide Family Networks in developing their leadership and organizations. Laurin worked with us to ensure that our technical assistance and training was competent in multiculturalism, strategic planning, and logic model mapping. UACC-TAC has demonstrated a forward progress and leadership at the local, statewide and national levels due to Laurin's multicultural values and vision, partnership skills, and commitment to a community-based strategic planning process."

—Gayle Wiler, United Advocates for Children, Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator, SFN-Technical Assistance Center

“The W.K. Kellogg Foundation hired Laurin Mayeno to facilitate a one-day forum for 30 health and healthcare professionals who are highly invested and immersed in helping to improve the health of Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI). With her polished facilitation skills and attention to detail, Ms. Mayeno guided this collection of champions and thought leaders in a highly interactive discussion to brainstorm, highlight, and hone in on critical issues and opportunities related to AAPI health. She fostered rich dialogue in small and large group discussions to effectively advance a highly ambitious agenda and help us arrive at our meeting goals. Her personal experiences in AAPI and community health were additional benefits that contributed to the depth of conversations she was able to draw from meeting participants. The learning and knowledge derived from this pivotal convening have greatly informed the Foundation’s program development work to improve the health of vulnerable AAPI populations. We are very pleased with the outcomes from this meeting and appreciate the highly valued and skilled facilitation provided by Ms. Mayeno.”

—Albert K. Yee, MD, MPH, Program Director, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

"Alameda County's Environmental Health and Public Health Departments completed a process for developing a joint environmental justice policy. It was necessary for our two, independently managed organizations to collaborate with one another, and also to engage a wide range of community members, nonprofit groups and industry representatives. At first our task seemed overwhelming, but with Laurin's guidance, we succeeded. Laurin was instrumental to our completing this process. She helped identify the tough issues to be addressed and the key questions to be answered. Laurin also assisted us to identify effective processes for developing and adopting our policy as well as appropriate venues for our meetings. She was also a skilled, perceptive facilitator. We got the sense from Laurin that our success in developing our EJ policy was as important to her as it was to us."

—Pamela J. Evans, Toxics and Pollution Prevention Coordinator, Alameda County Environmental Health Services

“Laurin is simply an amazing person to have worked with our immigrant leaders fellowship program. Laurin provided consultative, facilitation and training services. She designed and developed the health curriculum that was integrated into the fellowship program. Laurin teamed with the fellowship staff and consultant Francisco Herrera who provided a cultural component for the program.Laurin was viewed as a role model for the fellows and a mentor for the staff. She brings vast knowledge and experience collaborating with ethnically diverse communities. Her skills are unique and very valuable to groups working with grassroots communities. She will challenge organizations to do the best job possible for their constituents. She is passionate and dedicated to her work, reliable and organized. I highly recommend Laurin to organizations that are looking for guidance and direction.”

—Noe Paramo, Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship, Immigrant Leaders Fellowship Program

“Laurin facilitated our Steering Committee retreat to assist the Collaborative in a process of priority setting and to work on a theory of change for the organization. Laurin was delightful to work with prior to the event; she asked just the right questions, had many insightful comments, and was prepared for the retreat. The event was smooth, thought provoking and very productive. She moved us to a new level organizationally. Although several members were reluctant to discuss the same issues yet again, everyone felt that the time spent was productive, worthwhile, and fun. We are hoping to hire her again for another piece of work as an out growth of the retreat.”

—Sandi Goldstein, MPH, Director, Adolescent Health Collaborative

“Ms. Mayeno guided our team through a series of structured discussions that helped discipline our thinking around health disparities. The subject of healthcare disparities is ripe for a number of diverse perspectives and different approaches for problem solving. Laurin's facilitation was flexible enough for us to explore individual values, and also appropriately engaging to enable us to make progress to define objectives and goals. She explored our core assumptions with us and helped us to move to a work plan, so that everyone could feel that we were making concrete progress. In addition, she patiently waded through our descriptions of a fairly complicated organizational structure, and struggled with us as a partner to understand the distinct challenges and contributions facing our company. Laurin kept us on task, and provided us with meeting-to-meeting support and progression to a work plan that wove in our aspirations and our charge to get something done.”

—Winston F. Wong, MD, MS, Medical Director, Community Benefit Disparities Improvement and Quality Initiatives, Kaiser Permanente, National Program Office