Who We Are
Our team has broken bread with members of the African Union and struggled side-by-side with scrappy nonprofit organizations in Cape Town, Chicago, Montreal, Medellín, and Amsterdam. We’ve humbly witnessed B Corps in the UK and rural Wisconsin, never ceasing to be touched by glimmers of possibility alive within the most trying conditions.
We are organizational development experts, wellbeing scholars, university educators, nonprofit executives, small business owners, accompanied learners, and everyday dreamers. We’ve led and loved organizations of nearly every size, geography, and mission imaginable, always quietly yearning for organizations to be where we go to be well.
Our relationships run deep, many across decades and continents. Together, we’ve started organizations, hosted convenings, managed programs, published articles, and traveled to remote villages and large cities in search of organizations that could teach us the art of relational learning and collective wellbeing. And together, we hold infinite capacity to nurture, and to be nurtured by, the organizations we will meet along the way.
Core Team
Timothy Hartley
Co-Founder | Director of Org School - Scotland
Borders, Scotland
LinkedIn
Why do you care to be at Org School?
To me, being at Org School feels like a beginning of something and an ending at the same time. It represents the end of my search to belong somewhere professionally. Meanwhile, it feels like the beginning of where I will be learning and practicing for the rest of my life.
What is Org School revealing to you about your gifts?
I already felt somewhat familiar with what my gifts are, but I am much less familiar expressing them in a working environment that feels - and that is – such a psychologically safe space. I’m learning what it feels like for my gifts to be truly welcomed and celebrated by others.
Ncedisa Nkonyeni
Co-Founder | Director of Org School - South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa
LinkedIn
Why do you care to be at Org School?
I believe that we can create organisations that encourage us to step into our higher selves rather than trade on our individual gifts.
What is Org School revealing to you about your gifts?
To really engage with my gifts requires a humility that your traditional work space denies.
Ren Nilsson
Co-Founder | Director of Organizational Learning
Vermont, United States
LinkedIn
Why do you care to be at Org School?
To share what my teachers have taught me. My teachers were a small group of strange and humble organizations, scattered around the world, who committed themselves to another way of being, long before they really understood what they were being called toward. They practiced radical curiosity while confronting the world’s most painful challenges. They practiced wonder. They practiced love. To me they were, and are, an invitation. I’m here to pass that invitation on.
What is Org School revealing to you about your gifts?
I don’t know. The farther I travel with Org School, the more mysterious things seem to become, including myself! I suppose Org School is helping knit together in me the place where thought, song, and reckless kindness (thanks, John Nkum!) meet. My gifts must be somewhere in those wetlands.
Rebecca Paradiso de Sayu
Co-Founder | Director of Org School - United States
Wisconsin, United States
LinkedIn
Why do you care to be at Org School?
One of my deepest longings is for truth. I experience truth as a gentle reminder that we are more than what we can see. We are infinite, and we are delightfully small. At Org School, I am invited to notice a fuller, clearer, more beautiful portrait of how truth resides in all of us.
What is Org School revealing to you about your gifts?
I’m learning that when I am present, I radiate compassion, possibility, and love. Through presence, I can access subtle mysteries that live below the surface of my day-to-day experience. From that grounded place, my qualities of being are healing in ways that others can feel. I can feel them too.