About

Marlena has a unique breadth of experience and functional skills rarely found in the field: this synergy and ability to connect with each stakeholder ensures her ability to facilitate excellent, highly effective communication in person or through media.

Trained in mediation by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for a Restorative Justice program, Marlena has worked in local courts and in private practice, adding practical experience as well as ongoing training. After a decade of group facilitation in often contentious circumstances and nearly 20 years of pastoral counseling, mediation was an obvious combination of skills to contribute: by enabling neighbors, families, co-workers, landlords and tenants, et al to resolve conflict in a productive, healthy, self-directed manner, Marlena could effectively bring a collaborative and healing tone to a wide range of situations and communities.

With academic honors in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Religion from one of the top programs in the country, an MSW from the top program, and a personally diverse socio-economic and ethnic background, she is unusually astute about diversity issues which arise in organizations and community. This awareness results in a particularly strong ability to draw out feedback from participants who are often marginalized and give voice to those who struggle with articulating input. Having completed substantial graduate coursework in the field of international development, Marlena engages a balanced participatory model.  Her firm attention to the communication patterns within a group, making clear the separation between content and process, equalizes typical power dynamics to attain the highest outcome.

Marlena’s professional background includes nearly every industry and functional area.  With degrees and professional certificates in project management, human resources, law, fraud examination, sustainability, education, real estate, mortgage lending, and several human services modalities, she has led project teams in everything from construction to IT implementations. As functional manager, she is highly competent across operations, including skills such as accounting and compliance, development of business channels, process analysis, strategic alignment and making labels for files.

Clearly, this applied and soft skill excellence makes Marlena a clear choice for communicating change initiatives and facilitating education during corporate culture shifts.