Supporting leaders, organizations and collaboratives to succeed at complex social change.

Are you addressing complex issues with multiple root causes amongst a range of diverse stakeholder groups?

Are you considering changes that will have significant implications for your staff, clients, customers, or members?

Do you want to deepen and expand your adaptive, system leadership competencies?

Services

Leadership Development

Complexity requires adaptive leaders, skilled at different styles of leadership to address different contexts, as well as lateral and systems thinking.

Visioning, Strategy and Operations

Successful organizations and multi-stakeholder initiatives identify, optimize and amplify strengths, while actively learning and innovating on weaknesses and transforming threats into opportunities to achieve their aspirations and results.

Change and Adaptation

Understanding the implications of change across all four frames of organizational life — structural, human resources, political and symbolic — supports success. Fostering a culture of ongoing adaptation unleashes individual and collective growth and resilience.

Engagement

How diverse, relevant stakeholders — from staff, customers, members, clients, partners, funders, different sectors (e.g. corporate, non-profit, faith-based), media, the public — are effectively identified and engaged is a major factor for success in complex social change.

Advocacy

Establishing credible, trusted relationships with key stakeholders, strategic sequencing of tactics, cross-sectoral mobilization on evidence-based policy change through the application of long-term approaches like Collective Impact — all of these are crucial to successfully transform complex problems.

Backbone Support

A Collective Impact-inspired concept, backbone support provides ongoing facilitation, operationalization, communications, and advocacy support for multi-stakeholder initiatives aiming to change complex problems.

Knowledge Mobilization

Influencing key decision-makers to act on the evidence-base required for change is the core of knowledge mobilization. Communications, educational fora, media, social media, stakeholder engagement strategies, and more can all come into play.

Testimonial

Angie Heydon

"As the head of an association that worked closely with the Association of Ontario Health Centres, I had many opportunities to work with Leah on our shared issues and projects. Leah is highly committed to, and skilled in, building partnerships and collaboration to improve life, health and wellness for communities, in particular, for more vulnerable populations. She is an effective listener and communicator, smart and open-minded. She is a strategic thinker and is highly effective in coordinating groups to develop and implement plans. Leah is a pleasure to work with."

Testimonial

Nikhat Rasheed

"I had the distinct pleasure of working with Leah in the development of the Diversity and Inclusion Charter of Peel, the first regional initiative of its kind in Canada. Leah is a fabulous person to work with. She's an excellent listener, able to get people to work together, manage complex processes and competing priorities. She's dedicated, motivated and accountable, ensuring the perspectives of all stakeholders are honoured. I recommend her highly!"

Testimonial

Taryn Ridsdale

"Leah is a strategic thinker with the ability to simultaneously think through system and organization level impacts of change. The enthusiasm, passion and drive that Leah brings to every project is admirable. All of the work that Leah does is grounded in extensive research and an unwavering commitment to equity."

Testimonial

G. M.

"Leah is without a doubt the best director I ever had the privilege to serve under through the course of my working life. She is a leader in the fullest sense of the word, in terms of holding on to the Big Picture at the same time as bringing the best out in everyone around her. I would highly recommend her for any work related to leadership development and coaching, strategic thinking and planning, collective impact and policy development work."

Testimonial

David Jeffery

"Leah carries a high level vision for where the organization needs to go and couples that with a warm and collegial demeanor that simply invites participation. Working with Leah is a pleasure and rewarding."

Leah Marie Migriño Stephenson has cultivated her consulting expertise to improve how we address complexity through individual transformation, organizational change and systems change. She is passionate about social change. Her experiences as a daughter and caregiver for her late mother motivate Leah. Her late mother was a physician who overcame poverty, war, gender discrimination and other systemic and personal obstacles, who struggled against meningioma and recurrent endometrial cancer, all while remaining focused on ending the suffering of others. As a strategist and lateral thinker who has developed expertise in how to better address the many intractable, complex, multi-sectoral issues we face, Leah helps identify and establish effective approaches for individual, organizational and collaborative action to help achieve needed outcomes. A wide range of frameworks and tools support this work, including but not limited to: Four Frames, Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry, Collective Impact, Liberating Structures and more.

Informed and inspired by many years of art and yoga practice, Leah brings over a decade of executive-level work experience in national and international treatment access systems change, led by people with lived experiences. Plus she has over five years of executive-level work experience in the Ontario health system, focused on policy change to meet the needs of community health organizations and marginalized communities. She has successfully consulted for non-profits, for-profits and international agencies on a part- or full-time basis since 2001. She is a long-time volunteer and President of Livelihood Infrastructure Food Education For Health (L.I.F.E. For Health), where she is co-leading a sustainable and scalable community development social enterprise supporting rural communities in Bohol, Philippines, where her late mother was born. Leah has an Honours Bachelor of Arts in English and French Language and Literature (University of Western Ontario) and a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies (Universidad para la Paz).

As a consultant, she has designed and implemented processes to achieve significant outcomes on complex topics, such as the development and launch of Canada’s first Diversity and Inclusion Charter in Peel, co-led by Regional Diversity Roundtable and Peel Newcomer Strategy Group. For this project, Leah facilitated a multi-sectoral Committee of Diversity and Inclusion Champions to guide the project, designing and implementing a multi-sectoral consultation process with over 250 stakeholders including residents, private, public and non-profit sectors in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. She researched, wrote and finalized the Diversity and Inclusion Charter of Peel and supporting Guidelines, using a participatory approach to optimize engagement and launched the Charter at a 150-person public event with endorsements by major Peel institutions in April 2013. The Charter continues to be rolled out in Peel. Find out more here: dicharter.rdrpeel.org Opens in new window

Some of Leah’s past and current clients include: