Becoming a Strategic Facilitator

When my 30-year career paused mid-certification, facilitation gave me a new language, a new path, and a deeper way to lead.

I like to tell people that facilitation found me long before I had the word for it. I graduated from law school at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas in 1989 and, almost immediately, joined the Attorney General’s Office. I was young—early twenties—and suddenly sitting in rooms where large-scale restructuring was underway. Venezuela was opening conversations about human rights, environmental rights, and a new way of doing justice that wasn’t only about prosecuting, but also advocating. Those rooms got my attention.

What captivated me first wasn’t just the content; it was the process. The facilitators who guided us came from the Venezuelan oil industry, which, at that time, was the most internationally trained sector in the country. They brought methods they had learned overseas—logical, structured, human. In one session, someone introduced a fishbone diagram. It might sound funny, but that simple diagram changed something in me. I could see cause and effect, the root and the branches, clearly organized on a wall. It made sense immediately.

I raised my hand. I was the youngest in the room—twenty-two or twenty-three—and I stood up in front of my seniors and some of my former law professors and walked them through the fishbone. Honestly, it felt wild at the time. It also felt natural. Synthesizing came easy. Standing in front of people, listening, organizing, and then presenting back—I didn’t have to overthink it. It was the first time I thought, I want to do more of this.

From there, a thread emerged. Whenever the office needed someone to make sense of a complex issue or rally people around a plan, I’d jump in. Team builders, strategic sessions—anything where aligning people mattered. I started to see facilitation not as “running a meeting,” but as managing a process and enabling trust. That framing stuck with me as I changed jobs, moved countries, and built a career.

In 1995 I came to the U.S. for a Master’s in Public Policy at Georgetown, and after graduating in 1997,  I entered international development. For nearly three decades I worked across more than twenty countries, especially in governance: decentralization and local government at first—municipalities and citizens—then transparency and anti-corruption, and later citizen security and justice. I was the guy people sent into complex situations to calm the noise, build trust with stakeholders, and move teams toward results. It worked because I listened, synthesized, and created a structure people could recognize themselves in. Whether or not I called it facilitation, that was the work.

Curiosity Reignited in the Desert

Years later, I found myself in Jordan to help start up a new program. I realized we needed a workshop to align our partners, the client,  and the team. No one asked me to facilitate, but I drafted the agenda, clarified the outcomes, and ran it—English with Arabic translation. When we finished, people were energized. They had clarity. It felt like a confirmation. Facilitation wasn’t something I did occasionally; it was a way I worked.

Back home I kept thinking about how I’d been postponing formal training. I had logic frameworks, theory-of-change models, cause-and-effect trees—tools I’d picked up across the years—but I wanted a deeper foundation and a community of practice. I started asking around. Andrés Márquez, a professional facilitator  who does a lot of international work, suggested a few options and mentioned Voltage Control.

What I saw on the Voltage Control site resonated: a participatory approach, a clear methodology, a practical toolkit I could apply immediately. The arc of the program felt right for someone like me who was working full-time and needed something both rigorous and manageable. I didn’t need theory alone; I needed tools I could touch and use. The more I read, the more I felt, this is it.

What I couldn’t anticipate was the timing. On a Friday at 1 PM, in one of our certification sessions, we learned that USAID, my main client, would be eliminated. The following week, layoff emails started landing. Everything got loud. In a matter of days, the career I had invested three decades in—designing, negotiating, and steering complex programs around the world—suddenly paused. And there I was, in this facilitation training, trying to make sense of it all.

Choosing My Next Room

In that moment, the decision to commit to Voltage Control wasn’t hard. I knew I needed to pivot, and I knew I wanted facilitation to be part of what came next. Originally, I imagined becoming the go-to facilitator inside my firm. We had always outsourced facilitation for work plans, team building, and strategic sessions, and I wanted to build that capacity in-house. Then the layoff happened, and the context shifted. The commitment didn’t.

What drew me in specifically was the structure and the ethos. Three months felt doable with my schedule, and the program promised practice, not just concepts. The principles matched how I’d led for years—lead by influence, not authority; build trust; be intentional about inclusion. And the materials—the canvases, methods, and ways to open and close a session—were things I could see myself applying immediately.

I also wanted to be part of a community. I’ve spent years in rooms where the stakes are high and power dynamics complex. Doing that work without peers can be lonely. Seeing the cohort design of the program and the emphasis on psychological safety stood out. I didn’t want a certification that lived in a PDF. I wanted a practice with people who cared about the craft.

The Room That Held Me

Something beautiful happened in our cohort. From the first sessions, there was a sense of closeness, even though we hadn’t met in person. People showed up honestly. They offered help without being asked. When someone hit a block on their portfolio, a few of us would jump on a call to think it through. By the time we closed, the emotion in the room felt real. We had become a community.

The tools were great, but the way we were taught to use them mattered more. How to open a session in a way that sets purpose and tone. How to hold space in the messy middle. How to close with clarity so people leave knowing what’s next. Techniques for dealing with difficult conversations—surfacing tension, reflecting it back, and transforming it into shared understanding. I’ve always seen myself as a strategic facilitator more than a “one-meeting” facilitator, and these moves translated across programs, organizations, and crisis contexts.

My biggest aha wasn’t a single technique, though the book Leading with Purpose hit me hard—especially the idea that when you limit, you create freedom. My aha was more personal. The certification was happening right when my professional world was shifting under my feet. The portfolio work forced me to ask, Who am I as a facilitator? What am I here to do? I realized I’m not just interested in running workshops; I want to design and facilitate processes—public consultations, multi-stakeholder dialogues, complex governance conversations—where the work itself is how people build new futures together.

The Strategic Moves I Now Make

If I think about what changed most for me post-certification, it’s my awareness. I’ve always led by influence. I’ve always believed in listening actively and making sure people feel seen and heard. The program gave me more precise ways to do those things and to explain them to others. Now, when I lead meetings, I go in with a sharper purpose, I design for inclusion, and I close with well-defined next steps. People leave knowing what we decided, why it matters, and how we’ll move.

It also reframed what I’ve been doing all these years as facilitation. In international development, I often ran into fires. A new program was spinning. A client was frustrated. The team wasn’t aligned. Time and again, I’d slow things down and move the conversation from “deliverables” to “understanding.” One story that I always share is about a school-based violence prevention program in Central America. The client wanted an education project; we were approaching it as citizen security. We were talking past each other. Instead of defending our plan, I wrote a concept note and used it as a neutral artifact to anchor the dialogue. I brought in an education expert alongside a security expert so we could speak the same language. Then we facilitated a negotiation workshop—client and team in the room—where we clarified objectives, activities, and indicators together. It changed the trajectory of that program. That move—step back, listen, co-define the frame, and then co-design the work—is pure facilitation.

Another shift is about enjoyment. Leading meetings used to be something I did because it was needed. Now, I genuinely enjoy it. There’s satisfaction in watching a room turn from fragmented to focused, from guarded to collaborative. My metric isn’t just, Did we decide? It’s, Did people feel empowered to shape the decision? That’s the bar I bring into my work now, whether I’m consulting, supporting a nonprofit board, or advising on strategy.

Designing the Space Between Power and People

Looking ahead, I’m clear about the space where I want to practice: the space between institutions and communities. Multilateral banks, private sector firms in energy or extractives, public agencies—these actors often enter communities with infrastructure or reform plans. If the process is top-down, resistance rises, and the project suffers. If the process is participatory—if communities are heard early and often, if trade-offs are transparent, if there’s shared ownership—then the project can become a platform for trust-building rather than conflict. That’s facilitation. It’s also governance.

I’m actively exploring work that centers public consultation and complex stakeholder dialogue in multilateral banks and corporations, .., In my strategic plan, I can see exactly how the tools and methods from the certification would help these institutions design better consultation processes—agenda design that capture multiple agendas, openers that invite voice, frames that create shared language, decision-making structures that are fair and clear, closures that convert engagement into agreed next steps, and results that are widely disseminated to ensure ownership from participants.

Alongside that, I’m leaning into social impact and philanthropy work with nonprofits and foundations. I sit on the board of an anti-human trafficking organization here in Florida. . My consultant brain wants to rush to solutions, but my facilitator brain says bring people together. Design the process. Help them define specific solutions  and how they’ll measure progress. Then co-create the path. That’s what I’ll be doing with them—using facilitation to support growth of  the organization from the inside out.

I’m also leaving space for something I couldn’t have imagined six months ago: building something of my own. When the layoff news landed during our Friday session, it was painful. It was also clarifying. The constant across my career wasn’t a job description or a contract vehicle. It was a way of working—strategic facilitation—that fits who I am. Whether I’m supporting a government ministry, a multilateral, a foundation, or a neighborhood coalition, that’s the craft I’m bringing forward.

If you’re considering certification, here’s my honest take: do it. Not because you want to stand in front of a room with sticky notes—though you might—but because facilitation is a leadership language. It teaches you to listen deeply, align people around shared understanding, and move groups toward decisions they own. It helped me reframe thirty years of experience and gave me tools I can apply everywhere—from a tense client meeting to a nonprofit board retreat to a multi-stakeholder consultation on a new public policy. Read the materials. Practice the methods immediately. The more you use them, the more natural they become.

And if your career is in flux or you’re navigating a big pivot, you’re not alone. I lost the path I’d been walking right in the middle of the program, on a Friday at 1 PM. The cohort held me and the craft pointed me forward. Facilitation gave me words for what I’ve always done and courage for what’s next. If something in this story resonates, take the step. Join a cohort. Bring your questions and your voice. There’s room for you in this work, and we need you.