Ottawa, Canada Area
Jennifer Shepherd inspires everyday leaders to gain the clarity they need to create insightful connections and make their next move. She has oodles of facilitation and collaborative change experience working with local communities, regional networks and national initiatives. She is known for asking questions that prompt us to ask more questions, draw together, and solve the complex puzzles of our time. Jennifer is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator who loves to drum and walk the world in wonder.
Talk to me about using visuals to support sense making. I co-published the book “Drawn Together Through Visual Practice”. The purpose is to show you how to establish common ground and make sense of ideas through drawing pictures. It is an anthology of contributions from visual practitioners around the world.
One of my chapters is titled “Discovering wisdom within and between: How storyboards, portraits, and visual explanations can help us learn to solve the puzzles of our time.” I write about how these kinds of drawings help leaders gain clarity in four areas (calling, connection, community, and coherence) by holding and organizing what we know, identifying what we don’t know, and drawing out ideas and concepts that help us make sense of the complex problem, the shared work to be done, and our place in it. My experience over the years has shown how powerful visual practice is to help people work across boundaries and difference and the visuals help people stay focused on their shared work and purpose.
