HELLO. HALO. G'DAY. สวัสดีค่ะ.
I'M STEPHANIE
Facilitator & Experience Designer @stepharrow
social innovation | community building | systems change | co-design | climate action | wellbeing | sustainability | inclusive entrepreneurship | web3 | future of work
About me
I’m a facilitator - I explore the art and science of designing spaces and experiences that enable us to discover our individual and collective potential. Over the last 10 years I've designed and facilitated retreats, conferences, transformative learning journeys, and entrepreneur support programs around the world.
I'm a community builder - Relationships are the core of being human. I am always building relationships and looking for opportunities to creatively connect people and resources towards solving complex challenges, shared learning and collaboration. Or just simply for the joy of seeing new and meaningful connections come alive!
I'm a catalyst - I love sparking ideas and turning concepts into reality. I channel this entrepreneurial energy as the co-founder of Impact Hub Jakarta - a community hub of purpose-driven entrepreneurs that is part of a global network of 120+ hubs around the world driving local change and cross-sector, trans-local collaborations.
I collaborate at the edges - I believe that the most interesting possibilities exist at the intersection of diverse communities [web3, innovation, sustainability, social justice, entrepreneurship] and ways of knowing [ecological, embodied, intergenerational, indigenous].
I'm human-centered and systems-oriented - my sense of belonging in the world and approach to social change acknowledges our mutual interdependence with the systems around us (including the natural world) and the role of inner development and personal transformation in shaping our external systems. I'm curious about experimenting with models of decentralised governance, relationships, and community structures that promote agency, interdependence, and ecological sustainability.
I am oriented towards joy and pleasure - in everything that I do, I belive cultivating joy needs to be at the centre of our experience. It allows me to feel alive and in connection with others, and it's from this place that we can show up more authentically to support, collaborate and solve problems together.
I'm a "third culture kid" - born in Jakarta, raised in Perth and a citizen of the UK and Australia, I have never settled on a single cultural identity. I have been shaped by the many experiences and perspectives from the different places I've called home including: Australia, Cambodia, Denmark, Indonesia, Guatemala, USA, Singapore and now Thailand. I'm always exploring how this intercultural perspective and worldview can bridge different types understanding in my work and as a global citizen.
What else? I'm a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a carer of two adopted cats, a certified yoga instructor (hatha & yin), an activist, an runner and have been practicting meditation for over 5 years. I love getting lost in nature, I never say no to negroni and you'll probably find me dancing whenever there is music playing!
Projects
A selection of projects and initiatives I've been involved in:
gatherings
A facilitation and experience design studio that reimagines the way we gather in remote teams, distributed organisations and global networks. We specialize in designing immersive experiences that build alignment, culture and community among participants to transform the way we work and harness our collective potential.
A series of intentional, evidence-based dialogues where the collective wisdom of diverse voices transforms into impactful action to re-imagine the true value of forests.
Taking place in Southeast Asia, East Africa, South America & Europe between in 2024.
Visualising the Field
An affinity map of 718 practitioners & organisations and 120 resources in systems change. This map was co-created with community curators from the bottom-up to foster connections and weave together diverse systems change disciplines, particularly in the APAC and Africa regions.
SeoulBound
SeoulBound took place in South Korea with an aim to connect wisdom and learning across East and Rest (West) with an aim to centre local perspectives in building the DAO ecosystem. It brought together 60 participants, and five tangible projects emerged that participants are continuing to develop in support of the web3 ecosystem. 30% of these participants were new to Web3 space including students, politicians, non-crypto community builders, psychologist, and artists.
Sun Sang emerged as an experiment in response to unsustainable tourism and building structures in Bali. Developed by a Balinese social entrepreneur and leading Balinese bamboo architect, they had a vision to regenerate abandoned land in Tabanan and create a different model of tourism that works deeply with local community and seeks to inspire rest, reconnection to nature and appreciation of sustainable materials.
Impact Collective
Impact Collective is a platform that is pioneering a community-driven investment model (democratized capital allocation) to support high impact ventures in Asia by harnessing the power of collective intelligence across diverse experts, thereby enhancing the diversity and quality of startups scaling in the region. IC provides a unique equity-free acceleration program and access $100-500k investment for SDG-aligned startups looking to grow their impact in Asia-Pacific.
Smarter Together is a community of practitioners who explore and apply methods of collective intelligence for stronger democracy. Their contributions to "The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence" showcase vetted methods, key principles and inspiring stories of change towards democracy and new ways of governance.
Humanizing Virtual Facilitation
2020 was a powerful opportunity to rethink facilitation - how might we distribute power, be radically inclusive, and humanize these virtual spaces like never before? This resource was created by facilitators navigating change during the pandemic and shares principles for creating safe and inclusive spaces in virtual environments. It weaves together experiences and stories and lessons learned from collaborations in different sectors and regions.
Scaling Frontier Innovation is a DFAT supported initiative that seeks to achieve impact and social change in Asia-Pacific through supporting different but interdependent parts of the social entrepreneurial ecosystem - targeting entrepreneurs, funders, entrepreneur-support organisations and the relationaships between them.
ASEAN Conference on Social Entrepreneurship
Part conference, part systems innovation challenge - 50 social enterprises and 100 public-private partners were selected across ASEAN nations to develop new partnerships and co-create collaborative projects across five key sectors in the region.
Facebook Community Accelerator
The Community Accelerator is a global initiative investing in the leaders who are building communities around the world, bringing people together, offering encouragement, and driving change.
Communities
Some of the networks and communities that I am connected to, collaborating with and learning from:
Field Notes
Reflections on work, life and everything in between:
September 3, 2024An oldie but a goodie! A throwback to the Doing Better Work Together online gathering in 2022. I...August 25, 2024🌱 What is the role of mutual aid and community care in our lives, outside of institutions? In a...Contact
Curious about what we could do together? Drop me a line so we can explore ways to collaborate!