What might be possible if community and organization members were fully engaged and using their strengths to collectively achieve shared visions?

This is the question that motivates Cheri Torres and has her focused on collaboration. Given current global challenges, Cheri uses strengths-based organizational design practices to help clients respond effectively to increasing levels of complexity in their environments and growing demand for innovation and change. Her strategy is to expand collaborative capacity in communities and organizations using Appreciative Inquiry, Sociotechnical Systems Design, and Experiential Learning.  She does this by partnering with her clients to intentionally design workplace environments, multi-stakeholder conversations, organizational systems and individual and team training to maximize value for all stakeholders.

Her experience has taught her that systems and events that are intentionally designed for collaboration elicit our inherent collaborative capacity, regardless of our differences in background, views, or values. Expanding that capacity through lessons and intentional practice leads to increasing competence in thinking and working together with joy and creativity, resulting in sustainable innovation and ever-evolving excellence.

Cheri believes people are capable of extraordinary contributions when given the opportunity; consequently, she works with organization and community leadership to design for full engagement, and she provides strategies for people to expand their capacity to take advantage of new opportunities.  Her training and coaching programs are uniquely designed for immediate and long-term impact, focusing on changing workplace practices rather than people.

Cheri has worked in education, healthcare, manufacturing, service industries, government, military, and community services thoughout the United States as well as in Mexico, Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain. She has trained thousands in the practice of Appreciative Inquiry and Experiential Learning and she has authored or co-authored numerous articles and books, including Dynamic Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry in Daily Living, The Appreciative Facilitator, and From Conflict to Collaboration. In 1996 she co-designed a patented, award winning, innovative portable challenge course training using Appreciative Inquiry, which is used in hundreds of schools, community youth programs, military training programs, and corporations around the world.

Cheri holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with a specialization in Collaborative Learning from the University of Tennessee. She also holds an MBA, a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology, Level II certification in Spiral Dynamics Integral, and training in the Sociotechnical Systems Design Process.

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Specialties:

• Appreciative Inquiry
• Appreciative Process
• Collaborative Decision Making
• Communication
• Conflict Resolution
• Leadership
• Learning Styles
• Management Development
• Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
  
• Service Learning
• Team Building