About Leigh

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Leigh Tillman works with groups facilitating decision-making, group processes, and trainings.

Her intention is to help people hear one another and find common ground so that groups can make realistic, tangible, innovative, and informed decisions. She supports groups in developing clear next steps and assessment criteria to ensure effective implementation.

She does this by offering:

  • Clear, efficient group processes
  • Neutral, attentive listening
  • Customized trainings and workshops
  • Documentation and appropriate follow-up to help groups see their aspirations actualized

Background

Leigh’s background of diverse experiences offers her a unique skill set and perspective in approaching facilitation work. She is a certified mediator and brings this experience to her facilitation work. She highly values the art of recognizing all the perspectives at the table and the intentional crafting by a group of their identity, decisions, and direction going forward.

After completing a degree in Anthropology and Creative Writing at Connecticut College, Leigh spent the majority of the subsequent decade in cultural contexts other than the one in which she grew up, including:

  • Studying anthropology and assisting in a Heifer Project Natural Resource Management Assessment in Tanzania
  • Studying navigation and oceanography and crewing on yachts in the South Pacific and the Sargasso Sea
  • Helping Philippine University students further their efforts to create art, dance, sports, and music classes for youth in Ilocos Norte, Philippines
  • Helping out in the tsunami relief effort in Southeast India and in the post-Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans and Violet, Louisiana
  • Working at a consensus-based Quaker summer camp
  • Working the Alaskan Salmon Season, fishing and hanging (i.e. making) fishing nets
  • Traveling throughout New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, India, Morocco, the Caribbean, and Latin America
  • Studying and teaching yoga in India, Thailand, Mexico, and Maine
  • Starting up and managing several farming projects in rural and urban Maine

These experiences and others have helped Leigh recognize the value of different perspectives, broadened her awareness of ways individuals can collaborate, and lead to her interest in meeting facilitation. They have also invested in her a deep care for our individual ability to connect with one another and our community through sharing our stories. Her background has instilled in her a cross-cultural competency that she brings to her work.

Between 2010 and 2013, Leigh was trained as a facilitator and then worked as an Associate at Good Group Decisions in Brunswick, Maine, where she offered facilitation and training services to groups throughout the Northeast. She continues to work in collaboration with Good Group Decisions as well as independently through Leigh Tillman Facilitation. See Leigh’s client list here.

Leigh has developed a series of trainings to assist groups in developing strategies for addressing dynamics that can naturally arise in the workplace. Her specialty is developing trainings and facilitating meetings in a way that caters to your team’s specific needs. Click here to learn more about Leigh’s facilitation and training options.

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Leigh currently lives in South Portland, Maine where along with her facilitation work she is a co-founder of a local chai tea company, Chai Wallahs of Maine. She loves getting out to bike, surf, and cross country ski.