I am a passionate adult educator who is committed to achieving social and economic justice. My competencies in management, organizational development, and adult education are leveraged to increase the management skills and leadership abilities of those who manage and serve the public good. These competencies are manifested in my design and delivery of executive coaching and workplace learning programs (NYC Citywide Learning & Development, 200+ agencies). These same competencies are also applied to supporting social transformation by increasing the leadership and management skills of international social development actors.
My professional life has been an exhilarating journey resulting in 20 years of experience serving the needs of local communities on behalf of large municipalities and state governments in the United States. I am most often called upon to facilitate change management and strategic planning processes for organizations with budgets of 1M (US) and above (ATD – Fourth World Movement) and high-level executive leadership councils (City University of New York).
Since 2003 I have served as President and Founder of Futures Today Consulting. In 2009 we expanded into the international social development space and since then have dedicated a substantial amount of energy and focus to working with NGO’s that serve marginalized women and children in places like Lima, Peru, (Nuna Lab), Nairobi, Kenya (Kito International) and most recently El Factor, Dominican Republic. (Buena Idea). Buena Idea is my latest live on-the-ground initiative. It addresses the need for economic opportunities for women and children by training teachers and children, ages 6-12, on entrepreneurship principles.
Learning communities bring us closer together whether it is in a rural community (Campo) in Latin America or a university classroom in Asia. In 2010, I was named as a Rotary Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand where I lived for a semester and learned that I am an aggressive peacemaker.
My doctoral research at Columbia University (2009) explored how social change actors produce knowledge. The key findings inform our understanding of how the practice of facilitation, inquiry (cooperative), and power dynamics create space for individual and organizational transformation.
New York City is my home base from where, schedule permitting, I teach courses in Organizational behavior at Adelphi University’s Masters in Social Work program and Legal Issues in Higher Education in Indiana Tech’s Ph.D. Program in Global Leadership.
You can find out more about my work by visiting my personal website at luciaalcantara.com
