Strength of Connection’s Mission
To facilitate the quality of connection within ourselves and between people that creates respect, trust and a world where the needs of all people matter.
Strengthen Your Enjoyment of Life
Looking to develop a way to engage with conflict within your organization or neighborhood? Are you trying to get past the gridlock and make a decision? Do you want practice with effective, respectful, authentic communication? From retreat facilitation to bridging the gap between polarized groups, Kathleen offers an array of services tailored to specific communities and situations. Kathleen’s services include:
- Collaborative Community Building support
- Neighborhood Disaster Preparation
- Conflict Response and Prevention
- Feedback: Reflection and Learning
- Shared Power and Equity
- Staff Training for Effective Communication in the Workplace
- Leadership Support
- Workshops on a wide variety of topics ranging from conflict transformation, authentic dialog, respectful communication, effective meetings, social change, parenting, mediation, and more.
- Educational experiences
- Keynote speeches
- Mediation/Reconciliation
- Retreat and/or meeting facilitation
- Training the Trainer Programs: Trainer Candidate Community Program
- E-learning programs: webinars, telesummits, etc.
- Workshops on navigating Life Transitions with my colleague Mary Mackenzie.
About Kathleen Macferran
Certified Trainer and Assessor for the Center for Nonviolent Communication
Owner Strength of Connection in Seattle, WA
MMus in Conducting, Western Washington University; BA, Whitworth University
Kathleen holds a vision for a peaceful, just and sustainable world. She is committed to co-creating a world where peace replaces violence, love replaces hate, equity replaces inequity, and all people live meaningful lives. She has worked as a Certified Trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) since 2003, and as a CNVC Assessor since 2010 when she co-created a community-based path to certification. Community system building and conflict transformation are passions of hers.
Kathleen has worked internationally with individuals, community groups, businesses, schools, colleges, faith-based communities, hospitals, families, prison inmates, and correctional and law enforcement employees. She serves as a trainer for the Freedom Project of Seattle, WA, an organization that supports healing connection and restorative communities both inside and outside prison through the strategies of Nonviolent Communication, mindfulness, racial equity and anti-oppression.
Kathleen offers trainings, facilitation, system building and mediation using practical skills that lead to reconciliation with ourselves, our loved ones and our communities. For over 30 years Kathleen has explored ways to restore harmony to communities including two decades as a music conductor and leader of a nonprofit organization, and seven years as a public school teacher.
Kathleen is co-author with Jared Finkelstein of Choice: A Field Guide for Navigating the Polarization of Our World and Living Interdependently. She is the author of the children’s books How Giraffes Found Their Hearts and How Giraffes Got Their Ears, and conductor for Giraffe Tales a children’s CD setting those stories to music. Kathleen is the conductor on multiple Rainier Chamber Winds classical music recordings. Explore this website for helpful videos and other resources.
More information on these pages:
- Clientele
- Nonviolent Communication Videos
- Freedom Project
- Workshop Possibilities
- Contact Kathleen about being a part of an event that you are planning
Kathleen Macferran
Strength of Connection
PO Box 10009
Bainbridge Is., WA 98110-0009