Claudia Pineda Reyes is a Mexican, queer, and neurodivergent social artist based in Washington, U.S. She has been practicing facilitation for 15 years across a variety of settings with the thematic purpose of advancing healing and liberation. Her family immigrated from Michoacan, Mexico to Chicago, Illinois where Claudia was born and raised. She is a Master in Social Work practitioner and has been trained as a facilitator in restorative justice Community Group Conferencing, the Creative Empowerment Model, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and in leading trainings about social equity. For 8 years, as a direct service practitioner, she provided counseling services for youth and families with a focus on working with people from the global majority, including people who have immigrated to the United States. For 7 years, Claudia has been working with the local government where she is designing and managing a program that works with community organizations to influence government practices and policies.  

Summary

Claudia Pineda Reyes has a gift for working with complexity, discomfort and conflict in group process. In this podcast she shares intimately how she developed these capacities as well as a number of concrete tools and techniques that can be used by facilitators. She asks and answers the question, how do you bring the elephant in the room into the light, and what do you do with it once it is there?