FNM Advising
My Approach
Systems Level Change
To achieve sustainable, long-term, sustainable change that brings us a step closer to liberation, we have to work at multiple levels at once. Without working at all these levels, the system will work hard to maintain the status quo and undo all our work.
As such, my approach and the services I offer reflect my systems-level approach - providing offerings and consulting services for individuals, teams, organizations and to support a broader advocacy agenda.
Society
Sector / Industry
Community
Systems
Change
Organization
Family
Team
Individual
Sliding Scale Pricing
Aligned with the values of my work, I offer sliding scale pricing for all my services. Please contact me to learn more.
Follow me on LinkedIn to learn more
Offerings
Workshops
Customized and group workshops and learning journeys the leverages the way we learn: through stories and our collective wisdom in the room
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Coaching(-ish)
Supporting leaders authentically lead through 1:1 support and cohort circles especially for movement leaders
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Consulting
Supporting organizations and teams through customized advisory services to re-imagine work and our organizations.
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Consulting Services
Organizational Development
Supporting organizations align liberatory strategy with liberatory structures, including supporting hybrid organizations (501c3/501c4/PAC structures), deploying radical approaches for movement organizations, aligning values to structures, and the future of work
Strategy + Facilitation
Supporting organizations use participatory methods to set a collective strategy, Facilitating strategy retreats to support organizations to explore and self-define priorities; and team building retreats to empower your team to implement strategy.
JEDI+
Supporting organizations to build a culture of belonging, employ justice approaches, and work toward liberation. In particular, supporting longer-term work to align culture with structure and strategy. Work including DEI+ support, culture audits/ assessments, developing strategies, training, etc.
Customized Workshops for Your Org
I design and deliver custom workshops for your team's unique needs
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Workshops
Decolonizing Development Workshop
Intensive workshop to deepen your decolonizing development work through tools and resources
Leadership Circles for Women of Color
Build your authentic leadership skills in this exclusive six-week program
Past Workshops
- Liberatory Aid
- Decolonizing Leadership
- Intro to Decolonizing Development
- Belonging Circles
- Power Shifting Paradigms and Doing Power Analysis
- Justice by Any Other Names - DEI in a Global Context
- Inquiring into the After - Changing the way we share our stories
- Building Anti-Racist Workplaces
Decolonizing Learning Library
Visit this free and open Decolonizing Development Resource library to access thought-provoking articles and research on decolonizing development, re-imagined aid, reparations frameworks, concrete ways to #ShiftthePower and more.
Welcome! Click to access the slides, resources and get exclusive access to the Communications Audit Tool if you already have the access code.
Don't have a code yet? Please fill out this quick form to receive access. You are welcome to use all the resources with explicit attribution to FNM Advising.
Coaching(-ish)
1:1 Consulting
Partnering with leaders to define authentic management styles
Everyone needs an accountability and thought partner. I provide individual support to leaders and mid-career managers with a focus on aligning their values to their work. I'm not a certified coach and so have building my 1:1 on practice by centering liberatory / decolonized leadership and management approaches.
Coaching(-ish) Sessions to:
- Explore and build your leadership principles, values and styles
- Work through strategies and issues at work
- Have an accountability and thought partner
Research and Reflections
To support the broadest change, I also work at the systemic levels of industries and society through critical research, writing, podcasts, political education and advcacy work. This includes:
Podcast: Shifting Paradigms
A conversation about power and our shifting relationship with work as we navigates pandemics, technology revolutions, and a changing world
With: Nidia Trujillo
Diversity in Global Development
Groundbreaking report and follow-up research on diversity in the global development sector
Blog Articles and Reflections
My articles on liberation, decolonizing development, reparations, Women's Storytelling and other reflections
Political Education
I also work with movement organizations to support political organization for members
Contact Me
My Journey
Co-Rambler, Co-Explorer and Sometimes Consultant
How do we do a better (and also faster, because we don’t have unlimited time) job of changing the world? That’s the one central question that has been the propellant behind my career. I want to be part of the global movement that imagines - and builds! - a free, liberatory, fair world. I have rambled, meandered and explored my way to this point. I have worked in journalism, in advocacy/lobbying, to support power building and social justice organizations, for large global for-profits, and for start-up ed/tech nonprofits, learning something valuable from each experience. Today, I work as a “consultant” supporting both large and small organizations striving for greater, bolder, fairer change. I partner and collaborate with organizations to explore their strategies, their organizations and people, and their programs through advising / consulting and leading transformational workshops.
Read my full background on LinkedIn and listen to my story here.
What Clients are Saying...
"Farah was a fantastic thought leader and really challenged me to interrogate my personal and professional DEI journey. I'm walking away with resources, practical frameworks and so many new ideas to consider."
Farah's Decolonizing Development training was transformative, to say the least. As a group, we grappled with historical and power analysis, reckoned with our own journeys as well as that of our society, and gained practical tools to apply to our personal and professional lives in order to work towards collected liberation. Farah's ability to hold space, challenge convention, and invite people into more liberatory thinking is incredible, and my life and work will be better for it.
It was incredibly practical and relevant - while also being surprisingly engaging which can be so challenging to do virtually. Loved it!
Read the full testimonials + many others on my LinkedIn profile
Farah was remarkable... very engaging, contentious of different learning styles, radically honest, bought incredible experience into the session and practiced decolonization principles in real time -- it was one of the best trainings I've ever been apart of. Thank you!!!
Farah is an insightful leader who manages work and supervises with an eye on achievement. She is focused on finding strengths in everyone she encounters and encourages her staff to set goals that take them to the next level. She teaches and mentors others through a hands on approach and leads by example. She is extremely patient and well versed in accommodating a variety of working styles. She is someone to seek out when stuck on a complex issue and in need of non-critical advice.
Shifting Paradigms
Podcast
A conversation about Power and our changing relationship with work
with Farah Mahesri and Nidia Trujillo
Episode 1
Explore fundamental questions such as what is work, how we measure it, when and where it happens. We will share our personal anecdotes of how COVID-19 disrupted our notions of work and how history has shaped work culture.
Episode 2
We need to assess the current power dynamics between employees and employers as for the #futureofwork. It’s not about flexible schedules or wellness benefits - we need to reshape the workplace landscape so that we work to live not live to work.
Episode 3
Explore tools that help us ask broad questions and center goals, not tactics. Since workers are not just experiencing burnout; they are having existential crises, we need to explore the future of work and find ways to humanize our work spaces.
Episode 4
Explore the role of technology as an asset to humanize workspaces using a systems-level analysis at the individual, team, organizational, and societal level. We will argue that a paradigm shift is needed to put the human back into human capital.
In this StoryCorp Podcast, learn more about my journey and what brought me here - bridging the political, personal, and professional.
Decolonizing Communications + Global Development for Palestine Podcasts
Listen to a conversation about the important nuance of decolonizing communication - what does it mean, why is it so important and what place it holds in our world as we move to a more awakened society that seeks to place diversity, equality and decolonization. Farah explains how aid organizations can decolonize communication and shift the balance of power, furthering development and internationalization. And, about what decolonization means in the context of the current conflict in Palestine as well as the universal importance of stories and narratives.
In this episode, Rupande speaks with members of Global Development for Palestine about their tireless work to raise awareness about the ongoing conflict. Bringing in their extensive experience, the group talks about Palestine in context with decolonization, how global assistance organizations need to show up vs. their total lack of concern, the double standard & sense of white saviorism in the US - aid world and how aid washing is happening in Palestine. The group talks about how the general public can help and how those who work in this sector can collectively organize through their professional hats. Learn more: https://bit.ly/GlobalDev4Pal
In partnership with Kalpvraksh
