Dr. Rosalma Zubizarreta-Ada
Senior Fellow
Rosalma (Rosa) Zubizarreta-Ada was born in Lima, Peru, from a Peruvian father and a Cuban mother. Her family immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. Rosa started out in education, translating children's books and working on educational materials, before encountering the Dynamic Facilitation approach and returning to school to study in organization development and social work. After apprenticing with Jim Rough and teaching this methodology internationally, Rosa eventually returned for doctoral studies, writing a narrative dissertation on her learnings with and from the Bürgerrate facilitators in Vorarlberg.
Rosa's manual on Dynamic Facilitation,"From Conflict to Creative Collaboration" is included in the larger book she co-edited with Matthias zur Bonsen, "Dynamic Facilitation: Die erfolgreiche Moderationsmethode für schwierige und verfahrene Situationen" [The successful moderation method for difficult and muddled situations.] Rosa's own approach to this work, "Co-creating Desired Futures", or CDF for short, is also informed by Paulo Freire's transformative pedagogy, Eugene Gendlin's Focusing work, and Saul Eisen's work in Developing Human Systems.
- Democracy Visiting Fellow, AY2023-2024, Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School
- PhD student in Human and Organizational Systems / Organization Development and Change, Fielding Graduate University, 2014 - 2023
- Founder & Principal Consultant at Diapraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration, 2006 - present.
- Lead trainer for Dynamic Facilitation seminars, 2002 - present
- Affiliated Practitioner with the Co-Intelligence Institute, 2000 - present
- Practitioner of Clinical and Community Social Work, 2001 - 2011
- Work in Education and Educational Materials, 1987 - 2000
- facilitators as reflective practitioners
- developing wide-spread facilitative capacity to strengthen democratic participation
- communicative empathy and psychological safety in groups
- influence of minipublics on socio-cultural "appreciative set-points"
Publications prior to joining the RIFS
*Zubizarreta, R. & Escobar, O. (2024). Opening the Black Box: Facilitation in a Changing World. Deliberative Democracy Digest, July 1st, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/DelibDemDigest-Zubi-Escobar
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Atlee, T. & Zubizarreta, R. (2017). Embodying wholeness in our social process: Our evolutionary challenge as humans. In S. Momo, (ed.), Collective Enlightenment. Spanda Foundation: Spanda Journal VII (2), 45-55. https://tinyurl.com/Atlee-Zubi-Spanda-17
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Zubizarreta, R. (2015). Participatory public policy microcosms. In S. Momo (ed.), Creativity & Collective Enlightenment. Spanda Foundation: Spanda Journal VI (2), 9-17. https://tinyurl.com/Zubi-Spanda2015
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Zubizarreta, R. (2014). Zuhören, um der Lebendigkeit Raum zu geben (Listening for Aliveness). In R. Zubizarreta & M. zur Bonsen, M. Dynamic Facilitation: Die erfolgreiche Moderations methode für schwierige und verfahrene Situationen, 2. Auflage. 182-200. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Verlag.
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Zubizarreta, R. (2013). Co-creative dialogue for meeting practical challenges, OD Practitioner 45(1), 47-53.
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Zubizarreta, R. (2006). "Practical Dialogue: Emergent approaches for effective collaboration." In Creating A Culture of Collaboration: The International Association of Facilitators Handbook. Ed. by S.P. Schuman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley
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Facilitating Democracy: Expanding Our Toolkit. June 14, 2024, at the Frontiers of Democracy conference, Tufts University, Boston, MA.
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Effective Ways to Influence Societal Appreciative Set Points? Deliberative Minipublics as Socio-Technical Systems Change Initiatives. June 10, 2024, International Society for System Sciences, Washington, DC.
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Facilitation in Minipublics Roundtable, September 1, 2023, American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA.