Katrina Donald

I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an auntie, and a good friend. I am a second-generation settler with Ukranian and Celtic roots, born in what is now known as Winnipeg, within Treaty No. 1 Territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinabe (Ojibway), Ininew (Cree), Oji-Cree, Dene, and Dakota, and the Birthplace of the Métis Nation and the Heart of the Métis Nation Homeland. I now live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda (Bearspaw, Chiniki, Wesley) Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3). I am committed to my own ongoing learning in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation, and to practices of equity and inclusion. My work promotes organizational design that empowers workplaces to be actively anti-racist, praxis-centered and humble as they work through the prickly bramble of change.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Masters in Organization Development and Change. I have been trained in systems thinking and system innovation, a variety of evaluation approaches, design thinking, research and development, human resources, and am a certified recruiter. I am the principal consultant at ever-so-curious, a consultancy that believes that listening and sensemaking practices bring us into community, reveal pathways forward, encourage and embolden us, and allow for greater impact.

My approach is relational and iterative - this means that most often I work in close partnership with innovators, as a member of their core team. My role can shift in any given moment, based on what is needed to inform the project’s next steps. I will serve this work:

As a process designer and facilitator: for team development and trust building, creating structures that encourage diverse perspectives and redistribution of power to support collective idea generation, planning, solution-finding, and prototype development.
As a scientist of sorts and an R&D advisor: helping the team to test their assumptions and ideas, by building evaluative practice, tools, and small-scale probes in step with the initiative’s activities to integrate feedback from multiple perspectives into the design and implementation phases.
As a journalist: tracking and documenting what was tried, how it worked and what was learned in the process. This involves the creation of written or visual products that help make the innovation process accessible to different stakeholder groups.
As a facilitator of sensemaking: leads participatory sensemaking and debriefing practices, witnesses and holds different perspectives to the light to be considered by the group. Encourages critical and creative thinking and surfaces key learning and insights to inform the project.
As a trusted friend-to-the-process: Holds the team accountable to the grounding principles, names trends, patterns, pivot points, and key developmental moments and supports the team in wrestling with these and their implications for the work.