Dr. Carrie Kappel
Project Director and Facilitator
Dr. Carrie Kappel is a skilled facilitator and research scientist with 12+ years of experience participating in, leading, and facilitating trans-disciplinary collaborative working groups at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and beyond. She brings a unique combination of technical, inter-personal, listening, and visual skills to bear in helping diverse groups come together to solve challenging problems.
Carrie helps project leaders to design processes that support collaboration, facilitate dialogue, deepen participation, and streamline project management so that team members can focus on the work that needs to be done. She designs processes that build bridges across disciplinary and cultural divides, invite curiosity and co-learning, and are simultaneously open and creative and outcome-oriented. As a visual thinker, Carrie can also use graphic facilitation with groups to capture (and catalyze) a conversation in a way that fosters the emergence of new ideas and help groups think differently as connections and insights are made visible.
In addition to her deep hands on experience in the working group setting, Carrie has professional training in facilitation and graphic recording from The Grove Consultants, Liberating Structures, and Kelvy Bird’s Visual Practice Workshop. Systems thinking is an integral part of her practice.
Carrie is a Senior Fellow at NCEAS and a science advisor for the Science for Nature and People Partnership. In her research, she studies the dynamics of marine and coastal social-ecological systems and works to develop science-based tools to support more holistic decision making. Prior to beginning her research career, Carrie was an environmental educator for both Teton Science Schools and Ogden Nature Center. She has served on the boards of Ecology Project International, Teton Science Schools., and Wilderness Youth Project. She holds a B.S. in Biology with Honors from Brown University (1995) and a Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University (2006).
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