Converge is a team of strategists and designers committed to social and environmental impact. We help build collaborations and networks taking action on issues as diverse as economic mobility, environmental conservation, human rights, and healthcare reform. Learn more at converge.net

Context is a consulting firm with practice areas in strategy, leadership, and culture active in the public, private, and social sectors.

The New Leadership Network brings together some of the top leaders in Fresno, CA to work in the “dynamic space” between sectors – finding common ground and building trust – and then working together collectively for a better community. Sawyer was the lead designer of the NLN and a co-lead facilitator.Fresno, California, is a notoriously difficult place to achieve lasting, scalable social impact—in part because so few of the individuals and groups trying to improve the city’s future work together effectively. In 2013, the James Irvine Foundation launched a new kind of initiative designed to bring together diverse leaders in Fresno—across issues, sectors, and generations—to learn, build relationships, and collaborate for a better future for their region.But what started as an experiment in fostering more networked ways of working quickly became a mechanism for making real progress against longstanding civic issues—making the New Leadership Network a potentially powerful model for how leaders in other cities and communities could organize to solve intractable local problems. Read the Case Study Executive Summary below.www.INLN.org