It takes a team

The NGO Academy began back in 2010 to train people to navigate waters that kept changing... and needed to change differently.

For years, that focus was on one often tumultous water: the United Nations. We helped those seeking global community — NGO leaders, advocates, social entrepreneurs from more than fifty countries — find their footing in the intergovernmental world that needed grounding in field realities and perspectives: how to engage, how to be heard, how to turn commitment into standing and standing into action. That work continues.

But the waters everyone must now navigate have grown faster and stranger. Constant change is no longer an episode to get through; it is the condition we live in — and increasingly, powerful technologies hold the leverage, moving at speeds our habits, institutions, and conversations were never built for. In such a world, the deciding skill is no longer any single map. It is the capacity to navigate itself: to stay whole under pressure, to read what is actually happening, and to act with judgment you can answer for.

That is what the Academy now equips people to do. Our TQ Edge training builds the human capacity underneath every other skill — the steadiness, presence, and negotiating strength that hold up when conditions don't. And our rules-of-the-road instruments extend that same discipline outward: the AI COLREGs, for keeping your own judgment in command when working with powerful AI; the Civic COLREGs, for keeping our shared civic waters navigable when we disagree.

The sea will not calm down. We train the sailors, those who still dare to face the seas.

As Facilitator & Regional Focal Point, South America,
Marilyn has been a friend, participant and shaper of the Academy all while shaping her  career by standing where most people cannot bear to stand. A chaplain by training, she has served in high-stress inner-city hospitals in Columbus, Ohio, in hospice care across California's Bay Area and Central Valley, and as a grief counselor — walking with thousands of families through the most painful, and sometimes most sacred, moments of a life.

That experience is not a sideline to the Academy's work. It is the work, proven under the hardest conditions there are. A chaplain cannot fix what is happening in the room. What she can do — what Marilyn has done for decades — is stay: fully present, steady in someone else's storm, without flinching and without disappearing into it. That is precisely the capacity the Academy trains, and she brings it not as theory but as a life's practice, along with a depth and perspective that shape everything we do.

As Facilitator & Regional Focal Point, South America, Andrea facilitates TQEdge training for women leaders across South America and serves as the NGO Academy's regional focal point. She integrates this capacity-building into established women's leadership networks in Colombia and beyond—strengthening, not replacing, the work already underway.

Her focus is on the underlying capacities that help leaders hold steady under pressure: situational awareness, clarity, and the ability to respond well when the strain is real, and the pressures not always visible.

Andrea came to this work first as a participant. Her own leadership in Colombia changed measurably through the training, and it is that lived experience—not theory alone—that she now brings to other women leaders.

Laura Jackson Loo has spent more than thirty years behind the scenes of mission-driven organizations—arts and culture, human rights, nonprofits at every scale—where extraordinary work routinely goes unrecognized, underfunded, and misunderstood. Her diagnosis that has sharpened across those decades is that the problem is almost never the mission, it's the messaging.

A messaging strategist, executive coach, and founder of the M.O.V.E. the Mission™️ Model, she has represented global interests at the United Nations, coached leaders through pivotal challenges, and helped organizations close the gap between the work they do and what their donors, boards, and communities actually understand.

At the Academy, Laura works both sides of a rare bridge. She has trained and facilitated in the TQ work herself, so she knows it from the inside, not as a product to promote but as a practice she runs. That allows her to do what few communicators can: help our regional facilitators and partner organizations put honest, compelling words around capacity-building that is, by nature, quiet.

The training builds the self-command that allows things to close well including agreements, funding relationships, and conveying a mission that's understood by the public and stakeholders. Laura's craft is making sure those closings happen: that the right people finally see what an organization is, clearly enough to say yes to it.

My journey with NGO Academy started as an administrative support and participant, and it has grown into something I truly value. It inspired me to become more involved, contribute to the team, and eventually take the path toward becoming a facilitator.

I’m naturally curious, adventurous, and creative. I love discovering new places, meeting people, trying new things, and seeing where new experiences can lead me.

I’m excited to keep learning and grateful to be part of the facilitator team. For now, I’m happy to support the team, learn from our wonderful mentor, Dr. Karen Judd Smith, and our experienced facilitators, and bring my own creativity and adventurous spirit into the work.

For me, the journey from participant to facilitator is not simply about changing roles — it is about continuing to learn, finding my own voice, and eventually using what I have learned to create opportunities for others to discover, learn, connect, and grow too.