About

Jennifer Lentfer is the creator of how-matters.org and an independent consultant, leadership coach, and facilitator who supports teams and organizations to untangle from cycles of dysfunction.

She is a farm girl turned international aid worker once named as one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s “100 women to follow on Twitter” at @intldogooder. Given that her hometown of Bruning, Nebraska, USA has a population of less than 300 people, it’s no wonder that Jennifer Lentfer found her calling in accompanying people to build and thrive in community. A book that she co-edited with Tanya Cothran, Smart Risks: How small grants are helping to solve some of the world’s biggest problems features the growing community of grantmakers that find and fund visionary, yet under-the-radar community leaders around the world. It is available here.

In her work at EE Consulting, she and her partner Amanda Lindamood help professionals build the skills rarely found in job descriptions or organizational planning documents – for example: (1) bridging the systemic and the interpersonal, (2) non-extractive, trauma-informed meeting design, and (3) unearthing assumptions and checking for shared understanding.

Jennifer’s most recent institutional role was as the Director of Communications of Thousand Currents. In her career in the international aid and philanthropy sector, she has served with various organizations in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, and the US, including Oxfam, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services, and Firelight Foundation, and has consulted with many more. To learn more about her professional profile, see: linkedin.com/in/jenniferlentfer.

As a communicator, she is constantly looking for ways to portray the realities of people’s lives, their struggles, their strengths – as well as outsiders’ roles and mistakes – in an impatient, “silver bullet solutions” world. She taught “Storytelling and Communications for Social Change” at the University of Vermont Masters in Leadership for Sustainability Program for five years, and with her students at Georgetown in 2014, she published “The Development Element: Guidelines for the future of communicating about the end of global poverty.”

As a consultant and coach, Jennifer works together with her clients to usher in political courage, cultural humility, and an ethic of care within your team, your organization, and the social good sector writ large. She has completed the Introduction to Liberatory Coaching Training by Coaching for Healing Justice and Liberation.

As an artist and poet, Jennifer finds her joy in bringing forward people’s imaginativeness into the workplace. Her analog collages and poetry construct the world she wants to emerge from reckoning with settler colonialism – honoring lineage and community while rebuilding culture. You can view Jennifer’s artistic work here: jenniferlentfer.com

“We appear to have forgotten what is needed to succeed with the people.” ~Njabulo S. Ndebele

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.” ~Carl Jung

Image by Eric Wüstenhagen (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Why the succulent icon?

Vastly diverse species of succulent plants grow and thrive in some of the harshest and most beautiful places around the world. They are resilient, fractal, and adaptive to changing environmental conditions. Simply put, they are survivors.

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone. Content contained herein is not intended to reflect the work of any of my past, present, or future employers or clients.