Meet Our New Community Weavers
Building on the foundation laid by Jonathan Fong and Yi Zhang since last year, we have two new weavers joining their efforts to explore ways towards creating a world that works for all in our communities and with BK authors. Cecily Victor and Mansi Kakkar have both been part of the BK Community through Leadership Exchanges and reviewing books for BKP and are thrilled to directly weave our community to thrive.
Mansi Kakkar, new Community Weaver for BKF
and brings her skills in multicultural and multi-discipline facilitate.
and brings her skills in multicultural and multi-discipline facilitate.
Mansi Kakkar is an educator and systempreneur and brings her skills in multicultural and multi-discipline facilitation and creating experiential learning journeys as well as applying regenerative development and design in grassroots ecosystems.
Cecily Victor, new Community Weaver for BKF
Cecily Victor
My reality is sharing my life experience of effective leadership, communication and cultural intelligence to provide a comprehensive ‘Success Service’ to staff of nonprofits who are in the frontlines of direct service. Having worked for the most part of my career in nonprofits, I have witnessed people who come in starry eyed but become disillusioned because of inadequate training opportunities in communication skills, cultural intelligence and self-care/awareness. With my coaching and workshops I strengthen this particular work force as they are so critically needed now more than ever before.
Coming to the US as an immigrant, for the first seven years I learned how to live here, for the next eight I taught over 2000 new immigrants from over a hundred different countries how to transfer their skills from their home country to corporates, nonprofits and communities here. This priceless experience of being understood by people from all over the world empowered me, and I know that it is in communicating authentically with self and others, is how peace and prosperity for all begins.
I collaborate with organizations that serve community. With community building close to my heart and my sense of solidarity with my fellow nonprofit employees deeply engrained in my working life here in the US, India and Singapore, I am working on the biggest merger of my life, making my passion and my life’s work come together to build bridges through communication and create a transformational and sustainable impact in the community.
Read more from Cecily below…
My reality is sharing my life experience of effective leadership, communication and cultural intelligence to provide a comprehensive ‘Success Service’ to staff of nonprofits who are in the frontlines of direct service. Having worked for the most part of my career in nonprofits, I have witnessed people who come in starry eyed but become disillusioned because of inadequate training opportunities in communication skills, cultural intelligence and self-care/awareness. With my coaching and workshops I strengthen this particular work force as they are so critically needed now more than ever before.
Coming to the US as an immigrant, for the first seven years I learned how to live here, for the next eight I taught over 2000 new immigrants from over a hundred different countries how to transfer their skills from their home country to corporates, nonprofits and communities here. This priceless experience of being understood by people from all over the world empowered me, and I know that it is in communicating authentically with self and others, is how peace and prosperity for all begins.
I collaborate with organizations that serve community. With community building close to my heart and my sense of solidarity with my fellow nonprofit employees deeply engrained in my working life here in the US, India and Singapore, I am working on the biggest merger of my life, making my passion and my life’s work come together to build bridges through communication and create a transformational and sustainable impact in the community.
Read more from Cecily below…
Words are important, words are bridges, words can be inspiring and injurious, and words can soothe, anger, unite and divide. Words are how we come to know about the ways of the world, past, present and projected future. And words live in people’s hearts and for others to share those words they need to be spoken or they need to show themselves in a book. I saw words and fell in love with them even before I knew what they meant. My earliest memories are of me lugging around books that belonged to my young college going uncles and aunts. As I grew in my house I roamed the world through the pages of books, trying to find a place to belong. And the words became bricks, concrete and mortar of my world. I came alive and felt I belonged everywhere. I breathed in horizons and made the people my world and I felt at home with all and the world became my house.
And as I grew I dreamed that someday Rabindranath Tagore’s words will be the world. “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls and words come out from the depth of truth”. As a lover of words holding this dream, imagine my joy when I stepped into a workshop held by the BK Foundation, an intergenerational meeting of minds and ideas and visions for magically manifesting the BK Foundation’s mission. I saw people with eyes on the future and feet planted in reality. I heard people give voice to the anguish of the time and yet felt the hope in the room. The BK Foundation mission seemed clear and present; “ To enable emerging young leaders to create a world that works for all, by helping them put into practice the strategic ideas and methodologies described in BK books that support deep conversations and strategic change in the underlying beliefs, mindsets, approaches, and structures that keep generating the same cycles of problems”. The mission, that came about with the input from Berrett-Koehler readers, authors, partners, shareholders, and staff, the wisdom of the collective!
That day as I was returning home I knew I had made a full circle, I had connected the dots, the mystery of my being drawn to words was solved, my relationship to words shifted from comfort and safety, pleasure and leisure to empowerment. There was a sense of belonging and finding my tribe. As a leader, workshop creator, facilitator, transformational coach and story teller, I have worked with more than 2000 job people from over a 100 different countries and discovered my ability to move between seen and unseen borders and communicate seamlessly with people. Yet I have always longed for an organization to belong to, to identify and associate with, to serve community with greater impact and as a Community Weaver with Berrett-Koehler I look forward to bringing together my love of books and my life’s purpose of serving community to fruition.
Cecily Victor
And as I grew I dreamed that someday Rabindranath Tagore’s words will be the world. “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls and words come out from the depth of truth”. As a lover of words holding this dream, imagine my joy when I stepped into a workshop held by the BK Foundation, an intergenerational meeting of minds and ideas and visions for magically manifesting the BK Foundation’s mission. I saw people with eyes on the future and feet planted in reality. I heard people give voice to the anguish of the time and yet felt the hope in the room. The BK Foundation mission seemed clear and present; “ To enable emerging young leaders to create a world that works for all, by helping them put into practice the strategic ideas and methodologies described in BK books that support deep conversations and strategic change in the underlying beliefs, mindsets, approaches, and structures that keep generating the same cycles of problems”. The mission, that came about with the input from Berrett-Koehler readers, authors, partners, shareholders, and staff, the wisdom of the collective!
That day as I was returning home I knew I had made a full circle, I had connected the dots, the mystery of my being drawn to words was solved, my relationship to words shifted from comfort and safety, pleasure and leisure to empowerment. There was a sense of belonging and finding my tribe. As a leader, workshop creator, facilitator, transformational coach and story teller, I have worked with more than 2000 job people from over a 100 different countries and discovered my ability to move between seen and unseen borders and communicate seamlessly with people. Yet I have always longed for an organization to belong to, to identify and associate with, to serve community with greater impact and as a Community Weaver with Berrett-Koehler I look forward to bringing together my love of books and my life’s purpose of serving community to fruition.
Cecily Victor