Alison Lin
Coach and Consultant at Change Elemental
Background
Alison supports leaders in authentic collaborations to transform people and systems toward love, dignity and justice. With over 20 years of leadership experience, she draws from work in race equity, complex systems change, organizational development, learning through experimentation and life with a focus on issues affecting LGBTQ and people of color communities. She joined Change Elemental in 2017 and became a parent in 2021.
Alison trusts each person’s wisdom and offers deep listening and practices to interrupt oppression and racial inequity at multiple levels. Her coaching style is creative, joyful, sincere and firm and grows from her core values of integrity, playfulness, interdependence and curiosity.
Alison actively cultivates her connection to the earth which surprises her mind, heals her body, and hones her intuition. She is a queer single mama and of Chinese and Scottish-German descent. Alison grew up in Ohio and has lived internationally, in NYC, the Bay Area, and currently calls Philadelphia home. Consuming less and building community connections take up time in her heart and her schedule. You can find Alison parenting, dancing, taking photos, practicing Reiki, and eating backyard vegetables along with other pursuits of love.
Prior to joining Change Elemental, Alison worked with Social Transformation Project’s Movement Network and collaborated with Change Elemental on our Engage, Experiment, Emerge project, and our Network Leadership Learning Lab with CompassPoint. Additional clients include 18MillionRising, Women Donor’s Network, and the Art, Culture, & Social Justice Network. Previously, she worked as the Network Manager for CoreAlign and with Connect to Protect© at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She has been especially inspired by collaborations with community partners and the opportunities she had to incorporate research, coalition building, and components of structural change into her work.
Alison graduated with honors from Hamilton College with a BA in Chemistry and Columbia University with an MPH focusing on sexuality and health. She has published on topics such as interpersonal violence in adolescents, sex education, the health of LGBTQ Asian Americans, challenges in mobilizing communities for HIV prevention, and health advocates in public housing.
At the School of System Change
Deep equity and complex systems change towards liberation via cultivating power sharing, inner work, and multiple ways of knowing.
"The aspirations to hold complexity and emergence and the understanding that racial equity, power sharing, and relationships are non-negotiables."
