EMERGENCE
Wayfinding Through Life’s
Inflection Points
Join the mailing list to find out when the next cohort
is opening
If this resonates, this cohort is for you. Join us for a 10-week virtual journey through the uncharted waters of your life.
We all need a navigator and a crew to sail with us in uncertain and uncharted waters.
Each of us experiences life inflection points – moments where we find ourselves at the edge of our known world, looking out at the horizon, questioning who we are, what matters, where we’re headed, and feeling like something is falling away and something new or different is ready to emerge.
Maybe we experience a pandemic or look around at the state of world politics and experience a crisis of meaning and a call to live, work or relate differently. Maybe we welcome a child into our family and realize we aren’t just taking on new logistics, we are playing a whole new role in the world. Maybe we follow our dream to start a business and are confronted with just how much we have to learn. Maybe we lose a loved one, maybe we find love, maybe we get divorced. Maybe we experience a health crisis, receive some feedback about how we’re showing up that rocks our world, discover a new dimension to our sexuality, begin to caretake our aging parents, move to a new country, turn 30, 40, 50, 60…
Inflection points are exciting and overwhelming all at the same time. They are places of real aliveness where we come into contact with new possibilities for our lives. They usually prompt deeper inner reflection and change, but often do so against the backdrop of day to day lives that we can’t just step out of. We often experience a sense of pressure to come to answers quickly, yet it can be hard to hear our emerging truths amidst the demands of our current commitments and responsibilities. Much is unclear and uncertain, so we can’t just plan and execute our way forward. We are called to move differently…but how?
We need more experiences that support us to navigate these life inflection points intentionally and in community with others. This is what Emergence is about: offering a collaborative community, supportive guides, a facilitated space and a portfolio of resources to support you and us in more artfully navigating through the uncertain waters of our lives.
We hope you’ll leave this experience…
01
Feeling more capable and confident to navigate moments of uncertainty and emergence in your life.
02
Knowing how to “live questions,” sense and discover answers over time through observation, experimentation, play and discernment.
03
With tools for wayfinding and an ongoing community of support.
04
Able to continue wayfinding through present and future inflection points.
“Alice facilitates empowering spaces for reflection, dialogue and discovery. She creates a warm and welcoming community that encourages people to take emotional and intellectual risks. Her facilitation seamlessly blends reflection with direct instruction and feels both rigorous and spacious. Alice invites participants to try things on and to be present to their experience as they are learning. I always leave time with her feeling more clear, confident, compassionate and effective.”
— Gabriel Rodriguez, Associate Dean of Academics
Through this experience you’ll have access to…
A Collaborative Community & Artful Guides
You’ll be in ongoing dialogue with a group of fellow wayfinders, all committed to intentionally navigating a real-time inflection point and transition in their lives. Your group experience will be stewarded by experienced facilitators and coaches who are adept at wayfinding.
A Diverse Portfolio of Resources
You’ll experience a thoughtfully designed and facilitated space that is interactive and experiential and offers opportunities for individual inquiry, collective wisdom sharing, and coaching. You’ll be introduced to prompts and practices that will help you navigate the new frontiers you face and sense pathways forward that are “right for you” and “right for your context.”
Consistency & Right-Sizing
You’ll come together with others weekly over ten weeks to reflect on and explore what you’re shedding and what’s emerging for you right now. You’ll experience what it feels like to explore big questions, big fears, and big possibilities over time in “right-sized” rather than “all at once” ways.
Our sail plan…
Week 1: On Wayfinding and Emergence
Our lives are full of edge-of-the-world moments where we reach the limits of what we know or have done before and need to discover the way forward without a clear map or model. We’ll begin our journey together by orienting to the practice of “wayfinding” as a way to navigate through moments of uncertainty and life transition, and you’ll begin to give voice and shape to what’s emerging in your life right now and what you’re leaving behind.
January 17
Group Session
Week 2: On Presence, Sensitivity, & Aliveness
Wayfinding calls us into a different relationship with “reading” ourselves and the world. This week, we’ll invite a conversation about the instruments and practices that enable us to observe our ecosystem, access our inner knowing, and discover over time what’s “aligned” and “right” for us in context. You’ll have the opportunity to explore presence, sensitivity, and aliveness as instruments and information that support your wayfinding journey.
January 24
Group Session
Week 3: On Living the Questions
In moments of transition, life often offers us questions before answers. This week, we’ll invite a conversation about what questions are emerging for you right now, how to sail with them, and what it might mean and look like for you to “live” rather than “think” your way into answers.
January 31
Group Session
Week 4: On Inspiration, Play, & Experimentation
How do you discover what’s next and right for you when you currently don’t know? When you don’t have a model to work off of because you want to dream, dance, and delight differently than you have in the past? This week, we’ll invite a conversation about the role of play and experimentation in discovery and how to spark inspiration that will support you in clarifying your vision for the future over time.
February 7
Group Session
Week 5: On Silence, Stillness & Space
Transitions are all the things – scary, exciting, overwhelming, ripe with possibilities. As we shed aspects of ourselves and tack towards new horizons, our bodies, hearts, and ideas need space for breathing, grieving, and sinking into the newness of what’s emerging in our lives. This week, we’ll take some time away from our group space and invite individual reflection on the power and importance of silence, stillness, and space. You’ll also have an opportunity to meet 1×1 for a coaching session with one of our two facilitators.
Week of February 11
1×1 Coaching
Week 6: On Interdependence & Stewardship
Each of us is an ecosystem, and all of us exist within webs of power, relationships, and responsibilities. Sometimes our own needs and aspirations are eclipsed by the pressures and expectations around us. Sometimes we don’t consider our environment and commitments to others enough in our decision making. In this session, you’ll have an opportunity to consider your dreams and duties alongside each other, and we’ll invite a conversation about interdependence and stewardship – how we might honor our needs & desires and also fulfill our responsibilities to others and to life itself.
February 21
Group Session
Week 7: On Effort & Flow
Life isn’t easy, and it can become more easeful. This week, we’ll invite a conversation about flow inside and outside of ourselves – how to identify currents we might easily get swept up in, waves we can ride, and how to use our strengths to swim regardless of what kind of water we’re in. You’ll have an opportunity to consider your relationship to “effort” and “flow” and even how you might “flow” more easefully into this next chapter of your life.
February 28
Group Session
Week 8: On Community & Nourishment
Wayfinding is a collective endeavor; we all need a crew to help us read the stars, watch the horizon, and work the sails of our boats. This week we’ll invite a conversation about the many forms that community can take in our lives. You’ll have an opportunity to explore the contours of your historical relationship to community and consider what it might mean for you to nurture and be nourished by it now and in the future.
March 6
Group Session
Week 9: On Success, Striving, & Satiation
How do we think about “success” in our life journey? What is “enough” for each of us? In our last group session, we’ll invite a conversation about how we tell the story of what matters to us and where we are in relation to it. We’ll look at our wayfinding journey to date through the lenses of “success, achievement, striving, satisfaction, and satiation,” and you’ll have an opportunity to consider the glasses you want to wear when looking in on your own life.
March 13
Group Session
Week 10: On Unfolding
As we come to an inflection point in our shared journey together, we’ll invite a conversation about what it might mean for you to continue wayfinding beyond this cohort experience. You’ll have an opportunity to reflect 1×1 with one of our facilitators on how you’ve grown over the last 10 weeks, what you’ve discovered, what’s on the horizon, and what still remains a mystery to live into.
Week of March 17
1×1 Coaching
Emergence: A Wayfinding Journey
Inaugural Cohort Cost
$795
Registration Window
December 20th to January 12th
Winter 2024 Cohort Dates
Meets virtually via Zoom on Wednesdays from 4:00 – 5:30 pm PST/7:00-8:30 pm EST
January 17, 24, 31
February 7, 21, 28
March 6, 13
1×1 coaching to occur the weeks of February 11th and March 17th
Program Overview ($1,995 Value)
Eight 90-minute group sessions*
Two 40-minute 1×1 coaching sessions
A wayfinding toolkit of prompts, practices, and provocations
Optional peer coaching support
*Sessions will be recorded in case you’re unable to attend
Join the mailing list to find out when the next cohort is opening
Our Team
Alice Chen
Experience designer, facilitator and coach
Hi - I’m Alice Chen. I’m a leadership coach, facilitator and experience designer with a passion for creating delightful and impactful learning spaces. I’m also a fellow wayfinder who constantly navigates new frontiers in her personal and professional life.
I believe in lifelong learning, the wisdom of adjacent spaces, the creative power of joy and play, and the importance of rigor and discipline. I’m also an avid knitter and sewist, as well as an unabashed k-drama fan. After a decade in Silicon Valley, I now make my home in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.
Over the last decade, I’ve supported hundreds of leaders and organizations in business, education, technology, government, arts and academia to more artfully navigate the complex, uncharted and often unpredictable currents of modern day life. My client base has been wide and diverse – from Tesla and Toyota to Google and Lyft, from the Hewlett Foundation, the State of Hawai’i, the University of San Francisco to Indianapolis Public Schools and the Mindful Life Project. I’ve drawn on neuroscience, adult development theory, trauma informed practices, and wisdom traditions, as well as my own personal experience and cultural lineage to hold and facilitate spaces where leaders can experience a sense of belonging and well being as they learn and grow. Together, we’ve accessed courage and intuition and learned how to sense, discern, and discover our way forward in community to answers that are “right for us” and “right in context.”
I’m so excited to steward this cohort experience for all of you – to hold space for your individual and our collective journey together over 10 weeks and to share the cache of tools, practices, and wisdom I’ve gathered from my 1×1 work with individuals over the last ten years in this group format.
If you’d like to learn more about me and my background, click here.
David Rust
Facilitator and coach
Hi - I’m David Rust, and I’m excited to be one of your coaches and guides during this ten week cohort. I’m a creator at heart with a passion for great music, helping people become the best versions of themselves, and getting ideas off the ground.
I currently live in a community of friends on an old dairy farm in Marin County and love to spend my time mountain biking along the Northern California coast and playing piano.
I’ve navigated numerous personal and professional inflection points over the last decade. I began my career at Lyft as their 20th employee, where I launched new markets across the US and led their strategy team as we scaled to 2,000 employees. After leaving Lyft, I founded two businesses and saw one through a wind down and one through a successful sale. During this time I got married and moved across the country twice, all while learning how to create the time and space to play music, be in nature, and just be still. These experiences have shown me the power and challenge of listening to my internal voice and following it while balancing what’s right for me, right for others, and right for the environment I’m in.
For the past six years, Alice has been my personal and professional coach, and through my experiences with her and others I’ve seen first hand the importance of guides, community, and tools in navigating life’s twists and turns. I’m so excited and honored to support all of you on this journey.
