Christi Strickland
Christi Strickland is a facilitator, teacher, rites of passage guide and founder of Circle Forth who weaves living-systems thinking, nature-based wisdom, and relational craft to build groups and gatherings that are strategic, generative, and joyfully whole. She trains facilitators, mentors space-holders, and designs processes that enable groups to show up fully, orient to purpose, and move forward with clarity and care.
Research & Theoretical Work
Christi’s work synthesizes contemporary human development, organizational change, and ecological design. She draws on living systems and her study with Biomimicry for Social Innovation and Matrixworks, along with the generative approaches of Adreinne Maree Brown, Margaret Wheatley, Otto Scharmer,Peter Senge, and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects to frame collective transformation as an emergent, regenerative practice. Her facilitation is trauma aware and informed by Thomas Hubl and council practices that prioritize relational safety, diversity, inclusion, and deep listening. She is also influenced by the teachings of Malidoma Somé and continually returns to the wisdom of nature’s organizing principles and the awe-activating connection with the living earth for guidance.
Approach and Practice
Christi designs experiences that balance structure and invitation, blending curriculum design, somatic presence, and practice-based learning and transformation. She specializes in experiential group dynamics, communication skills, restorative circles, conflict evolution, mediation, feedback systems, and change processes. Her methods create both connective space and forward momentum so groups can clarify vision, practice accountability, and operationalize change. She values adaptability and uses outdoor settings, embodied exercises, collective wisdom dialogue, and story as tools to translate insight into action.
Personal Journey and Leadership
Sixteen years of teaching experiential leadership at Naropa University and decades of facilitation across diverse contexts have shaped Christi’s steady, earnest leadership. She leads from grounded curiosity, practical skill, and a commitment to equity, inclusion, and ongoing learning. Her leadership values include deep listening, creativity, grounded compassion, and a fierce dedication to evoking emergent collective wisdom. Her formative practice includes teaching cohorts of students who became peers and teachers, and those experiences continue to inform her evolving craft. For the past 6 years she has been the executive director of a small non-profit, The Wilderness Guides Council, which has helped shape her capacity to integrate the practical with the wild and possible.
Programs and Community
Through Circle Forth, Christi offers retreat facilitation, strategic planning, leadership coaching, team development, facilitation mentorship, and short-term project facilitation. She supports organizations across rural and urban settings, corporate and nonprofit sectors, classrooms, co-housing communities, criminal justice settings, hospice, and youth programs. Her cohorts and trainings seed durable community practices that support collaboration, shared responsibility, and collaborative decision-making.
Guides, Mentors and Elders
My kindergarten teacher meant the world to me. Our classroom was a joyful little ecosystem where we laughed, played, sang, and occasionally stirred up mischief in the hallways. That early sense of belonging planted a lifelong love of community – and, in many ways, I think I’ve been trying to recreate that feeling of “homeroom” for others ever since.
Where I stand now is the result of many hands and hearts: soccer coaches, teachers, guides, and mentors – some still here, many now gone. In the group facilitation world, I was fortunate to learn from Mukara Meredith and Matrixworks. In the rites of passage world, I will always be indebted to Steven Foster and Meredith Little, to the elders of the Wilderness Guides Council, and especially to Trebbe Johnson. I am also grateful to have studied with Joanna Macy and so many amazing people at Naropa University.
I am in a life phase where, alongside continual learning, I feel called to give back – to offer what was given to me by my kindergarten teacher, my graduate school professors, and my life-mentors. And ultimately, my greatest teachers have been the Earth and the thousands of people I have sat in circle with over the years.
Life and Commitment
Christi is currently somewhat nomadic, weaving through many places and communities. She moves between caring for her mother in Houston, Texas; returning to the Colorado lands she has loved for more than 30 years; and traveling to facilitate circles and connect with groups. She is a devoted dream-worker, bird-watcher, mountain climber, and tree listener. She is most creative near water and most joyful in wild spaces. Christi is devoted to restoring connection and reducing fragmentation through the craft of facilitation, connecting people more deeply to themselves, the Earth, and one another.
