Jeanette Romkema

Senior Partner, Certified Network Director, Owner and Board Secretary

Jeanette Romkema is an Owner and Senior Partner with Global Learning Partners (GLP). An artist educator, she helps organizations gain clarity about how to become a learning-centered organization. Unique in her passion for heart learning, she delves deep into the values, culture and practices of people and organizations to strengthen their identity, mission, purpose and the change they seek.

With 35 years of experience, expertise, and relationships with practitioners and colleagues who are thought leaders in learning-centered approaches to design and learning facilitation, she now coaches and mentors trainers and change agents who are working across many government and civil society sectors and around the globe in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America.

Jeanette has a knack for connecting with large and small clients to accompany them through short and long processes of change, always with the learners and the learning in mind.

Jeanette serves GLP as its Partnerships and Certified Network Director.

She holds a Master’s degree in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, and is adjunct faculty with Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto.

Jeanette also has extensive experience in governance, having served on numerous community and not-for-profit Boards.

 

Education & Training

FORMAL

PhD (abd) Education: Teaching and Learning

    • Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto | Canada

M.A. Education: Teaching and Learning

    • Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto | Canada

B.A. Education

    • Calvin University | Michigan, USA

Diploma: Fine Arts in Black & White, Colour Photography

    • Academie voor schone kunsten ǀ Ghent, Belgium

Diploma: Black & White Photography

    • Academie van St. Lucas kunsten ǀ Ghent, Belgium

Diploma: Textiles Analysis & Weaving Techniques

    • Stedelijk textielinstituut Henri Story ǀ Ghent, Belgium

 

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Certificate: Authentic Facilitation I & II

    • Anima Leadership ǀ Toronto, Canada

Certificate: Seminars for Trauma Awareness and Resilience I (STAR I)

    • Eastern Mennonite University | Virginia, USA

 

Project Spotlights

Impact and Innovations Development Centre (IIDC), Uganda

Jeanette led the development of a series of ‘how-to’ guides for IIDC to use with partners to help support, train, and resource them to be learning-centered organizations. To ensure strong and consistent modeling of the principles and practices of a learning-centered approach, Jeanette (with a skilled GLP team) trained staff in learning design and facilitation for a variety of applications, including meetings, training, conferences and convenings.

 

Canadian Red Cross, China
Jeanette worked with local Red Cross China teams to evaluate their HIV + AIDS work with two priority groups: heroin addicts and commercial sex workers. An emotion-based approach was used, and multiple evaluation tools were developed including the use of drawings, pictures, stories, and probing questions. Members of each priority group as well as members of multiple influencing groups were interviewed. The final report offered rich findings which led to provocative recommendations for future work.

 

TransACTION, Ethiopia
Jeanette collaborated with GLP colleague Valerie Uccellani to design HIV prevention education materials for mobile individuals including waitresses and daily laborers (male and female), and designed training for local NGOs around the country. TransACTION was especially interested in creating materials which would effectively promote personal reflection, honest dialogue, and new perspectives on taboo topics. For example, real stories from the priority groups were collected and used to produce interactive “story cards”. We also worked with TransACTION to design Peer Leader Guides to build their confidence in HIV and AIDS content, as well as their skills in storytelling and facilitation.

 

Read about more of Jeanette’s work:

 

Blogs

Jeanette has written the following blogs for the GLP Blog, Speaking of Dialogue.

 

Listen to Jeanette on Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast

 

Client Testimonial

Jeanette created a warm and friendly space but with enough structure and substance to bring about a lot of progress in a short amount of time. Jeanette really helped us to take ambiguous ideas and move us into an intentional plan, all the while providing us with spaces for our own learning and growth. We left each session with practical takeaways as well as increased knowledge and development in facilitation. We received excellent feedback from participants for the session that Jeanette provided coaching on the design.

Emilie Hayes – Capacity Development Advisor, Sustainable Affordable Housing – Green Municipal Fund || Conseillère en développement des capacités, Logement abordable durable – Fonds municipal vert || Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Participant

Participant

China Team / Canadian Red Cross

I have never experienced such a well-thought out program or worked so purposefully as a group. [Jeanette] works effortlessly to ensure everything that is designed and executed is purposeful, focused and pushes everyone to where they need to be.

Geraldine Sicola

Geraldine Sicola

Director of Communications & Resource Development / Aga Khan Foundation

Jeanette was terrific. Our group is very complicated and complex, and she was very patient. She coached us well and understood our challenges. Three things jump out: First, her commitment to deeply understand our environment and situation, which demonstrates how your approach fully honors values and principles. Secondly, the safety and comfort that was created for people within the learning environment. And lastly, the ongoing support and deep wisdom she provided that these sorts of large, impactful changes aren't something you can make overnight... she helped us to see this and be comfortable with our progress.

Aideen Gilmore

Aideen Gilmore

Head of Training, Technical Assistance & Networking / International Budget Partnership

Over the last number of years, the International Budget Partnership has been journeying with GLP to become a learning-centered organization. Jeanette has been the key driver in that journey. She has been a mentor to individual staff to support and deepen their skills and practice of Dialogue Education. She has both pushed and nurtured the organization as a whole to grow by helping us identify strategic opportunities to build and deepen the learning-centered approach through training, events and sharing resources. Her deep intuition, and understanding of the importance of dialogue in building strong relationships and strong organizations has been invaluable to us.

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