Alison Crowther – Founder/Director
Originally trained in faciliation and consensus building, Alison is a coach, speaker and trainer. She works in the fields of 
positive psychology, conflict resolution, and stakeholder and public engagement, particularly in the environmental, social and science sectors. She has worked for the past 16 years advising central government how to work with the public to create new policy on complex science and ethical issues. During this time she has and has mentored many resilience projects, from space weather, nanotechnology and the use of stem cells to communicating flood risk. She has over 25 years experience working in the UK and internationally with central and local government, business and the third sector.
Alison works to encourage deeper connection and collaboration with others, learning from science and nature to form more resilient systems – be they at work or in the community. She coaches people in decision-making positions to take on new, brave management cultures that properly empower staff, reduce stress and create satisfaction and meaning for the whole system. She also mentors and delivers creative and engaging processes from senior strategy workshops, and team away days and the odd flood-themed street event!
As Covid-19, Climate Change and the responses to them shape our society and world, Alison is focussing on how trauma might show up and be worked with in teams, workshops and events. From the most difficult of “Difficult Conversations” – those with traumatised children about their past lives, (a project with Bristol University) – to working with eco-anxiety, MadeToLast Resilience uses principles of working powerfully with traumatised groups, stressed and worn out staff and publics.
Alison is an Associate of Involve, the public participation charity, and has a varied past – a degree in Music, a Masters in Psychology, a Diploma in environmental technology and a professional qualification in leadership coaching. She has lived up mountains and in jungles and is now a mum to one, enjoys time in nature and dancing with Bristol Samba!
Kate Swatridge – Associate
Kate helps businesses and organisations to navigate their way through messy problems and complex decisions. She draws on an extensive toolkit of soft and hard analytical methods enabling clients to understand systems, explore scenarios, test assumptions, decide between priorities, allocate resources more effectively, quantify costs and benefits, understand and manage risk. Her projects invariably help clients to make better, more robust and defendable, evidence-based decisions.
Kate will bring out a shared understanding of complex issues; work with you to map your systems, interdependencies and information flows so that together we can design the right qualitative or quantitative analyses, model or tool for the job. She can also facilitate workshops and key meetings to involve stakeholders at an early stage, to ensure that informed decisions are made and supported. She has been designing, delivering and managing soft and hard analytical and decision support projects for clients in the private, public and voluntary sectors for more than fifteen years.
Kate has a degree in Statistics, Computing, Operational Research and Economics, holds a professional qualification as a facilitator and a Permaculture Design Certificate. Permaculture is a system of ecological design used to create solutions to meet human needs while ensuring a resilient future. Kate co-founded an urban food growing network in London which had the dual aims of reconnecting people with their food and bringing together neighbours to create street level communities across South London. Kate draws on the ethics and design principles of permaculture in her work, and in her spare time enjoys getting muddy in her veg patch!
Susannah Raffle – Associate
Susannah is a facilitator, trainer, climate communicator, calm-weaver and compassion advocate. Her work focuses on helping organisations and individuals to talk about and create deep understanding of the human, social and cultural dynamics of creating a more just and sustainable future. She has studied and worked at the juncture of environmental and social issues for over 15 years. This has included supporting local authorities to address water conservation and water quality management for a thriving community and environment now and in the future; evaluating participatory action research in understanding forest-dependent livelihoods; co-developing land management agreements with Indigenous leaders for the joint management of national parks between Traditional Owners and state government.
For the past 5 years her work has been centred on how we can have better conversations about the climate crisis. Conversations that bring us together in our commitment to act rather than drive us apart. This began in Melbourne, Australia working with start-up organisation Climate for Change, developing an approach to facilitating conversations about the climate crisis in people’s homes with their friends and families to deepen intellectual, emotional and social understanding about the challenge we face. Now living in the UK Susannah seeks to bring her learnings to a different national context and support a collaborative, deliberative, inclusive and compassionate way forward from where we are now. We are all in this together.
Susannah holds a degree in environmental sociology and a post-graduate diploma in sustainability thinking. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators and is on the leadership team for the England & Wales Chapter. She is also a member of the emerging Deliberative Democracy Practitioners Network convened by Involve UK.