Marc Swan

Marc Swan is a facilitator, trainer, and consultant in organizational development and movement-building strategy. Marc has dedicated his life to bringing leadership and service to strengthening powerful movements for social justice and generating a people-powered economy. He feels most at home in the beautiful places where these circles of liberation intersect.

Marc has worked with dozens of organizations in strategic planning, theory of change processes, and in developing systems for organizational governance and decision-making structures that maximize democracy and accountability. Marc’s craft is moving groups through stuck places toward new opportunities by exploring their contradictions, challenges, and strengths.

Systems of oppression and domination shape our world, our organizations and ourselves. Their hegemonic influence can only be disrupted through intentional work as individuals, within relationships, and in the context of building power together. Through coaching, identity-based caucusing work, and team-building practices, Marc supports honest transformation. He is committed to supporting his fellow white people, men, and cis people in recognizing how they might be impeding change, or challenging the way internalized systems of hierarchy undermine transformation. Marc’s political education comes through many years of involvement in grassroots organizing, feminist and left study groups, and committed personal development as a white, cisgendered man striving to be in anti-racist, feminist praxis.

Participating as an educator and organizer in political collectives, activist groups, childcare and worker cooperatives, Marc has honed his skill as a listener and communicator through the most challenging of dialogues. He recognizes how skillful navigation of difficult conversations and conflict mediation can astronomically increase an organization’s effectiveness.

Marc was born in England, and has spent the last 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He converted his small catering business into a worker owned cooperative. He has two amazing kids that he tries to spend as much time as possible with. He really wishes that he liked to garden.