Weaving Everyday Insights into Meaningful Change
We collaborate with organizations, partnerships, and communities to transform everyday insights into collective wisdom and shape strategies to bring a more just and positive world into being.
At Optimistic Anthropology, we collaborate with organizations, partnerships, and communities to transform individuals’ every day insights into a group’s collective wisdom. We help you envision the more just and positive world you’re trying to create, and co-develop and try out strategies to help bring that vision into being.
Our Offerings
As anthropologists, facilitators, emergent learners, and systems changemakers with experience working in multiple sectors, here are the ways we can work together:
Developing Emergent Learning Cultures & Strategies.
In a busy and rapidly changing world, individuals and groups are always learning. Yet they often struggle to share, make meaning of, and integrate insights so they generate collective wisdom and more effective strategies. We partner with teams to build cultures of curiosity and real-time learning that navigate complexity for meaningful social change.
Starting with your existing strengths, we help evolve your team's mindsets, skillsets, and heartsets. Together, we co-create processes that enable everyone to adapt strategy as conditions change—unlocking your group's full potential for creating a more just and equitable world.
Developing Emergent Learning Cultures & Strategies.
In a busy and rapidly changing world, individuals and groups are always learning. Yet they often struggle to share, make meaning of, and integrate insights so they generate collective wisdom and more effective strategies. We partner with teams to build cultures of curiosity and real-time learning that navigate complexity for meaningful social change.
Starting with your existing strengths, we help evolve your team's mindsets, skillsets, and heartsets. Together, we co-create processes that enable everyone to adapt strategy as conditions change—unlocking your group's full potential for creating a more just and equitable world.
Developing Emergent Learning Cultures & Strategies.
In a busy and rapidly changing world, individuals and groups are always learning. Yet they often struggle to share, make meaning of, and integrate insights so they generate collective wisdom and more effective strategies. We partner with teams to build cultures of curiosity and real-time learning that navigate complexity for meaningful social change.
Starting with your existing strengths, we help evolve your team's mindsets, skillsets, and heartsets. Together, we co-create processes that enable everyone to adapt strategy as conditions change—unlocking your group's full potential for creating a more just and equitable world.
Designing & Facilitating Learning Experiences
For people, communities, and organizations to thrive, they need intentional learning spaces that expand understanding and illuminate new possibilities for change. We create generative workshops, learning communities, and leadership programs that build meaningful connections among participants.
Our carefully designed experiences can help deepen understanding of dynamic issues, communities, and systems—helping diverse groups develop the collective wisdom needed to navigate change together.
Designing & Facilitating Learning Experiences
For people, communities, and organizations to thrive, they need intentional learning spaces that expand understanding and illuminate new possibilities for change. We create generative workshops, learning communities, and leadership programs that build meaningful connections among participants.
Our carefully designed experiences can help deepen understanding of dynamic issues, communities, and systems—helping diverse groups develop the collective wisdom needed to navigate change together.
Designing & Facilitating Learning Experiences
For people, communities, and organizations to thrive, they need intentional learning spaces that expand understanding and illuminate new possibilities for change. We create generative workshops, learning communities, and leadership programs that build meaningful connections among participants.
Our carefully designed experiences can help deepen understanding of dynamic issues, communities, and systems—helping diverse groups develop the collective wisdom needed to navigate change together.
Dialoguing as an Independent Learning Partner
Leaders and small teams often need a trusted outside perspective to enhance their work. As your Independent Learning Partner, we serve as a thoughtful sounding board, asking powerful questions that clarify thinking, unlock new possibilities, and illuminate paths forward.
Our collaborative dialogue helps you transform everyday insights into actionable wisdom for navigating complexity.
Dialoguing as an Independent Learning Partner
Leaders and small teams often need a trusted outside perspective to enhance their work. As your Independent Learning Partner, we serve as a thoughtful sounding board, asking powerful questions that clarify thinking, unlock new possibilities, and illuminate paths forward.
Our collaborative dialogue helps you transform everyday insights into actionable wisdom for navigating complexity.
Dialoguing as an Independent Learning Partner
Leaders and small teams often need a trusted outside perspective to enhance their work. As your Independent Learning Partner, we serve as a thoughtful sounding board, asking powerful questions that clarify thinking, unlock new possibilities, and illuminate paths forward.
Our collaborative dialogue helps you transform everyday insights into actionable wisdom for navigating complexity.
Delivering Workshops & Webinars
Organizations tackling complex social challenges require engaging and accessible entry points to powerful frameworks and methodologies that can transform their approach. Without structured opportunities to explore and apply concepts like Emergent Learning, teams often remain stuck in conventional thinking patterns that limit their impact.
We offer a suite of engaging workshops, webinars, and series on specialized topics including Emergent Learning, Theory of Change for Systems Transformation, and Multi-Sector Partnerships for Social Change. Each offering can be thoughtfully tailored to your specific audience and learning goals, creating opportunities for collective discovery and practical application.
Delivering Workshops & Webinars
Organizations tackling complex social challenges require engaging and accessible entry points to powerful frameworks and methodologies that can transform their approach. Without structured opportunities to explore and apply concepts like Emergent Learning, teams often remain stuck in conventional thinking patterns that limit their impact.
We offer a suite of engaging workshops, webinars, and series on specialized topics including Emergent Learning, Theory of Change for Systems Transformation, and Multi-Sector Partnerships for Social Change. Each offering can be thoughtfully tailored to your specific audience and learning goals, creating opportunities for collective discovery and practical application.
Delivering Workshops & Webinars
Organizations tackling complex social challenges require engaging and accessible entry points to powerful frameworks and methodologies that can transform their approach. Without structured opportunities to explore and apply concepts like Emergent Learning, teams often remain stuck in conventional thinking patterns that limit their impact.
We offer a suite of engaging workshops, webinars, and series on specialized topics including Emergent Learning, Theory of Change for Systems Transformation, and Multi-Sector Partnerships for Social Change. Each offering can be thoughtfully tailored to your specific audience and learning goals, creating opportunities for collective discovery and practical application.
Want to explore working together?
Want to explore working together?
Want to explore working together?
About Our Founder
Hi, I’m Alison Gold — Chief Optimistic Anthropologist, travel-enthusiast, amateur baker, and someone who believes that systems can change when we learn together. I founded Optimistic Anthropology in 2017 to bring my work and educational background -- as an anthropologist, emergent learner, systems-changemaker, and community-weaver -- to organizations and collaborations wanting to partner with a consultant who will co-create and facilitate processes and strategies to enable the creation of a more just and positive world.
Over the years, I’ve worked across philanthropy, government, and nonprofits in the U.S. And now my consulting practice (and life) enables me to work internationally, too. This gives me the chance to learn about and explore connections across seemingly disparate areas of social change—from nuclear threat reduction to health inequity, genocide prevention to urban poverty. I consistently see common threads across these fields of work that I believe can help changemakers better understand how systems and institutions and communities came to face the challenges they do, and how people can collaborate and learn together to bring a different world into being.
A Little Birdie Told Us…
Read what some of our clients, collaborators, and colleagues have to say about working with Optimistic Anthropology and our founder. To make this section a bit more fun, we've illustrated the testimonials with photos of birds. Alison took all these snaps during her travels.
"I can't imagine where we would be without her! Her joyful energy, insightful questions, and her wisdom have helped us move our program forward in a way I couldn't have imagined."
We have worked with Alison and Optimistic Anthropology on a number of different projects since 2017 - we actually started with her on one project and she added such value that we asked her to work with us on another project. Thanks to Alison, we have been able to produce a theory of change for our program that has had hundreds of ripple effects into how we do our work. The work on the theory of change helped us clarify some of our implicit learning goals, and led us to develop curriculum to directly address these goals. Alison has helped us dig deep and through her advising, we have made connections I didn't know were there. It is so clear that she cares deeply about the work she does, and her love and joy shine through.
Director, UC Berkeley UCSF Joint Medical Program and Former Director PLUS program, UCSF
"I can't imagine where we would be without her! Her joyful energy, insightful questions, and her wisdom have helped us move our program forward in a way I couldn't have imagined."
We’ve worked with Alison and Optimistic Anthropology on several projects since 2017. She started on one and added so much value that we invited her onto another. Thanks to Alison, we developed a theory of change for our program that has rippled across how we work. That process helped clarify our implicit learning goals and led us to create curriculum that directly addresses them. Alison’s guidance has helped us uncover connections we didn’t see before. It’s clear she cares deeply about her work—her love and joy truly shine through.
Director, UC Berkeley UCSF Joint Medical Program and Former Director PLUS program, UCSF
"I can't imagine where we would be without her! Her joyful energy, insightful questions, and her wisdom have helped us move our program forward in a way I couldn't have imagined."
We have worked with Alison and Optimistic Anthropology on a number of different projects since 2017 - we actually started with her on one project and she added such value that we asked her to work with us on another project. Thanks to Alison, we have been able to produce a theory of change for our program that has had hundreds of ripple effects into how we do our work. The work on the theory of change helped us clarify some of our implicit learning goals, and led us to develop curriculum to directly address these goals. Alison has helped us dig deep and through her advising, we have made connections I didn't know were there. It is so clear that she cares deeply about the work she does, and her love and joy shine through.
Director, UC Berkeley UCSF Joint Medical Program and Former Director PLUS program, UCSF
"Curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can."
Optimistic Anthropology guided our team in exploring and applying new frameworks. Our key takeaways – work from good learning questions, frame ideas as hypotheses, and articulate held assumptions – have transformed our practice. Alison's meditation that curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can struck a chord and has opened us up to new ways of approaching our work. We've replaced the feeling that we need to offer solutions with an intent to facilitate learning.
Partner, City Scale
"Curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can."
Optimistic Anthropology guided our team in exploring and applying new frameworks. Our key takeaways – work from good learning questions, frame ideas as hypotheses, and articulate held assumptions – have transformed our practice. Alison's meditation that curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can struck a chord and has opened us up to new ways of approaching our work. We've replaced the feeling that we need to offer solutions with an intent to facilitate learning.
Partner, City Scale
"Curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can."
Optimistic Anthropology guided our team in exploring and applying new frameworks. Our key takeaways – work from good learning questions, frame ideas as hypotheses, and articulate held assumptions – have transformed our practice. Alison's meditation that curiosity takes you places that certainty almost never can struck a chord and has opened us up to new ways of approaching our work. We've replaced the feeling that we need to offer solutions with an intent to facilitate learning.
Partner, City Scale
"They came with humility, curiosity, and blew us away with brilliance."
Working with Optimistic Anthropology is one of the smartest decision our organization has made. They were able to tackle a fairly complicated project, and from start to finish ensured that the project was organized, timely, and at the highest level possible. They were intentional every step of the way, and came to the project with genuine humility and curiosity, despite their many years of experience. Every check-in, deliverable review, and phone call had a clear agenda and desired outcomes, and was an incredibly safe place where collaboration flourished. Between Alison’s anthropological roots, and Alice’s vast experience in adult learning, they are an absolute dream team!
Senior Program Manager, Black Business Accelerator, Amazon and Former Program Director, U.S. Soccer Foundation
"They came with humility, curiosity, and blew us away with brilliance."
Working with Optimistic Anthropology is one of the smartest decision our organization has made. They were able to tackle a fairly complicated project, and from start to finish ensured that the project was organized, timely, and at the highest level possible. They were intentional every step of the way, and came to the project with genuine humility and curiosity, despite their many years of experience. Every check-in, deliverable review, and phone call had a clear agenda and desired outcomes, and was an incredibly safe place where collaboration flourished. Between Alison’s anthropological roots, and Alice’s vast experience in adult learning, they are an absolute dream team!
Senior Program Manager, Black Business Accelerator, Amazon and Former Program Director, U.S. Soccer Foundation
"They came with humility, curiosity, and blew us away with brilliance."
Working with Optimistic Anthropology is one of the smartest decision our organization has made. They were able to tackle a fairly complicated project, and from start to finish ensured that the project was organized, timely, and at the highest level possible. They were intentional every step of the way, and came to the project with genuine humility and curiosity, despite their many years of experience. Every check-in, deliverable review, and phone call had a clear agenda and desired outcomes, and was an incredibly safe place where collaboration flourished. Between Alison’s anthropological roots, and Alice’s vast experience in adult learning, they are an absolute dream team!
Senior Program Manager, Black Business Accelerator, Amazon and Former Program Director, U.S. Soccer Foundation
Subscribe to Optimistic Anthropology Newsletter
Sign up for a periodic field report from Optimistic Anthropology—featuring fresh blog posts, events worth your time, new additions to our resource collection, updates on what we're up to, and an occasional photo of our office mascot, Dimi the wonderdog!
All photos are by Alison Gold, unless noted otherwise. Content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License. For permissions, visit https://www.optimisticanthro.com/contact-us.
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Subscribe to Optimistic Anthropology Newsletter
Sign up for a periodic field report from Optimistic Anthropology—featuring fresh blog posts, events worth your time, new additions to our resource collection, updates on what we're up to, and an occasional photo of our office mascot, Dimi the wonderdog!
All photos are by Alison Gold, unless noted otherwise. Content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License. For permissions, visit https://www.optimisticanthro.com/contact-us.
Made by
Subscribe to Optimistic Anthropology Newsletter
Sign up for a periodic field report from Optimistic Anthropology—featuring fresh blog posts, events worth your time, new additions to our resource collection, updates on what we're up to, and an occasional photo of our office mascot, Dimi the wonderdog!
All photos are by Alison Gold, unless noted otherwise. Content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License. For permissions, visit https://www.optimisticanthro.com/contact-us.
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