Marty McConnell. Marty’s first job was in the mail room of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, during the summer she also learned to drive. While she has never lost her love for organizing office supplies, she did attempt to escape the family legacy of nonprofit work by spending several years as a public relations consultant and then pursuing her MFA in creative writing. Despite these efforts, she brings to ASG years of experience running strategy and resource development programs for nonprofits and facilitating trainings and workshops for youth and adults in positions including Director of Resource Development at Alternatives, Inc., Director of Strategic Advancement at the Partnership for After School Education, and Program Director of Urban Word NYC. 

She helps groups and individuals envision and build powerful, planful, purpose-driven organizations and lives. Grounded in the tenets of Appreciative Inquiry and more than 20 years of experience with and within nonprofit organizations ranging from front-line roles to executive leadership teams to coaching and consulting, Marty leads projects from a values-centric, equity-focused perspective. Her expertise in strategic planning, team culture transformation, organizational language development and alignment, and systems development make her a valued resource for organizations large and small in a range of fields.

Since co-founding Appreciative Solutions Group in 2014, she has worked with organizations nationwide to assess and unify around their true needs, purpose, and direction; create and operationalize actionable, aspirational plans and systems; build meaningful connection between people, teams, and organizations; and prepare thoughtfully for and move smoothly through leadership transitions.

Along with her practical, lived understanding of how teams and organizations function at their best and their worst, Marty brings to bear on her work the creative force of her professional writing practice as well as her studies in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy and other human growth-focused methodologies.

She is a certified facilitator for racial healing circles through the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) initiative, and continues to co-facilitate the Critical Conversations @ Work: Anti-Racism process which she co-created with Gregory Geffrard in 2020 through the Chicago Poetry Center. She teaches Advanced Grant Writing and Grants Management through DePaul University.

Kai Castillo. Kai is a first-generation Latina, artist, and proud product of Chicago’s youth programming. Her early experiences in nonprofit spaces shaped her values of care, creativity, and collective responsibility – principles that continue to guide her work today. Over the years, Kai has worn many hats including artist, operations lead, and events manager, stepping into roles that call for creative problem-solving and thoughtful system design. Her approach is rooted in listening, troubleshooting, and improving how things work for people, for organizations, and for the communities they serve. Recently, Kai served as a national grant panelist for Kresge Arts in Detroit, using both her lived and creative experience to uplift emerging artists and community-driven work. Kai leads with thoughtfulness, flexibility, and a deep commitment to making the spaces she's in more expansive and accessible. 

Mariah Neuroth. Mariah is the extroverted half of the ASG co-founding team. She brings to her work over a decade of experience as a non-profit executive, strategy consultant, professional development trainer, executive coach, program developer, project manager and event planner.

She began her nonprofit career working with refugee youth through the organization now known as RefugeeOne. She helped to build from its inception the Interfaith Youth Core, where as Senior Program Director she created curricula, managed an exponentially growing staff, and traveled the world with young people establishing meaningful connections across lines of ethnicity, faith, and background. As Chief Program Officer at Umoja Student Development Corporation and Producing Director at Young Chicago Authors, she built powerful teams and the systems to support them while developing and implementing innovative platforms for young people to grow, express themselves, and exercise their power. As the Chicago Reader’s Director of Innovation, she guided the visioning, development, and implementation of new projects and systems to support the organization’s growth and thriving through its transition from a for-profit to a non-profit.

Her work sits at the intersection of culture and community, impacting staff, talent, spaces, programs, and events with those values.  She works alongside cultural institutions, mission driven companies, artists and musicians, and event spaces to build authentic connections among clients, staff, participants, donors, communities, and the missions that unite them.

Through Mariah’s work with ASG, organizations have delved deep into the questions of what allows their staff to succeed, and used that information to create systems, policies, and structures. She has led organization-wide initiatives to reduce silos among teams and departments, piloted multi-year citywide projects using the arts to bring people together, helped organizations identify and live out their core values, coached individuals into unforeseen levels of productivity and effectiveness in their work, and deepened understanding within and among teams to maximize their functioning. 

Gregory Geffrard. Gregory is an educator, scholar, activist, actor, and facilitator dedicated to the empowerment of historically dehumanized populations and the creation of opportunities for radical joy. Since moving to Chicago in 2012, he has dedicated his time and energy to decolonizing spaces and leading conversations around true equity in institutions, organizations, and their leadership. He has partnered with the Chicago Inclusion Project, Steppenwolf Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Old Town School of Folk Music, and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education to facilitate challenging conversations, create curriculum and formulate initiatives to aid in the creation of brave spaces and the development of the systems and commitments needed to maintain them. He co-developed and piloted the Critical Conversations @ Work: Anti-Racism process with Marty McConnell through the Chicago Poetry Center.