Profile: Rut Martinez-Alicea, Hybrid Thinking Consulting
Learning through collaboration
Rut Martinez-Alicea, principal of Hybrid Thinking Consulting, LLC, creates and organizes spaces for people to learn from one another. “Collaborative knowledge creation” is just another way of saying the best way to learn is in an environment that enables the sharing of life experiences and expertise.
At Hybrid Thinking Consulting, Rut’s three core training modules are anti-oppression/racism, intercultural competence, and communication skills. She aims to promote more egalitarian ways of learning. “The traditional model assumes the trainer pours knowledge into people, who are seen as empty vessels,” Rut said in our recent Skype call. “Knowledge is power. I don’t want to repeat oppression strategies. Participatory and peer learning dismantles the teacher-student power dynamic. People learn from each other, my role as a facilitator is to organize, reorganize and reframe the expertise in the room.”
How does collaborative learning work? “It assumes your life story makes you an expert,” Rut said. “I create an environment where attendees listen and share, and where every individual learns from everyone else. As a facilitator I make sure the expertise is organized and re-framed in a way that’s respectful of everyone’s expertise and that’s focused on the subject at hand with manageable amount of information.”
A graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, Rut complemented her degree in psychology and fine arts with master’s program studies in art therapy at Illinois State University and Marylhurst University. Her focus on power and group dynamics steered her, “almost naturally”, toward gender-based violence.
Before launching her business in February of 2009, she worked for nine years with Portland’s Latino community as volunteer, translator, trainer, and curriculum developer. At Proyecto UNICA, a domestic violence and sexual assault program for Latina survivors of El Programa Hispano-Catholic Charities, she started the region’s first 24-hour crisis line for Spanish speakers, and managed six other projects and a team of 14.
Rut’s latest project is leading the nonprofit Uniting to Understand Racism (UUR). The organization focuses on understanding racism and its consequences. Rut is applying the same collaborative learning approach at UUR: she’s now organizing community spaces for interracial dialog, where groups of people explore their racial biases and their roles in perpetuating racism.
Rut is now developing the consulting element of her business – she helps companies improve their internal communication. “All obstacles to team work involve communication,” Rut said. With her assistance, businesses build communication as a basic competence. When employees have the language and guidelines on communication, businesses can pursue and externally communicate their mission clearly and consistently.
(July 2009)
