• Facilitator for Inspired Change
• ConferenceWeaver
• Presenter of Opportunities
• Coach of Unique Approach
• Storyteller & Myth Maker

The key strands of SOAR's work are:

• People technologies for emerging and positive change

  The 'soft stuff' is the hard stuff in any business. Using the methodologies of Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Open Space and a variety of narrative practices people are supported to find their strengths, refocus their vision, name their goals, and create powerful strategies for taking hold of success. These are powerful people technologies that forge new ways of working and bring out the best in people.

• Innovative and transformative processes for groups of all sizes

  Looking for ways to kick-start your future fast? The answer lies in working together with in-house teams and organisational networks to create events and facilitate meetings that generate cohesiveness and action. Mary-Alice is a ConferenceWeaver, adept at creating meeting spaces that get results in innovative and interactive ways.

• Powerful questions and creative sparks to galvanise focused action

  Wondering how leadership can take hold? Working with the key skills of powerful questioning and innovative creativity assists leaders at every level to refocus their visions, re-energise their teams and open the door to new fields of action and success.

• Stories for the heart, mind, soul and the journey

  At the core of every success lies a powerful story. Today's organisations need a powerful core story that will be a beacon for success and a touchstone for times when the going gets tough. Today's leaders need to be able to tell that story well and use stories that build rapport, create vision and reinforce values. At any moment, the right story can motivate, inspire, and transform and finding, developing and learning how to tell these is a key skill.

Mary-Alice Arthur is a facilitator for inspired change.

The word 'facilitator' comes from the Latin root 'facile', 'to make easy'. Mary-Alice's key focus is in creating spaces for people to do their best work together. 'Inspired' harkens to the ability she has to help people to look at their situation from the perspective of positive possibility. 'Change' comes when people are supported first to honour, and then move from their strengths, to common and then higher ground.

The name of Mary-Alice's business reflects the value she places on the ability to take a fresh look at things. SOAR stands for 'Significant Orientations, Amazing Results' - it's how you look at things and what you choose to do with what you see, that matters.

Mary-Alice is New Zealand's leading narrative practitioner, and at the heart of her work is the practice of recognising, working with and transforming the personal and group stories, conversations and inquiries that impact on success. Her powerful results from a Telecom merger project were written up in the 2006 book Wake Me When the Data is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (ed: Lori Silverman).

Her work is both practical and transformational, demonstrating the belief that the wisdom is in the group, our stories are the key to unleashing our knowledge and life is too short to have a boring mission or a boring meeting.

In her almost 25 year career in New Zealand, Mary-Alice has worked for Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, the New Zealand Wool Board, and the New Zealand Tourism Board, where she pioneered both Event Tourism and the internationally recognised KiwiHost Customer Service training programme, training 75,000 people in the first five years and launching similar programmes in a variety of other countries.

Mary-Alice has been a facilitator since 1996 and her clients are found throughout the public and private sectors and overseas. She is a sought after speaker and presenter and she is also a professional storyteller, having performed at the Fringe Festival of the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington and in festivals overseas.

Mary-Alice is currently working on The 4 Million Dreams Project, an initiative aimed at encouraging people's dreams and engaging the population of New Zealand in collectively creating a new story for the country's future.