Christine Whitney Sanchez

Christine Whitney Sanchez
Partner, Innovation Partners International   

Christine Whitney Sanchez has collaborated with leaders across four continents to build the capacity for distributed leadership and strategic collaboration.

For 25 years, Christine had an independent counseling and training practice that focused on change from the inside out.  She built on those skills in her organization and community change consultancy and has become a pioneer in large-scale transformation. 

Since 2009, Christine’s expertise in strength-based change and transition, strategic collaboration, leadership development, economic and workforce development and citizen engagement has led her to work with the Arizona Rural Development Council, Cochise County, Pepperdine University, Maricopa Community College District, Girl Scouts-Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, the National Center for Teacher Education, Prescott College, University of California at Santa Cruz, and Rio Salado Community College.

The creator of Methods for Strategic Collaboration™, Christine has coordinated dozens of large-scale transformation projects for corporate, government and social sector groups, has trained hundreds of facilitators around the world in strength-based approaches for self-organizing in their own communities and has facilitated some of the largest intergenerational conversations in the world for the Girl Scouts of the USA.

In 2011, she became a partner in Innovation Partners International.  IPI works with individuals, organizations, networks, and communities to ignite, implement and continually nurture positive change.  We work with leaders who are embracing the challenges of the emerging new economy.  IPI collaborates with leaders who are grappling with complex systems problems, exponential change, ambiguity and uncertainty.  As world-renowned pioneers of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and related strength-based, high-engagement approaches to planning, design, innovation, collaboration and stakeholder and community engagement, we have a rich history of engaging change leaders at all levels to tap into and mobilize their strengths and assets to create the future they most want. The deceptively simple premise that people evolve in the direction of the questions they ask forms the foundation of our work. We invite people to inquire into moments of exceptional functioning, then to imagine new possibilities, which build upon the best of what is. This process unleashes creativity and opens the doors to innovation and inspired action.  The outcomes:  hope, possibility, confidence, energy, collaboration, exponential change, and focused innovation.

Christine holds a B.A. from the University of Hawaii and a Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University. She has engaged stakeholders in strategic collaboration and generated new opportunities to increase the triple bottom line of people, prosperity and the planet with the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, AZ, Huron, SD, and Aspen, CO, Arizona Rural Development Council, Arizona Department of Economic Security, Maricopa County Youth Service Bureau, Financial Planning Association, Arizona League of Cities and Towns, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Facilitators Network Singapore, Appreciative Inquiry Network UK, KaosPilots Business School in Denmark, American Red Cross, Northrop Grumman, Motorola, Make-A-Wish Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, La Liga de La Leche de Latino America, Arizona Diamondbacks Sales, Girl Scouts of the USA, and the United States Postal Service.  She serves as Vice-President of the Open Space Institute–US Board of Directors and is an Oxford Leadership Academy Fellow.