TRUST LABS

ACCOMPANIES THE PEOPLE COMMITTED TO THEIR COMMUNITY THROUGH HARD MOMENTS.

We’re a think-and-do tank, equipping community stewards with tools, training, coaching, and peer learning networks in order to help communities be in (and stay in) relationship – especially when it's hard.

  • The dialogue to process a national or local conflict with a homogeneous audience, the speaker series on an important local tension that the people who are involved don’t attend, the neighborhood dinner that only two neighbors attend, the commission selection meeting that had the same folks that always attend town meetings .

  • Why is no one talking about that that person just said? How could we not address the recent crisis? We’re losing sight of our mission. The power dynamics here are preventing me from being honest.

  • They said they would help with this project but are always busy when we need to do something. They put up a sign in support of this issue, but when I bring how it manifests in our team, everyone ignores me. We have community norms about listening with curiosity, but whenever I’m honest, I’m shut down. 

  • t’s easier to just avoid talking about this than addressing it. I think she keeps shutting down my ideas because of what I said two weeks ago, but I’m afraid to ask. How come no one stepped in. His slack message to the full group was out of line and I’m hurting/mad/annoyed/distracted that we’re pretending like nothing is wrong. 

  • They said sorry for the harm they caused, but do they know what the harm was? What are they apologizing for? I don’t know how to reach towards this person who seems so upset with me. . 

Often, what gets in the way of good ideas is not the idea itself, or systemic barriers — however mighty they may be. It’s a failure to build, move through, and sustain healthy relationships.  

That’s where we come in. 

We're experts in adaptive leadership and relational change. We help you identify where mistrust and misunderstanding are getting you stuck, and equip you with tools and strategies to cultivate the kind of connection and community that can withstand heat and the test of time. 

In the clinic of relationships, we’re the primary care physicians, helping triage amidst crisis or diagnosing underlying issues before they become emergencies. We work with you to determine the right interventions for healing and repair, trusting you are the expert on your own context.

What we offer

One-time event design & facilitation

Hosting a conference and want to talk about something more interesting than your business cards? We’ll help you design a conversation over a shared meal that invites participants to reflect on the themes of your gathering, and to spark meaningful connection and conversation that will help sustain relationships when your gathering ends. 

Training & leadership development

Effectively mobilizing change means being able to diagnose and attend to challenges both systemically and interpersonally. The good news is that this leads to more sustained change. The bad news is that you’ll have to change too. Using the adaptive leadership framework, we offer immersive, collaborative training in relational skill-building: how to correctly diagnose what’s got you stuck, how to approach conflict as an opportunity to dig in together, practical strategies to strengthen belonging and to help you bring the right people together, and where you might be getting in your own way.

Design lab

We wouldn’t be good at our jobs if we weren’t also in the mess with you. That’s why, in addition to offering trainings and consulting services, we also take on a limited body of work where we can actively sit in the builder’s seat: cultivating deep, peer-driven communities of care at scale, where they’re needed most. 

Who we are

We’ve built peer-to-peer networks that have forged face-to-face connection and community among tens of thousands of people. We’ve guided more than a dozen communities through moments of acute and historic rupture. Now we’re helping others do the same.


  • is hellbent on creating spaces where humans can be human, out of a belief that healing is

    collective and nothing is done in isolation. She previously launched and led The Dinner Party, a platform for connecting

    grieving 20-, 30-, and early-40-somethings, and The People's Supper, which builds trust and connection among people of

    different beliefs and experiences. She is an Ashoka Fellow, and her work has been featured on OnBeing with Krista Tippett,

    NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN, CBS This Morning, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and dozens of other publications.

    She has a passion for communal living, backpacking, and good dance parties, and lives with her family in High Falls, NY.


  • is from the redwoods of Northern California and grew up amongst a group of people

    dedicated to community and service. At Trust Labs, she designs and facilitates workshops on the adaptive challenge of

    belonging in a world that increasingly incentivizes isolation. Prior to this most recent chapter, she spent 6 months traveling

    across the US as a Harvard University Sheldon Fellow talking to people about how natural disaster has shaped their

    relationship to place and belonging. She graduated from Harvard Divinity School after working as the founding Chief Program

    Officer of Lead For America. Maya seeks to infuse her work with experimentation, learning, and practice around the orienting

    question: how do we live well together?