Carla Berg-Nelson
Communications Consultant and Organization Weaver in Tucson, Arizona
Summary
A Bay Area native transplanted to Tucson, Carla has long been a "factivist" using strategic communications and organization development to stimulate healthy change. After finishing at Berkeley, her first focus was on expanding public access to legal services and she led teams that successfully lobbied lawmakers in CA and DC while serving on state and national Bar committees. Several roles on boards and commissions followed, and later led launching a firm that managed communications and marketing for hundreds of clients in business and government on projects ranging from land use proposals to business plans and many successful election campaigns. She also founded a non-profit group that creatively raised multiple $M for regional after school programs, and built a consortium of interim pros for C-suite posts. By the 1990s, her wide angle lens plus an agile pen led to a multi-year post as a sci-tech columnist for a large suburban daily near Silicon Valley exploring the personal impacts of the emerging Internet. At the same time, family health sparked years of self-help mentoring, clinician teamwork and patient advocacy, including nearly a decade hosting the Mind-Brain Sciences forum on CompuServe. In 2006, she relocated to Tucson when her engineer husband retired from Silicon Valley.
Present
Carla remains a free-range analyst and a trusted advisor, drawing on decades of strategic consulting to mentor, trouble- shoot, co-create and innovate with decison-makers of many kinds at pivotal times.
Recent highlights:
..||| 2008: Osler Fellow at the University of Arizona, a post designed to elicit expertise from a pool of veteran professionals. Has served as advisor to the medical school, the psychology dept. and the school of business.
..||| 2009-2011: In partnership with a former UC chancellor, served as COO of a statewide campaign for green energy in public transit.
..||| 2007-present: Teams with leaders in an award-winning school district on leadership seminars for gifted high school students
..||| 2012-2017: Inaugural panel of citizen grant reviewers for NIH and PCORI; patient reviewer on rapid response teams for BMJ clinical studies; Stanford MedX panelist
..||| 2012-14: Designed, deployed the @s4pm forum (participatorymedicine.org), the group’s first online member community
..||| 2014-18: After serving on Board of @s4pm, now an innovation catalyst, advocate for healthcare quality and consultant to communities that encourage and enable partnerships with patients