Chris Martin '10: From Friction to Flow: Operationalizing Empathy

Chris is an LCC alum who works with organizations and communities to make decisions that actually match how people work, what systems demand, and the realities they serve. Over the past decade, they worked across agencies and consultant networks in the nonprofit and social impact space, often stepping in where strong intentions were undermined by unclear processes, conflicting priorities, and unrealistic expectations placed on staff and volunteers who were already carrying complexity without shared language or support.Chris has intentionally built their work outside the content and visibility economy. Instead of relying on constant posting, paid marketing, or a polished web presence, they engage in spaces where people are already thinking deeply, amplify leaders across disciplines, and stay in conversation through collaboration and dialogue, often across roles and perspectives that do not usually speak to one another. All of their work has emerged through trust, peer relationships, and referral, modelling an alternative to burnout driven and transactional approaches to impact.A Nonprofit Hive Trusted Partner, Chris has supported organizations working across gender and identity, youth mental health, and humanitarian and conflict affected contexts. Their approach is shaped by academic experiences across international development, peace-building, and psychology at McGill University, where they studied how power, conflict, and social systems shape outcomes on the ground, and how change actually happens when people are under pressure.Within the past year, Chris founded Empowering Empathy, a federal nonprofit, to carry this relationship centred work into shared infrastructure, knowledge, and capacity for the sector. Through coaching, advising, and facilitation, they support people and organizations leading change in imperfect conditions, helping teams move from friction toward shared clarity, steadier decision making, and ways of working that can actually hold the impact they are trying to create.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.