As co-founder of BTU, Diana facilitates intentional spaces. She helps companies increase resilience and transform their relationship to failure, while deepening their sense of belonging and readiness for the metaverses. She has decades of experience utilizing play and reflective conversations to create embodied experiences that strengthen empathy and connection. A certified facilitator with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, she expertly asks the right questions at the right time, holds space for all voices to be heard, and utilizes multiple strategies to maximize learning for all. As a professed non-gamer, Diana is the canary in the coal mine of the metaverses. Using her superpower of resilience outside of her comfort zone–she identifies the hurdles to adoption and generates expanded awareness about when, how, and why we work and play in the metaverses. She always has at least ten books on her night stand. She has the knack of a switchboard operator for connecting people and resources. In addition to running BTU, she’s done everything from backpack guiding for the Boy Scouts, reporting for a small town paper, yoga instruction, performance, catering and culinary education, to building one of the largest community gardens in North Carolina.

🐙👾 I navigate the world in ways that other people might call strange, or nonconformist, or even risky. 👽🤖 Through years of studying how other people meet their desires, I’ve found that my mind runs in patterns that are... different. It is easy for me to think of this as a handicap. But once I began to embrace what I call my “chaotic magical awareness,” I realized that my natural aptitude for wonder and play can benefit both individuals and organizations — simply by my ability to bring out “weirdo” qualities in others. This is why they call me: Abundance Magician✨. Chaos Weaver🌻. Muscle Mover💪🏽. Game Keeper🕹️. Redesigning Communication → A lot of the problems that plague people and organizations are also crippling to me. For example, when I’m under stress I gravitate towards a results-focused approach (an attempt to control or predict outcomes) rather than remaining connected. In other words, I stop listening. Learning to recognize and manage this tendency in myself led me to a problem that many people believe is impossible to solve: How can one remain present while under stress? It can be done. Through wonder and play. The Play Solution → When I am with others, exploring the world from a lens of play, anything seems possible. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way all or even most of the time. We live in an age in which functionality and hard work are placed at such a premium that work’ often becomes bad work, and functionality itself suffers. (This paradox is lost on much of the business world. Organizations and corporations are only slowly waking up to the idea that “functionality” may not always look like a person working on a spreadsheet.) I realized long ago that almost anything that brings me back into the present moment will help return me to a creative and cooperative flow. A game🎱, hacky sack🦶🏼, throwing a disc🥏, making music🎹 — all of these are much more powerful tools than one might think. In addition to conventional play, for many years I have been using game design to solve “real-world” problems (be they individual, relational, societal, or environmental). My version of game design does not mean writing code. It means figuring out, preferably in a group, how to turn a problem into a puzzle, and then into a game. If this works, then overwhelment vanishes, and “players” (a.k.a people) are empowered enough to feel around the rough edges of a problem, perhaps for the first time. They’re on their way to making actual change. 🎲I play every day, it keeps my brain from the numb.. join me in game as "sheepsknuckles".🎲

As co-founder of BTU, Diana facilitates intentional spaces. She helps companies increase resilience and transform their relationship to failure, while deepening their sense of belonging and readiness for the metaverses. She has decades of experience utilizing play and reflective conversations to create embodied experiences that strengthen empathy and connection. A certified facilitator with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, she expertly asks the right questions at the right time, holds space for all voices to be heard, and utilizes multiple strategies to maximize learning for all. As a professed non-gamer, Diana is the canary in the coal mine of the metaverses. Using her superpower of resilience outside of her comfort zone–she identifies the hurdles to adoption and generates expanded awareness about when, how, and why we work and play in the metaverses. She always has at least ten books on her night stand. She has the knack of a switchboard operator for connecting people and resources. In addition to running BTU, she’s done everything from backpack guiding for the Boy Scouts, reporting for a small town paper, yoga instruction, performance, catering and culinary education, to building one of the largest community gardens in North Carolina.

🐙👾 I navigate the world in ways that other people might call strange, or nonconformist, or even risky. 👽🤖 Through years of studying how other people meet their desires, I’ve found that my mind runs in patterns that are... different. It is easy for me to think of this as a handicap. But once I began to embrace what I call my “chaotic magical awareness,” I realized that my natural aptitude for wonder and play can benefit both individuals and organizations — simply by my ability to bring out “weirdo” qualities in others. This is why they call me: Abundance Magician✨. Chaos Weaver🌻. Muscle Mover💪🏽. Game Keeper🕹️. Redesigning Communication → A lot of the problems that plague people and organizations are also crippling to me. For example, when I’m under stress I gravitate towards a results-focused approach (an attempt to control or predict outcomes) rather than remaining connected. In other words, I stop listening. Learning to recognize and manage this tendency in myself led me to a problem that many people believe is impossible to solve: How can one remain present while under stress? It can be done. Through wonder and play. The Play Solution → When I am with others, exploring the world from a lens of play, anything seems possible. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way all or even most of the time. We live in an age in which functionality and hard work are placed at such a premium that work’ often becomes bad work, and functionality itself suffers. (This paradox is lost on much of the business world. Organizations and corporations are only slowly waking up to the idea that “functionality” may not always look like a person working on a spreadsheet.) I realized long ago that almost anything that brings me back into the present moment will help return me to a creative and cooperative flow. A game🎱, hacky sack🦶🏼, throwing a disc🥏, making music🎹 — all of these are much more powerful tools than one might think. In addition to conventional play, for many years I have been using game design to solve “real-world” problems (be they individual, relational, societal, or environmental). My version of game design does not mean writing code. It means figuring out, preferably in a group, how to turn a problem into a puzzle, and then into a game. If this works, then overwhelment vanishes, and “players” (a.k.a people) are empowered enough to feel around the rough edges of a problem, perhaps for the first time. They’re on their way to making actual change. 🎲I play every day, it keeps my brain from the numb.. join me in game as "sheepsknuckles".🎲