Communities that work aren't luck. They're designed.
The difference between communities that thrive and those that fade isn't expertise or commitment — it's design, facilitation, and sustained attention. That's the work we do.
Fifteen years of practice, not theory.
Community Works Collective grew out of fifteen years at Participate, where we designed and sustained learning communities across education, nonprofit, and industry — worldwide.
Along the way we issued hundreds of thousands of digital credentials and convened networks spanning dozens of institutions. We learned what makes communities of practice actually work — and what quietly kills them.
That experience is the foundation of everything we do now: the consulting practice, and the products we build on it.
The people behind the practice.
Mark Otter
Mark leads Community Works Collective's work with nonprofits, education systems, and networks to design communities of practice, learning ecosystems, and credentialing systems that support distributed leadership. Before founding CWC, he was CEO of Participate, building community-centered platforms for social learning and digital credentials. He started his career as an educator, and that grounding still shapes his work today.
Julie Keane
Dr. Julie Keane focuses on open learning design, research, and building recognition systems that hold up to scrutiny. As Chief Learning Officer at Participate, she led research and evaluation across all of Participate's programs; before that, she was Associate Project Director at the Center for Children and Technology at EDC. She holds a Ph.D. in education from UNC Chapel Hill.
Don Labonte
Don spent over six years at Participate, most recently as Head of Creative Services, after designing learning experiences to grow community engagement as Senior CS Strategist. Before that, he researched how expertise is shared in family learning environments at the University of Washington, and co-directed Convergence Academies for Chicago Public Schools. That combination of community design, research, and school-system experience informs how he approaches systems convening today.
Sound like people you'd want in your corner?
Tell us about your organization and what you're trying to build.
Start a conversation