MIKE BELL

Mike Bell is a management consultant specializing in communications, group animation and community and organizational development. He's honed his skills as a public speaker, writer, trainer and group animator in a wide variety of work environments.

After spending a dozen years with a Roman Catholic monastic community, Mike worked as a priest in New York City and Baltimore. He gave retreats, served as a chaplain in jails and hospitals, and worked in various inner-city poverty programs. In the late 60s he went to Paris, France were he served as a student chaplain on a large campus for international students. He worked with students during the student riots that broke out in May of 1968.

In the 70s, Mike worked as a community organizer on Milwaukee's East Side counter-culture community, as a consultant with an architectural firm in Vancouver, and as an administrator for two community health centres in northern British Columbia. In 1980 Mike moved to Baffin Island in the Eastern Arctic and worked for three years as the Superintendent of Social Services for the Government of the Northwest Territories. In 1983 he became the Director of Policy, Training and Information Systems for the Department of Social Services in Yellowknife and, in 1985, worked as senior consultant for the NWT Housing Corporation.

In 1986 he set up his own consulting firm, Inukshuk Management Consultants, in Yellowknife. Since then he's worked with many government departments, private companies, aboriginal organizations, and community organizations both in the North and in the western provinces. In 1989, as Project Coordinator for the Government of the Northwest Territories' Special Committee on the Northern Economy, he wrote THE SCONE REPORT.

Mike is an expert group animator and trainer. He runs small-groups workshops and focus group sessions using his storyboarding technique. He also works with large groups (30-100 participants) and runs Future Search and Open Space Conferences. Most of these are community-based planning activities to develop community visions, wellness strategies and economic development strategies. In recent years, Mike's has spent most of his time doing community development work in northern aboriginal communities. He provides foundation workshops and organizational retreats in community development, strategic planning, board development, leadership training and teambuilding. He also provides a variety of communication workshops.

Mike has an M.A in Communications from the University of Wisconsin, and an M.A. in Theology from St. Paul's University in Ottawa. He has done postgraduate work in communications and theology in a number of universities in the U.S. and France.

Mike Bell, Principal
Inukshuk Management Consultants
5404 50A Avenue, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories X1A 1G3
Yellowknife, N.W.T. X1A 1G3
Phone: (867) 873-5042 Fax: (867) 873-9169: E-mail: mikebell@internorth.com

 

<<Many years ago, in my previous career as a monk and priest, I was living in a monastery in New York--at the same time as Tom Berry who was more or less persona non grata because of his "radical views".  I was a theology student preparing for the priesthood but the theology they were teaching us was terribly outdated and pretty well irrelevant. However, there was one bright light and source of inspiration. Some "underground" theological tracts were coming into the monastery and being read sub rosa by myself and my fellow students.  I was very impressed by the context of those tracts.  Great Stuff--and it certainly helped shape my thinking.  But we were forbidden by our superiors to read the tracts because they were being produced and circulated through the "underground network" by a person, our superiors called, "that 'wacko priest' working down in Spanish Harlem."  The Wacko Priest was Ivan Illich. Ever since that time I've been a great believer in the power of circulating ideas through informal networks.>>