Welcome

Greetings! This is Patrick’s personal website where you can find some of his writing and connect with him about speaking events, training, leadership coaching and consulting projects.

About Me

Patrick Reinsborough is a US based strategist, trainer, writer and creative provocateur with over 30 years of experience in movements for peace, racial and economic justice and ecological sanity.

His work has incorporated a range of creative strategies including narrative shift, distributed organizing, brand-busting, culture jamming, corporate campaigning and nonviolent direct action. Patrick has trained thousands of organizers and partnered with hundreds of high impact organizations to frame issues, strengthen alliances and win campaigns. He has helped organize countless creative interventions including the historic shutdown of the Seattle WTO meeting in 1999, networked protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and visionary alliance building uniting North American communities impacted by fossil fuels.

Patrick’s strategic approach confronts the overlapping crises of the 21st century at the intersection of movement building, the ecological crisis, and strategies to shift cultural narratives. In 2002, he co-founded the Center for Story-based Strategy (formerly smartMeme), a national strategy center dedicated to harnessing the power of narrative to accelerate transformative movement building. In 2016 Patrick transitioned from his Executive Director role and handed the organizational reigns to the next generation of leaders. You can see Patrick doing a short presentation about the story-based strategy approach here.

From 2017-2020 Patrick was the U.S. Organizing Director for the global climate organization 350.org where he developed and led a new U.S. organizing department to strengthen the network of 160 grassroots affiliates. His team combined many different aspects of movement-building including distributed organizing, training, arts, direct action, grassroots funding and multiracial alliance-building. Patrick and his colleagues amplified numerous campaigns and supported hundreds of local actions including the September 2019 youth-led Global Climate strikes which mobilized over 6 million people across 150 countries.

Patrick is the co-author of Re:Imagining Change: How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements & Change the World (2nd Edition PM Press 2017) and a contributor to Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for the Next Revolution (2012 O/R Books) and Globalize Liberation (2004 City Lights Press). He is a frequent commentator on issues of social movement strategy, the ecological crisis and the power of narrative.  Patrick lives on the unceded territory of the Lisjan Ohlone people in Oakland, California.

Consulting

Patrick provides direct support to aligned social change efforts through his movement consulting practice. Over three decades of social movement engagement, Patrick has played a wide-range of roles: from founding and directing a non-profit strategy center, to consulting with hundreds of different types of organizations to designing national programs and funding initiatives to leading equity-based organizational change processes. He has worked with a broad range of organizations: from unfunded all-volunteer groups to deep rooted community-based organizations, to diverse, multi-stakeholder coalitions, foundations and large, international NGOs. He believes consulting can play its most powerful role in the broader movement ecosystem when it is oriented towards maximizing impact with skills transfer and leadership development in the service of long-term power building.

Some of the services he provides include:

Narrative and Campaign Strategy Development

Patrick has been a trail-blazer in the field of narrative strategy and developed models that are used by social change organizations around the world. His approach connects the dots between strategy, communications and movement-building and helps organizations scale up to meet their goals. Planning a new initiative and thinking through how to ensure it is designed for success? Patrick might be able to help. 

Leadership Coaching

Over three decades, Patrick has played a lot of different roles in the movement. Through it all he has honed his facilitative approach to guiding organizations, while building transformative community and prioritizing leadership development. Now he leverages all that experience into his coaching process to support both veteran and emerging leaders to achieve their fullest potential. Are you looking for some outside support to help you take your leadership to the next level? Patrick might be able to help. 

Creative Content Development

Our words and images are among our most effective tools for making change, but only when they align with our strategy. Patrick has helped groups with everything from effective campaign messaging, pithy ad copy, creative concepting and brand strategy. Whether you are starting from scratch and looking for direction or just need an outside editorial perspective to wrap a project, Patrick might be able to help. 

Training & Curriculum Design

Patrick has been designing and leading trainings on a wide range of topics for over 20 years. He brings a familiarity with various pedagogical approaches and a personal commitment to support lifelong learning for everyone (particularly himself). Whether the need is a short skill-building workshop, a bigger capacity-building challenge or an organizational change process, Patrick might be able to help.

Public Presentations on Movement-building, Narrative and System Change

Patrick is an accomplished public speaker and popular educator who does presentations to diverse audiences around the world. Whether you’re looking for a deep dive on the mechanics of social change, inspirational stories of movement building or just a booster shot for your own revolutionary imagination, Patrick can educate, entertain and motivate your audience regardless of political background or experience level. 

Contact

Patrick’s consulting and coaching practice  supports mission-aligned leaders and social change organizations. If you think his skills could be a good match for your needs please get in touch. He is also available for select speaking events, media inquiries and general rabble-rousing. You can reach Patrick via the form below or via email:  patrick [@] patrickreinsborough.org. You can also find him on twitter @RadicalWhispers.

UPDATE: I had to remove my contact form because it got overwhelmed by spam and bots so it was proving unreliable. If you are trying to reach Patrick you can email me directly at patrick [@] patrickreinsborough.org.