Meet the Team
Principal & Founder
Ailiana Denis
She/Her/Hers
organizational development strategist // culture change consultant // leadership coach
In a world where success depends on our ability to navigate complexity and difference with intelligence and care, we need organizations that are more socially and strategically evolved.
As Principal of Axia Amplified Consulting, Ailiana partners with nonprofit and corporate organizations to strengthen the relational and operational capacities they need to hold social complexity, cultivate strategic coherence, and create conditions for people to thrive within and through their organizations.
Rooted in a systems-conscious and human-centered approach, her work is grounded in the belief that effective organizational change is shaped not only by strategy and structure, but by the skill, adaptability, and responsibility people bring to navigating complexity in service of futures where all people flourish.
Her work has strengthened intercultural development, systems-change capacity, and strategic focus for cross-sector entities including legal advocacy and grassroots organizations, philanthropic institutions, statewide coalitions, and Fortune 500 leadership teams. Her projects have involved:
designing and leading learning and organizational change processes,
strengthening culture and people practices, and
supporting forms of collaboration and system design that advance organizational effectiveness and further equity, inclusion, and justice.
She holds a Master’s in Organizational Learning and Change, along with certificates in Organizational and Leadership Coaching and Leading Equity and Inclusion from Northwestern University. She serves on the boards of Chicago Freedom School and Chicago Women in Philanthropy.
Director of Learning
Yoko Takemoto
She/Her/Hers
Yoko Takemoto is a bridge builder and cultural mediator with over 10 years of experience helping organizations attract, develop, leverage and retain their diverse talent. Her professional and lived experience includes helping organizations foster environments of belonging by engaging in cross-cultural education, in training and development, talent search consulting, and executive coaching. She has worked with an array of organizations - both domestic and global - and has successfully navigated through social, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences across a multitude of sectors.
Yoko believes that embracing discomfort presents us with a chance to grow. She enjoys the challenge of working with leaders to strategically expand their intercultural engagement comfort zones and creating work spaces where everyone has equitable access to opportunities to thrive and contribute. Yoko equips her clients to increase their capacity to be attentive to experiences beyond themselves through what she calls “collective mindfulness”. She received her M.A. in Organizational & Multicultural Communications from DePaul University and her B.A. in Communications from California State University.
Lead Consultant
Robert Bailey
He/Him/His
Robert Allen Bailey is a mental health therapist has spent his professional career using his gifts in service to the causes that speak to his soul. Robert has worked with and managed community development efforts in various countries (e.g. Kenya, Madagascar, Honduras) and communities. After discovering that he was best equipped to help the people in the places he is most familiar with, he’s since focused on the problems facing the Black community and other marginalized groups here in the U.S.
Robert’s therapeutic work primarily involves providing counseling to Black, Latinx and Hispanic adolescents, young adults, and families. His specialty is PTSD and helping people address the ways trauma has entered their lives. Robert’s passion and mission is to help people process these events and move past them by helping his clients develop new boundaries and habits. Robert completed his undergraduate studies at Oakwood University, an HBCU in Huntsville, AL, earning a B.A. in Theology: Counseling/Chaplaincy. He then went on to complete his graduate work at Andrews University earning a Master of Social Work and a Masters of Community and International Development.
Evaluation Lead
Kimberly Rishe
Kimberly Rishe is a Filipino-Italian, full-time millennial woman, who is also known as an evaluation practitioner-scholar and applied researcher. A Claremont Graduate University alumna of the Positive Health Psychology and Evaluation programs, Kimberly uses her transdisciplinary evaluation training to partner with community organizers and leaders who seek to ask powerful questions and bridge gaps. Prior to her current work as an evaluator, she worked in a variety of settings that range from an HIV/AIDS center to an executive search consulting firm. Her evaluation experience includes all forms of research methods including measurement development, quantitative and qualitative data collection, data management, data analysis, and data visualization.
All of these paths had mission-driven service in common, which naturally led to her professional purpose to cultivate relationships and help others share their purpose stories. Kimberly is committed to bringing culturally responsive, rigorous methodology to those who are often left behind. When Kimberly is not wrangling data, she enjoys spending time at home with loved ones, cooking while listening to podcasts, being a self-proclaimed sit-down comedian, or letting her feelings out through dodgeball.