The Participation

The Participation Company LLC (TPC) helps government and business clients manage public issues to accomplish clients' objectives. We can plan and manage your participation project from start to finish. We can provide strategic advice and direction. We can coach and mentor your staff and managers. We help you build agreements and craft durable and defensible decisions. We are Doug Sarno, Wendy Green Lowe, Marty Rozelle, John Godec, and Debra Duerr. TPC was established in 2010 as a woman-owned company with offices in Arizona, Idaho and Washington, DC. The company is comprised of five public participation colleagues who have spent our careers working as open-process advocates between stakeholders and decision-makers. As sole practitioners of our own successful companies, we formed TPC to take advantage of our collective synergy, strengths, and geographic locations. Our cumulative experience includes 130 years designing and conducting stakeholder participation programs for an array of public agencies and private companies, in connection with well over 1,500 projects. All the members of The Participation Company LLC are seasoned public involvement professionals with wide-ranging experience in training and practice of: strategic planning issue and needs assessment program development and design effective public information public and media relations risk communication multi-stakeholder meeting and dialogue facilitation formation and management of citizen advisory groups and task forces employee focus groups, advisory boards, and participation programs interagency consultation collaborative planning consensus building decision support Our skills have been applied to urban and regional planning processes, natural resource management programs, infrastructure projects, Superfund sites, public policy development, National Environmental Policy Act studies, and organizational change endeavors. Most of our work involves highly-charged, controversial, and complex community concerns about proposals that affect people's lives, make major social and infrastructure changes, and determine the long-term future of communities and organizations. Our principals are at the heart of the effective public participation movement worldwide. We're founders and long-time leaders of the globally-respected International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). Our partners include an IAP2 founder and past president (Dr. Martha Rozelle), IAP2's former Executive Director (Doug Sarno), a former International Training Director (Wendy Green Lowe), a former International Vice-President (John Godec) and IAP2 USA Board directors (Duerr, Lowe). Sarno and Rozelle were principal developers of the IAP2 Spectrum and Rozelle, Godec, Lowe, and Sarno are principal authors and original master trainers for IAP2's 40-hour Certificate in Public Participation course. Godec worked with Dr. Peter Sandman to develop IAP2's newest course on Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation.