Elevating the Art of Facilitation: Meet Certificate in Facilitation Co-Director Kim Weinberg
Meet Certificate in Facilitation Co-Director Kim Weinberg! Kim brings deep expertise in small-group dynamics, leadership development, and facilitation to this program—now being offered at UVA | Northern Virginia starting in March 2026. In a world where virtual rooms, hybrid teams, and rapid change are the new normal, Kim helps professionals move beyond simply running meetings to designing gatherings that spark connection, clarity, and action. Through this program, she guides participants to deepen their self-awareness, master the architecture of meaningful gatherings, and cultivate presence and adaptability in every facilitator role they play.
Q: What is the Certificate in Facilitation?
A: The Certificate in Facilitation is an opportunity for people who design and deliver gatherings to develop and grow skills that help them not only facilitate their gathering, but also how to prepare, design, and follow through afterward. It involves knowing who you are as a facilitator, knowing who your audience is, and how to design a gathering in a structured format that follows a rhythm. It’s a framework for everyone to work from.
One of the parts people love most is learning different varieties of modalities. Modalities are the ways we deliver content in a way that is engaging, inspiring, challenging, and supportive. It’s more than just “we talk, you answer” and having a straightforward meeting.
Q: Tell us about you and why you are a part of this program?
A: I actually grew up in this space starting in college. At the time, the major I wanted to focus on (Communications and Psychology in Organizations) didn’t exist in the way we know organizational behavior, organizational development, or training and development today. I ended up finding my path through creating my own major in college and I’ve been on this linear path with this ever since. I started with training and development, moved to organizational development, coaching and group facilitation, always specializing in small group dynamics. While I specifically focus on small group dynamics, my passion is not just how to create a delivery of content, but how to create a connection between everyone in the room beyond the task we are there to accomplish.
Q: What makes this program stand out?
A: The content is rich and rigorous. Anyone can create an agenda and deliver it. It’s how you deliver it that gets the results, the engagement, and the inspiration you want. What I think really stands out is that we have top-notch caliber facilitators. We have dedicated our lives to being connectors, networkers, and translators of information in a way that is engaging and inspiring. We have a very diverse bench. We’ve all been doing this for many years and we come with different specialties.
Attention spans now are about 90 seconds, with the way technology, social media, and AI have evolved. Our job as facilitators is how to keep people’s attention for a little longer than 90 seconds—whether that’s through 3-5 minute sound bites, 10-20 minute lecturettes, for modalities that are requiring a lot of hands-on concentration. A lot of that comes from knowing how to read a room, how you’re showing up, what people need in the space, and being able to provide it.
Q: Why is facilitation so important?
A: I work with a lot of leaders and one thing that happens is that people move into leadership roles because they are good at a technical craft—sales, marketing, accounting. Then suddenly they’re promoted into leadership, which shifts from the technical to the human component. In these situations, the facilitation is needed to teach how to navigate that shift. It’s how we impart technical information within an adaptive leadership model, human people skills, and the joy of working with people. Then you have to tie this into the more conceptual evolutions which is what leadership turns into. As you move up from frontline leadership to senior leadership, you have to navigate and lead multiple specialties, divisions, departments, and people. Facilitation helps bring those diverse perspectives together in a meaningful way.
Q: What can learners expect from this program?
A: One thing that often surprises people is that the program starts with learning about themselves. We can’t really facilitate others until we know how to navigate ourselves, so emotional intelligence is really important.
Then you move into design and delivery. Before design, we work on identifying stakeholder needs, requirements, and what they are looking for. There’s an organizational development component in how we immerse ourselves with our clients to figure out what they need. Then we design the gathering, which is the creative piece of how we’re going to navigate it, and then we move into delivery. We spend the front end and the back end focused on who I am as a facilitator and then actually doing the facilitation, because those are the in-person pieces. The middle section is a lot around design thinking. That’s the technical part—how we create a gathering, how we make sure we’re checking all the boxes of the objectives and meeting the requirements.
We also work on facilitating in the virtual space. Facilitating in person is one thing; facilitating virtually and keeping people’s attention so they’re not checking email or getting distracted is another. How do we create engagement that keeps people plugged in and focused? So there are technical specifics around how to structurally design a gathering, and then there is a wide variety of modalities—different ways to reach people with different learning and engagement styles.
Q: Who is the ideal learner?
A: Anyone who designs gatherings that allow for individual expression, learning, and creating — the beauty of this program is that you can take people who are just learning the basics of facilitation skills, who maybe haven’t even thought about how to set up a room or what supplies they need. We cover those foundational pieces. But the program also moves through a rich arc of working on our presence — on facilitator presence — and then getting into the nuances of what to do when things get prickly or tricky. How do we navigate difficult situations? How do we communicate and facilitate when the heat gets turned up and participants’ emotions or investments are running high?
And when more energy or investment is needed, how do we intentionally turn up the heat to increase engagement? Because emotions lead to action. We need to think to plan, but we need to feel to act. So we work across all of those layers and spaces.
Q: What is one of your favorite memories from past cohorts?
A: During COVID, we all had to pivot– I remember we had one week to turn our curriculum from being in-person to virtual. And this was when Zoom was still new— not everyone was using it yet. I had used it a little, but not at the scale we suddenly needed. We went in with the mindset: if we can do it in a room, we can do it on Zoom.
It became this fast and furious joyful learning curve for us. Our learning just skyrocketed. We were basically teaching our world how to use Zoom. We were hosting gatherings before most people even knew what Zoom was — birthday parties, funerals, staff meetings, teachers’ workshops — you name it. The creative energy around all of that was incredible.
And we always have so much fun, because you can actually see the light bulbs going off for people. It’s a very personal and open curriculum — it’s not just delivering content. We’re exploring together. We use frameworks like the Johari Window, and we move into the unknowns together. We’re learning alongside each other. That was probably one of my favorite memories.
About the Certificate in Facilitation Program
The Certificate in Facilitation (non-credit) is a cohort-based program for professionals who lead meetings, retreats, and multi-stakeholder conversations. Across three months, participants blend immersive, in person learning with focused virtual labs—building practical skills to design meaningful gatherings, guide courageous dialogue, and move groups to decisions and action.