Consultant, Community Engagement and Mediation

Daphne Politis is the Principal of Community Circle, a firm dedicated to creating spaces to have meaningful conversations as the basis for crafting meaningful strategic plans, making decisions that are relevant to stakeholders and envisioning a future that incorporates the concerns and desires of all. Daphne is an urban planner, a trained facilitator, and a certified moderator. She has worked with diverse communities and is comfortable in multilingual, multiethnic and multiracial settings. Being bilingual and bicultural herself and as a result of straddling more than one culture, she has developed an empathy and understanding that leads to respecting different ways of seeing, being, and communicating. Daphne’s experience working directly on issues of racial equity include the Cultural Competency Training she conducted for the Massachusetts Housing Partnership. She designed a two-hour
session intended to raise awareness amongst the workshop participants regarding issues of discrimination, implicit bias, and ways to discuss and support diversity in conversations regarding affordable housing. She also designed exercises to facilitate the exploration of unconscious bias and to encourage more inclusive attitudes.

Daphne holds a M.A. in Urban Planning, a M.A. in Research in Architecture, and moderator certification, all from M.I.T.