Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being in aid organisations

About Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being in aid organisations

A podcast for humanitarians who want to work in closer alignment to core values like compassion, accountability, solidarity and equity. Born in 2020 in collaboration with CHS Alliance and Mary Ann Clements, the podcast is now entering its next evolution and is hosted by Melissa Pitotti.

Publisher

Melissa Pitotti

Category

business · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Apr 2020

Latest episode

18 Feb 2026

Latest episodes

67 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Feb 2026

   67. Learning how to carry what happened with Silvia Risi

   What do you do when your professional world turns upside down? Maybe it’s burnout, harassment, a role abolished, or something else. An identity shaken. Humanitarian workers are trained to carry other people’s suffering. But what happens when we are the ones carrying something heavy? In Episode 67 of Embodying Change, Melissa Pitotti sits down with Silvia Risi, former humanitarian aid worker turned mental health peer supporter, to explore one powerful idea: recovery is learning how to carry what happened without letting it define or disable your life. After more than 16 years working in conflict and post-conflict contexts, Silvia reached a breaking point that led her to step away from the field. What followed was not an immediate reinvention. It was grief. Identity loss. Slowness. Reconstruction. This conversation explores what it means to pivot, not by erasing what happened, but by integrating it. In this episode, we explore: • Why losing a job can feel like losing yourself • The difference between therapy, coaching, and mental health peer support • What “Nothing about us without us” means in recovery work • Why peer support is horizontal and rooted in lived experience • How hope can be practiced, not just promised • Why "Pivoting Well" starts with grieving well • How humanitarian skills translate into unexpected new chapters Silvia shares how reconnecting with her values, practicing daily self-kindness, and finding peers who understood the humanitarian context became central to her healing. Because sometimes the goal is not to "move on." Sometimes the goal is to learn how to carry what happened with strength, dignity, and support. About Silvia Risi Silvia Risi worked for over 16 years in humanitarian operations, primarily in conflict and post-conflict settings. Following burnout and workplace psychological harassment, she began a recovery journey that led her toward coaching, professional training in mental health peer support, and a new way of serving the humanitarian workforce. She is currently completing a university diploma in mental health peer support, and neurodiversity at Lyon University. Silvia now serves as a humanitarian mental health peer supporter with CoCreate Humanity, a Swiss association founded in 2019 to strengthen the psychosocial wellbeing of humanitarian workers and their families. About CoCreate Humanity CoCreate Humanity provides: • Multilingual, confidential humanitarian peer support (primarily online) • Advocacy and awareness through art and community events • Working toward professionalization and training in humanitarian peer support Peer support at CoCreate Humanity is grounded in lived experience, structured training, and ongoing supervision from mental health professionals. It complements, but does not replace, professional mental health care. Learn more about their work or request support: www.cocreatehumanity.org (http://www.cocreatehumanity.org/) Additional resources mentioned: ●      WHO Europe Roadmap (2025): Transforming Mental Health Through Lived Experience https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/WHO-EURO-2025-12307-52079-79927 (https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/WHO-EURO-2025-12307-52079-79927) ●      Sarah Verrier’s dissertation: Humanitarian Peer Support in Mental Health - A Link in the Chain of Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Workers (available via CoCreate Humanity website) https://www.cocreatehumanity.org/memoires-final-dissertations If this episode resonates… If you are navigating mental health challenges, burnout, restructuring, identity shifts, or a career pivot you do not have to carry it alone. Find a peer. Start a conversation. Give yourself permission to grieve what changed. And if this episode felt meaningful, consider sharing it with a colleague who might need to hear it. Because embodying change isn’t about pretending nothing happened. It’s about learning how to carry what happened together.

2. 

   26 Jan 2026

   66. AI adoption as a human story with Maude Pittet Nazareno

   What if AI adoption isn’t a tech problem, but a trust-and-teams problem? In this conversation, Maude Pittet Nazareno shares what she’s learned from training frontline negotiators on pressure management and supporting organizations with AI-enabled workflow transformation. We explore why “prompt hygiene” matters, how AI can amplify (worsen) existing team tensions, and what it looks like to adopt AI in ways that support (not erode) human connection. In this episode, we cover: What “embodying change” looks like when you’re under pressure (head, heart, and body) Why coping strategies can be “partial,” and how to expand your internal and external resources What NLP is (in plain language) and why it shows up in pressure management work The surprising result from a pilot: why self-paced AI training lowered trust and team coaching raised it Why AI adoption often amplifies existing organizational problems (data mess, team tension, outdated processes) What AI-enabled workflows actually mean (beyond “ChatGPT for emails”) Practical AI literacy: how LLMs work, how to prompt, and how to avoid bias in prompts “Prompt hygiene” for shared team threads (and how to ask AI what assumptions it’s making) How Colaborix’s AI Café creates a space for teams to learn from each other Details on the AI Champion Accelerator + how to join with a listener discount Resources and links Maude on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maude-pittet-nazareno/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maude-pittet-nazareno/) Maude’s website: https://www.maudepnazareno.com/ (https://www.maudepnazareno.com/) Colaborix Programs (including Coffee & Champion Accelerator): https://www.colaborix.ai/ai-programs (https://www.colaborix.ai/ai-programs) Colaborix all upcoming dates & enrolment links: https://www.colaborix.ai/upcoming-ai-events (https://www.colaborix.ai/upcoming-ai-events) Opportunity 25% off Colaborix cohort programs (including the AI Champion Accelerator) Use coupon code: ACCESSNOW About Maude Pittet Nazareno Maude Pittet Nazareno is a coach and facilitator who helps leaders and teams build clarity, presence, and influence in high-pressure environments, from humanitarian negotiation to organizational transformation. Through her work with CCHN, she supports frontline negotiators to access, assist, and protect communities under extreme stress. At Colaborix, she brings a human-centered approach to AI adoption and workflow transformation, focusing on trust, capability-building, and how teams actually change.

3. 

   9 Jan 2026

   65. Reclaiming humanity in the age of AI with Silva Ferretti

   AI is already reshaping humanitarian work, evaluation, and decision-making, whether we’re ready or not. The real question isn’t whether to use AI, but how. In this episode of Embodying Change, host Melissa Pitotti is joined by evaluator and systems thinker Silva Ferretti for a wide-ranging, deeply human conversation about what’s at stake as AI accelerates across the humanitarian sector. Silva challenges the idea that evaluation is about compliance and box-ticking, and reframes it as a space for learning, truth-telling, and transformation. She explains why “best practices” often fail in complex contexts, how power quietly shapes what gets summarized and what gets ignored, and why AI is not neutral (especially when used uncritically). You’ll also hear how Silva uses AI in participatory ways: to conduct interviews, surface patterns, validate findings with communities, and even co-create a song that captures her thinking about AI ethics and fluency. This is not a tools episode. It’s a conversation about principles, power, trust, and reclaiming humanity with AI as both the risk and the opportunity. And if you stay until the very end, you’ll hear the full song Silva co-created with AI, bringing the conversation into a different register entirely. Today’s guest: Silva Ferretti Silva Ferretti is a humanitarian evaluator with a background in architecture and planning, known for her work on learning-oriented, complexity-aware evaluation. Rather than treating evaluation as a compliance exercise, Silva focuses on sensemaking, power, relationships, and context, and on creating space for people to talk honestly about what isn’t working, not just what looks good on paper. She is also an early and thoughtful adopter of AI in evaluation, experimenting with its use for pattern recognition, rapid synthesis, participatory validation, and creative communication, while remaining deeply attentive to ethics, bias and human agency. Silva regularly shares reflections and provocations on LinkedIn and collaborates with peers through initiatives such as the International Evaluation Academy. You’ll learn The 5 Levels of AI Fluency for Values-Led Professionals, from “just try it” to collective ethical use What Silva means when she says she’s “not a rebel,” just aligned with humanitarian principles Why “best practices” often fail in complex systems (and what works better) A simple, memorable distinction between complicated systems (like rockets) and complex systems (like human relationships) Why AI is not neutral, and how it can quietly amplify power and bias A practical method you can borrow immediately: record → transcribe → summarize → validate together The uncomfortable question facing the sector: are we becoming a logistics and reporting machine, or a principled humanitarian practice? Bonus: You’ll hear how Silva used AI to run 60+ interviews in just days, why the first analysis echoed the manager’s worldview, and how re-running the analysis helped surface the voices (and tensions) that were missing. Resources & links Connect with Silva Ferretti on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sferretti/) : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sferretti/ Silva’s article: AI in Evaluation (https://aea365.org/blog/ai-in-evaluation-by-silva-ferretti/) (International Evaluation Academy Week) https://aea365.org/blog/ai-in-evaluation-by-silva-ferretti/ Silva’s song: It starts with trying (https://peertube.uno/w/6QopXJaTkgGZERs4DTmzJU) (Silva’s lyrics, AI-made music) https://peertube.uno/w/6QopXJaTkgGZERs4DTmzJU Concepts referenced: Appreciative Inquiry, complexity vs. complication, humanitarian principles, participatory evaluation

Who has been a guest on Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being in aid organisations

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Wayan Vota
• Jody Gunn-Russell
• Camille Lemouchoux

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 58 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

81

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

85

Contact Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being in aid organisations

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.