About Us
Led by women and people of color, our strength is in our collective experience and diverse backgrounds.
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Capacity Building Partnerships was founded in 2019 by Cliff Jones, Sara Curiel Paez, Alexis Millett and Maria Lisa Johnson. While Capacity Building Partnerships is relatively young, our story begins many years ago at Nonprofit Association of Oregon (NAO) where we worked as consultants. While at NAO, we established strong relationships with nonprofits and government entities across Oregon, as well as with each other.
When NAO dissolved its consulting department in 2018, Capacity Building Partnerships was envisioned and formed. Capacity Building Partnerships remains in deep support of NAO and its work advancing the nonprofit sector across Oregon. Our first employee, Tere Mathern, was integral in our founding and stewards our organization’s operations and administration. Maria Lisa Johnson no longer serves in a Partnership role but remains in close relationship with Capacity Building Partnerships as an associate consultant. We all work extensively with additional partner consultants across the state and nation. Each of us brings our own cultural perspectives and backgrounds to our work. What ties us together are our shared values and deep commitment to ensuring all people have access to a good life. 
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Cliff Jones
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Cliff is a sought-after trainer and consultant and especially recognized for his work in equity and inclusion, building alliances across differences, team development, conflict resolution, supervision and facilitation. As a generalist, Cliff has over 30 years’ experience in organizational development consulting with thousands of people and organizations. Working in all sectors he leverages best practices in one sector and shares them with other sectors. Capacity building and partnerships are cornerstones of Cliff’s work with organizations.
His consulting focus areas include strategic planning, board development, cross-cultural effectiveness, workplace mediation and conflict resolution, effective supervision, team building and staff development, and civic engagement. Cliff is a co-founder of Tools for Diversity, which was a comprehensive curriculum led by a multi-cultural training team focused on solutions to problems caused by privilege, prejudice, discrimination, disparities and oppression. Cliff has strong ties to the nonprofit community in Oregon. He worked as a senior consultant for the Nonprofit Association of Oregon for 26 years, 1992-2018. A partial list of clients includes Central City Concern, Children’s Relief Nursery, Community Health Partnerships, Friends of the Children, Home Forward, Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, Multnomah County Aging and Disability Services, Northwest Health Foundation, Oregon Health Authority Office of Equity and Inclusion, Portland Public Schools, Service Employees International Union, a number of Fortune 500 companies. Prior to his consulting work, Cliff was an experienced community organizer, legal advocate, policy analyst, and health promotion advocate. He has been an Executive Director, Program Manager, Front Line Staff, Board Member, Chair and Treasure. He has a B.S. in Community Service and Public Affairs from the University of Oregon with a focus on social psychology and community education. |
Alexis Millett
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Alexis thrives on working with people to solve complex social, organizational, and leadership challenges. Whether organizational mission impact, leadership effectiveness, or large-scale social issues, she works toward understanding the whole system and finding creative and engaging solutions. Placing client’s mission and vision at the forefront of her work, she believes that internal culture change, process improvement, effective supervision, and advancing equity and inclusion are all in service to the mission of the organization.
Alexis has extensive background facilitating difficult conversations on race and identity. She has been working as a consultant, trainer, and facilitator since 2012. Her educational background is in community development and planning. Alexis worked for the Nonprofit Association of Oregon for seven years, where her focus was supporting rural nonprofits in partnerships with The Ford Family Foundation. Her approach is relationship-oriented and strength-based with the ultimate end goal of creating equitable, inclusive, positive environments for all people to thrive. Alexis works with her clients to ask difficult questions about their history, culture, and policies and practices and examine who has been historically excluded, disadvantaged, and marginalized. This work is done through her cultural perspective as a white, cis-woman, and with a critical eye for what her perspective misses because of systemic privilege and advantage. Alexis often works with white people to examine their own relationship with their cultural and social identities, and particularly white women to examine the intersection of whiteness and sexism and how that dynamic shows up in leadership. Alexis grew up in Seattle Washington. She currently lives in Portland with her husband and kiddo. She loves hiking, backpacking, and generally being as active as possible. |
Sara Curiel Paez
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Sara is an experienced bilingual and bicultural capacity building consultant. With a background in Participatory Leadership, Sara has over 10 years’ experience in leadership development, civic engagement and facilitation & training. As a first generation Mexican-American woman, Sara deeply believes that all people have the same value and that leadership happens through reflection, listening and dialogue.
She was born and raised in Nayarit, Mexico. She attended Oregon State University and received both her B.S. degree from the Honors College and a master’s degree in Public Policy. Internationally, Sara has worked and studied in Spain, Bulgaria and Mexico. In 2005, Sara had the opportunity to interview nonprofits in Bulgaria to understand their role in the policy process before becoming part of the European Union. In addition, Sara has two years of Law School from Universidad Panamerica in Guadalajara, Mexico. Recently, Sara obtained a Certificate for Nonprofit Financial Management from Cornell University. Sara has worked throughout rural Oregon as a trainer and facilitator on a variety of topics including leadership development, project management, and organizational development. Sara has delivered the Ford Institute Leadership Program in rural communities as well as Cultivando Comunidad and the Raices program. She has extensive experience developing curriculum on civic engagement for the Latino community. She is a certified MBTI trainer. This year, she received a certificate for Nonprofit Board Consulting from Board Source. |
Tere Mathern
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Tere Mathern is honored and grateful to be able to support the work of Capacity Building Partnerships administering and managing the many aspects of business, finances, and client relations needed to keep things running smoothly. She brings years of experience working in the nonprofit world in administrative and executive positions.
She met and worked with Cliff Jones at TACS (now the Nonprofit Association of Oregon) where she learned from their many nonprofit gurus including Cliff, Kay Sohl and Guadalupe Guajardo. Her experience includes financial management, fund development, design and marketing, coordinating training intensives and technical assistance grants, program development and event production. She was the director of Conduit Dance, an organization supporting independent dance artists from 2001-2015, and has worked extensively as a modern/contemporary dance artist, educator and choreographer. |
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In addition to the firm's partners, we work with a range of experienced independent consultants whose experience and background supplement our team.
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