Our story
Why AD8 exists.
AD8 Collective was founded on the belief that leaders and communities deserve intentional spaces in which they can be honest about what they are navigating, examine what is not working, and imagine what may be possible. Rooted in health and human services, AD8’s work extends across sectors. We partner with people who are committed to leading with greater intention, strengthening relationships, and remaining in productive relationship across difference. We create immersive spaces that honor both the complexity of the work and the humanity of the people doing it.
Founded by
Anita Shannon
Leadership Strategist & Founder
Anita Shannon is a national leadership strategist and founder of AD8 Collective. Her deepest expertise is in child welfare and human services, and her work extends across sectors where leaders, organizations, and communities are navigating complexity and change.
Across more than three decades, Anita has worked alongside people with lived experience and partnered with community, executive, judicial, legislative, public, private, and philanthropic leaders to strengthen leadership, improve organizations, shape public policy, and advance systems improvement and transformation.
Her experience spans public policy, public-system leadership, executive and organizational development, and complex systems change. Anita served for five years as Principal Aide to Hennepin County Commissioner Mary Tambornino, helping research, shape, and advance public policy and serving as a bridge among government, county departments, and communities.
Her public-system experience also includes work within Hennepin County Children, Family and Adult Services and five years with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, the nation's largest public child welfare agency.
Anita's national work has brought her alongside leaders and communities across counties, states, and territories. As Senior Director of Strategic Consulting–Systems Improvement, she supported executive teams, leadership development, policy and practice improvement, organizational change, and complex systems-transformation efforts across the country.
Through AD8 Collective, Anita brings that experience into focused, time-limited work: executive advising and coaching, immersive leadership convenings, strategic facilitation, executive-team development, keynote speaking, and community-centered consultation. She creates the conditions for people to surface what is difficult, make meaning together, and move collective expertise toward shared responsibility and action.
Her approach recognizes well-being as a leadership competency and is grounded in community agency, accountability, and cultural humility. She believes communities must have voice, agency, and meaningful influence in the systems that shape their lives.
Anita is a community member, mother, partner, and ancestor-in-training. She plays Scrabble competitively and considers floating in the ocean a job to which she is deeply committed.
- 30 years in leadership development & organizational change
- Public policy, organizational improvement, and systems-transformation experience
- Immersive facilitation, focused executive advising, and keynote speaking
- Grounded in community agency, accountability, cultural humility, and well-being as a leadership competency
What we believe
Our guiding commitments.
Ready to start the conversation?
Tell us what you are navigating, who needs to be in the room, and what you hope becomes possible. Together, we can determine whether AD8 is the right fit.”
Get in touch