Amy Armstrong is Founder and Principal at Weaver Collaborations. She brings 20+ years’ experience designing and leading global initiatives, working within and across government, philanthropy, research organisations, and NGOs. An agile facilitator and dot connector with experience across sectors and cultures, she brings a rigorous and inclusive approach to helping organisations clarify their vision, develop their programs and partnerships, and evaluate and communicate their impact.

She understands what it takes to create new programs. Throughout her career, she has helped design, launch, or grow four new entities (two applied research centres at New York University and two philanthropic initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation). She is comfortable in the messy, generative space inherent in building new things, and brings credibility and compassion to founders and builders who need thought partnership and design support.

She has deep expertise in resilience-building strategies. For nearly 15 years, Amy has been a part of building and growing a global resilience practice. She has partnered with some of the world’s largest cities and smallest island nations in designing resilience strategies, projects, and policies. She has developed frameworks and strategies to support resilience practitioners and designed resilience-based management training used by thousands of people around the globe. And she has advised philanthropies interested in resilience-building on their grant making strategies.   

She is adept at designing and activating knowledge and learning systems. Amy loves partnering on theories of change and impact frameworks that help programs learn and adapt as they deliver (not sit on a shelf as a consultancy artefact). She has advised on or led development of theories of change and program strategies undergirding ~$1 billion of philanthropic and public investment. Perhaps more importantly, she has partnered with organisations as a facilitator and learning partner to understand where programs are delivering impact, where change is needed, and what that teaches us about the system the program is operating within. 

As a weaver, she holds many affiliations, including as an Associate with Think Place New Zealand, a Senior Consultant with EcoAdvisors, and as an Edmund Hillary Fellow. She sits on the Board of the Institute for Climate and Peace. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Reed College and an MSc in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics.

She is mom to a goofy and curious son who is also figuring out how to do well for the world, and spouse to a talented writer and fisherman.