Serious Play Business is proud to announce the winners of the inaugural LEGO® Serious Play® Global Facilitation Excellence Awards, the first international awards program dedicated entirely to recognizing excellence in LEGO® Serious Play® facilitation.

The awards attracted entries from certified practitioners across multiple continents, spanning corporate, academic, community, and public sector contexts. Each submission was evaluated on facilitation design, participant outcomes, and the measurable or observable impact generated through the method.

“The depth and quality of the submissions we received exceeded all expectations. These facilitators are not just using LEGO® Serious Play® — they are advancing it. Every entry demonstrated genuine commitment to craft, to their participants, and to producing real outcomes. It was an honor to be able to recognize this work formally for the first time.” — Dr. Denise Meyerson, Founder & CEO, Serious Play Business

All entrants receive a Certificate of Participation and a digital badge. Winners in each category receive an official award certificate, a featured profile on the Serious Play Business website, and a USD$250 Development Award toward further certification.

GRAND PRIX — PRACTITIONER OF THE YEAR WINNER
Melodie Yong Canada · Providence Health Care, Vancouver
Melodie Yong delivered 63 LEGO® Serious Play® sessions across 35 locations, engaging 528 participants over five months in a values co-creation initiative. The project achieved a 97% engagement rate and directly resulted in four co-created organizational values being formally adopted. Yong also mentored two newly certified practitioners throughout the process, extending the reach of the method within the organization. Judges described this entry as an unmatched combination of scale, rigor, and inclusivity.

EXCELLENCE IN TEAM DEVELOPMENT WINNER
Khalilah Pitt United States · KPConnects, LLC, Tampa
Khalilah Pitt facilitated a session for 70 YMCA HR and Operations leaders titled “Building Bridges: Collaboration for a Thriving Culture.” What distinguished this entry was what happened after the session ended: participants were witnessed acting on their commitments on the same day. The organization returned a full year later for a deeper follow-up engagement. Judges praised her exceptional storytelling technique and psychological insight in working with a large, operationally diverse group.

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Natalie Kirkoroglu Switzerland · TransformOcean Consulting, Zurich
Transformed a newly restructured, multi-country leadership team for a global fashion brand in a single three-hour session, moving the group from silos to measurable collaboration. Client-reported improvements in teamwork were documented weeks after the session, and judges noted an outstanding client testimonial and sophisticated facilitation design for a high-stakes, cross-cultural environment.

AWARD OF DISTINCTION — THE BRIDGE BUILDER
Chared Verschuur-Ballo Netherlands · Good Comms, Pijnacker
Introduced a creative facilitation device — using physical strings to connect individual models to a collective landscape — to make invisible organizational dynamics visible. This entry also stood out for the quality of a second submission in the Strategy & Alignment category, demonstrating exceptional versatility as a practitioner.

AWARD OF DISTINCTION — BREAKTHROUGH
Adam Cebulski United States
His “Duck Pond” session unlocked team conversations that multiple prior retreats had failed to access. The central metaphor became an enduring leadership framework that influenced how the team made decisions about its own membership. Judges highlighted his exceptional sequencing and patience as the defining qualities of this entry.

EXCELLENCE IN STRATEGY & ALIGNMENT WINNER + INNOVATION IN PRACTICE AWARD
Garret Westlake United States · Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
Garret Westlake addressed one of the most demanding facilitation contexts in this year’s awards: 140 senior leaders within a conservative federal agency navigating major organizational restructuring. Westlake pioneered the integration of LEGO® Serious Play® with AI tools, using the combination to translate physical builds directly into actionable strategic plans. The organization subsequently requested further engagements, and Westlake received the Innovation in Practice Award for this novel methodological contribution.

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Ewan Riccio-Laing United States · Figary Learning, Savannah
Delivered nine LEGO® Serious Play® sessions spanning leadership and frontline teams in a hospitality organization. His original concept “The Passenger Effect” gave participants a physical way to understand how inconsistency cascades through a service operation. The session’s service mission concept is now embedded in the organization’s operational culture.

AWARD OF DISTINCTION — APPLIED LSP
Natalie Kirkoroglu Switzerland · TransformOcean Consulting, Zurich
A second recognition for Natalie Kirkoroglu, for aligning a newly formed cross-functional team around a 2026 visitor growth strategy for a Swiss brewery. The facilitation included a bespoke build sequence and generated a client LinkedIn recommendation of notable specificity and warmth.

ACADEMIC & EDUCATION PRACTICE WINNER — EDUCATION EXCELLENCE AWARD
Connie S. Barber United States · University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Connie S. Barber transformed a theoretical project management topic into a dynamic shared model exercise that fundamentally changed her approach to teaching. Recognized both as a standout education practitioner and a tireless community advocate, judges described her as one of the most committed champions of LSP in academic settings in the entire awards program.

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Amy Holcombe United States · High Point University, North Carolina
Submitted three distinct, well-crafted entries spanning a faculty retreat, a regional leadership institute of 60 district leaders, and a school principal kickoff event. Judges described her as the most consistent academic practitioner in the awards, demonstrating that LSP can be applied across multiple educational contexts with sustained quality and intention at each level.

AWARD OF DISTINCTION — CURRICULUM INTEGRATION
Binal Kamdar India · TeachSTEAM Education Services, Rajkot
Integrated LSP with design thinking stages at Karnavati University, introducing the “Landscape of Futures” collective build. Working with a faculty and student audience of 47, the session generated unanimous positive feedback. Judges noted the originality of the design thinking integration as a significant contribution to LSP academic practice.

AWARD OF DISTINCTION — SCALE IN EDUCATION
Małgorzata Małecka-Tomala Poland · Universee Creative / WSB University
Demonstrated LSP as a repeatable and scalable academic tool by delivering the method across multiple cohorts totaling more than 200 management students. Students reported applying negotiation insights from the sessions in subsequent team projects — a meaningful indicator of transferable learning.

COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION AWARD WINNER
Gloriana Lugo Lugo Puerto Rico
Working with caregivers and older adults with functional diversity — including visually impaired participants — Gloriana Lugo Lugo developed NeuroBricks®, a trauma-sensitive, neuroprotective, multi-sensory adaptation of the LEGO® Serious Play® methodology. Judges described her two entries as among the most extraordinary in the entire program, demonstrating both exceptional facilitation skill and a profound commitment to accessibility and inclusion.

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Saad Bin Tariq United States · Fine Line Consultants, Nutley NJ
Facilitated “Building Equity in Tech” at the Google NYC / MLT Conference, achieving the highest registration and highest rating (4.8/5) of approximately 60 conference sessions. More than 40 participants kept their LEGO models on their desks after the event. The session led directly to follow-on engagements with Ally Financial and StackCon.

ONLINE FACILITATION EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNER
Livia Szekelyhidi United Kingdom · Expansion Point Coaching, Reading
Livia Szekelyhidi brought LEGO® Serious Play® into a 1:1 coaching context delivered fully online via Microsoft Teams — a creative and largely unexplored application of the methodology. This entry stood out for demonstrating that the method’s power to surface insight, create alignment, and generate meaningful outcomes is not diminished by the virtual environment or the absence of a group dynamic. The client requested to keep the bricks after the session — a small but telling indicator of the depth of engagement the experience created.

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARDS
The following awards were created to honor entries that demonstrated exceptional qualities not fully captured within the primary categories.

Longitudinal Excellence
Ildiko Sas · Romania — For a unique multi-session design linking four connected LSP sessions over time, revisiting models to track mindset shifts and connecting them to measurable business outcomes.

Young Builders Award
Dave Lee · Canada · Connections Community Services, Vancouver — For adapting LSP for children aged 5–9, achieving 100% participation across every session and demonstrating rare sensitivity to the natural flow of young learners.

Storyteller Award
Kathryn Rioch · United Kingdom · The Impact Edit, Hitchin — For a session whose central metaphor — “the ducks” — became a lasting piece of cultural shorthand within the organization. Proof that a powerful image, well facilitated, creates enduring change.

Empathy in Practice Award
Puja Mathur · India · Bengaluru — For facilitating one of the most delicate leadership challenges in this year’s submissions: holding performance accountability and psychological safety simultaneously during a period of workforce reductions.

Debut Impact Award
Melissa Malcolm · Canada · Toronto — For a standout first official LSP session in which participants rated the experience 6 out of 5. Deep empathy and strong craft were evident from the very first session.

Heart of Play Award
Les Csatary · Canada · The Attic Loft Co, Markham — For using LEGO® as a language bridge for a single ESL student working toward employment in Canada. Small in scale and described by judges as one of the most deeply human submissions in the awards.

Community Builder Award
Jason Reagin · China · Western Academy of Beijing — For building a lasting peer learning network among fellow educators, flattening hierarchy by participating as both facilitator and learner — demonstrating that LSP can plant seeds of lasting professional community.

Healing Through Play Award
Diana Conroy · Kenya · United Nations World Food Programme — For a WFP team at a hardship field duty station in Nairobi processing a major organizational downsizing, repurposing the brick-clearing ritual as a formal closure exercise and generating lasting shifts in team openness and collaboration.

Sustained Transformation Award
Francis Jennings · United States — For a structured multi-session program using LSP to rebuild communication and strategic alignment across seniority levels, pairing participants as accountability buddies and tracking progress against a scorecard — generating lasting behavioral change endorsed by both managers and participants.

About the Awards
The LEGO® Serious Play® Global Facilitation Excellence Awards were established by Serious Play Business to formally recognize facilitators who are applying the method with structure, intention, and measurable impact. The awards celebrate real-world outcomes — not theory — and are open to certified practitioners worldwide across corporate, academic, community, and coaching contexts. The awards will return in 2027.

About Serious Play Business
Serious Play Business is a global provider of LEGO® Serious Play® certification and training, led by Dr. Denise Meyerson. The organization has trained and certified hundreds of facilitators worldwide, offering foundational and advanced certification programs as well as specialist modules across a wide range of professional applications.
Media Contact
Serious Play Business
[email protected] · seriousplaybusiness.com