Global Awards Announcement
Serious Play Business Announces Winners of the First Global LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitation Excellence Awards
Recognizing exceptional facilitators applying the LEGO® Serious Play® Method across organizational leadership, strategy, culture, innovation, and transformation contexts worldwide.
Serious Play Business has officially announced the winners of the inaugural LEGO® Serious Play® Global Facilitation Excellence Awards. The awards recognize exceptional facilitators applying the LEGO® Serious Play® Method across organizational leadership, strategy, culture, innovation, and transformation contexts worldwide.
The awards program attracted submissions from certified practitioners across multiple continents. As a result, the program showcases the growing global impact of strategic facilitation using LEGO® Serious Play® in corporate, academic, community, and public sector environments.
According to Serious Play Business Founder and CEO Dr. Denise Meyerson, the quality and depth of submissions was striking. Specifically, the entries demonstrated how the methodology continues to evolve far beyond traditional workshop approaches.
The depth and quality of the submissions exceeded all expectations. These facilitators are not simply using LEGO® Serious Play® — they are advancing the methodology through meaningful organizational outcomes, thoughtful facilitation design, and measurable participant impact.
Dr. Denise Meyerson — Founder & CEO, Serious Play BusinessEach submission was evaluated on facilitation structure, participant engagement, measurable outcomes, and organizational relevance. Furthermore, winners were selected across multiple categories — including strategy and alignment, team development, academic practice, community contribution, and online facilitation excellence.
Grand Prix — Practitioner of the Year
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. Moreover, she 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 — indeed, one of the most complete entries in the program.
Excellence in Team Development
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. Notably, 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.
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. Judges noted an outstanding client testimonial and sophisticated facilitation design for a high-stakes, cross-cultural environment.
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.
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
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. Specifically, he 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.
Westlake also received the Innovation in Practice Award for this novel methodological contribution — a dual recognition reflecting both facilitation excellence and genuine methodological advancement.
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. Consequently, the session’s service mission concept is now embedded in the organization’s operational culture.
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.
The awards program attracted submissions from certified practitioners across multiple continents. This, in turn, demonstrates how the LEGO® Serious Play® Method continues to generate measurable organizational outcomes at global scale.
Academic & Education Practice
Connie S. Barber transformed a theoretical project management topic into a dynamic shared model exercise that fundamentally changed her approach to teaching. Through highly participatory LEGO® Serious Play® facilitation models, her work improved both engagement and systems thinking among students and faculty. Judges described her as one of the most committed champions of LSP in academic settings in the entire awards program.
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.
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.
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
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.
Consequently, she received both the Community Contribution Award and the Special Innovation Award — a dual recognition reflecting the reach and originality of her work.
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. Furthermore, the session led directly to follow-on engagements with Ally Financial and StackCon.
Online Facilitation Excellence Award
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 demonstrated 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. In particular, the client requested to keep the bricks after the session — a telling indicator of the depth of engagement the experience created.
Special Recognition Awards
Additional awards were presented to facilitators whose work demonstrated exceptional qualities not fully captured within the primary categories. Furthermore, these awards highlighted how the LEGO® Serious Play® Method continues to evolve. Today, it functions as a strategic facilitation methodology capable of supporting organizational alignment, leadership communication, innovation, and transformational change.
- Longitudinal Excellence
- Young Builders Award
- Storyteller Award
- Empathy in Practice Award
- Debut Impact Award
- Heart of Play Award
- Community Builder Award
- Healing Through Play Award
- Sustained Transformation Award
The following awards were created to honor entries that demonstrated exceptional qualities not fully captured within the primary categories. In addition to the category winners, these facilitators represent the full range of impact the LEGO® Serious Play® Method is generating worldwide.
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.
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.
For a session whose central metaphor — “the ducks” — became lasting cultural shorthand within the organization. Proof that a powerful image, well facilitated, creates enduring change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Together, these recognitions reflect the growing global sophistication of LEGO® Serious Play® facilitation. They also underscore the expanding role of strategic facilitation in organizational transformation, leadership communication, systems thinking, and collaborative innovation.
About the Awards
The LEGO® Serious Play® Global Facilitation Excellence Awards were established by Serious Play Business to formally recognize facilitators who create measurable impact through structured facilitation practice. In particular, the awards celebrate applied organizational outcomes across leadership, strategy, culture, communication, education, and community transformation contexts. The program will return in 2027.
About Serious Play Business
Serious Play Business is a global provider of LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator certification and advanced training. The organization is led by Dr. Denise Meyerson, one of the original four LEGO® Serious Play® Master Trainers worldwide. In addition, it provides certification programs, advanced facilitation training, and strategic workshop design support for facilitators, consultants, HR leaders, coaches, and organizations worldwide. For more information, visit seriousplaybusiness.com.
Advance the Methodology With Your Own Practice
Whether you are a certified practitioner or exploring LEGO® Serious Play® for the first time, Serious Play Business has a program for you. Specifically, the organization offers world-class certification and training designed to create measurable facilitation impact.
To understand the full methodology behind the workshop design described above, read The LEGO® Serious Play® Method Explained.