Our Story

A cento is a poem composed entirely from lines that already exist. The poet's work is not to invent new material but to recognize which lines belong together, arrange them with intention, and let the composition reveal something that none of the individual lines could say alone.

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That principle is the foundation of this practice.

 

Shannon P. Bartlett spent more than twenty years inside mission-driven organizations — in courtrooms, law schools, and eventually the C-suite of one of the world's most recognized cultural institutions. Across those roles, the presenting challenges changed. The underlying pattern did not. Talented people couldn't see the path forward clearly enough to trust it. Organizations with genuine values couldn't close the gap between what they believed and how they operated. Leaders who knew something needed to change kept running into the same walls.

The obstacles were rarely what they appeared to be on the surface. They were structural. They were relational. They lived in the space between what people had been told about themselves and what was actually true, or between what an institution said it stood for and how it actually made decisions.

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Cento Clarity was founded to work in that space.

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Shannon brings a rare combination of strategic rigor, coaching sensibility, and deep expertise in equity, inclusion, and organizational systems. Her training spans civil rights law, coaching grounded in ICF methodology, cultural intelligence, and conflict resolution — a range that reflects the nature of this work, which sits at the intersection of organizational systems and human experience.

 

Before founding Cento Clarity, she served as the inaugural Chief Community Engagement and Social Impact Officer at the National Geographic Society and held senior leadership roles at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. An active board member of multiple nonprofit organizations, Shannon is known for executive judgment, careful listening, insightful questioning, and the ability to read systems and relationships with nuance.

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