Cuán McCann!!

PRONOUNS: HE/HIM & ey/em

Hey, there! I’m Cuán. (Pronounced coo-awn.) I’m a trans and queer white person of Irish and Southern Italian descent living on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land (Baltimore, Maryland). I am educator and artist, and the founder and lead trainer here at Build With. I have over 18 years of facilitation and teaching experience, spanning small and large group convenings, mediations, workshops, classes, interactive tours, collaborative art spaces, happenings, keynotes, and more. (Catch a recap of my public speaking, teaching, and mischief making here.)

As a steward of emergence-focused processes, I develop spaces that welcome silence and creativity, celebrate the expression of a variety of communication and learning styles, help participants cultivate revelation, and proactively and reactively work to interrupt white supremacy and other toxic patterns of power within group spaces.

I’m no Pollyanna: the work of communal design and collaboration is capital-h Hard. Not to mention that unlearning and dismantling white supremacy and colonial mentality, in general, but especially for me as a white person and a settler, is an ongoing, non-linear, life-long process. My work is informed just as much by failure, challenge, and near-misses as it is by convergence, healing, connection, and “success”. I am constantly learning, on my own and in community, how to hold this complexity while continuing to carve new pathways for transformation. I am truly moved by what is possible when we open ourselves to what my friend Kristen Jackson calls “discovery within discomfort”. I hope to help you and yours with the same.

Beyond and throughout my facilitation and education work, I’ve lived and continue to live a thousand lives as an Irish martial artist and coach (specializing in Doyle style bataireacht), a community organizer, drag king, cardboard dinosaur parent, civic tech elder, government transparency policy analyst, audio engineer, partner, Husband, neighbor, and friend.

In whatever ways our paths cross, I look forward to connecting with you.