About Us

Grace C. Weltman, Founder

Grace Welt­man, Founder of Com­mu­ni­ties in Motion has over 20 years of pub­lic pol­i­cy, non­profit lead­er­ship and com­mu­nity devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence.  She has led many col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts focused on improv­ing social and human ser­vices. Lever­ag­ing her expe­ri­ences and exper­tise in pub­lic pol­icy and non­profit man­age­ment, Grace has been pro­vid­ing non­profit capac­ity build­ing, train­ing, and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to non­prof­it and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions, with plan­ning spe­cial­ties in orga­ni­za­tion, strate­gic plan­ning, pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy lead­er­ship,  data plan­ning and man­age­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.  Grace has exten­sive com­mu­nity plan­ning, group facil­i­ta­tion, and com­mu­nity engage­ment expe­ri­ence, which spans across her pro­fes­sional and vol­un­teer expe­ri­ence.  She has worked across a vari­ety of sec­tors that includes ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion, social ser­vices, home­less­ness, and youth devel­op­ment.

Grace received her Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Pub­lic Pol­icy & Man­age­ment and her Master’s in Pub­lic Pol­icy degree from the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Price School of Pub­lic Pol­icy. Grace also par­tic­i­pates in var­i­ous efforts impact­ing the pub­lic and non­prof­it indus­try.   Grace is cur­rent­ly an instruc­tor for the USC Safe Com­mu­ni­ties Insti­tute in which her are of focus is on Home­less­ness.

Stephanie Inya­ma, Senior Con­sul­tant

Stephanie brings a pow­er­ful set of unique per­spec­tives to her col­leagues and clients in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful fif­teen-year career as a banker, she found her pas­sion in men­tor­ing and was able to bring her expe­ri­ence, lead­er­ship and project man­age­ment skills to orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ties through­out North­ern and South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Her efforts focused on grass­roots orga­niz­ing and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty projects intend­ed to out­reach to dis­ad­van­taged indi­vid­u­als, youth and fam­i­lies.

Over the past  twelve years, she has devel­oped aug­ment­ed pro­grams and pro­vid­ed ser­vices to non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions con­cern­ing oper­a­tions, strate­gic plan­ning, col­lab­o­ra­tion, capac­i­ty build­ing, tech­ni­cal assis­tance, facil­i­ta­tion, qual­i­ty assur­ance, train­ing, grant and pro­pos­al writ­ing. In addi­tion, Stephanie brings a strong back­ground of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, plan­ning and orga­niz­ing around such diverse mat­ters as fos­ter care, the child wel­fare sys­tem, home­less­ness and the home­less deliv­ery sys­tem.  

Stephanie cul­ti­vates and lever­ages strong and diverse rela­tion­ships across a wide spec­trum of com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams and ini­tia­tives. Her part­ner­ship net­work includes tran­si­tion-age youth, com­mu­ni­ty providers, city and coun­ty agen­cies, local gov­ern­ments and first respon­ders.

Kari­na Gaete-Llanos, Out­reach Coor­di­na­tor 

Kari­na is an inter­na­tion­al trade pro­fes­sion­al, and a trav­el indus­try expert with a vast expe­ri­ence in pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion and lan­guages. Kari­na ini­ti­at­ed her career over twen­ty-five years ago in Spain, where she built a thriv­ing pro­fes­sion in the field of Inter­na­tion­al Trade and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty. In 2001, she moved to Brus­sels, Bel­gium –where she explored the field of the Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions and the Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs as Tech­ni­cal Advi­sor at the Par­lia­ment of the Euro­pean Union (EP). In this insti­tu­tion, first, Kari­na joined the Office of the Chair­man of the Indus­try, Trade, Research and Ener­gy Com­mit­tee. Three years lat­er, she joined the team of the speak­er for Trans­port and Region­al Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee. In ear­ly 2007 she joined the Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent, where she gained pre­cious exper­tise in devel­op­ment aid –par­tic­u­lar­ly at the EP del­e­ga­tion to the Joint Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly Africa/­Caribbean/­Pa­cif­ic-Euro­pean Union and its Women’s Forum, where gen­der issues are con­tin­u­ous­ly tack­led.

Since 2011 Kari­na resides in Cal­i­for­nia. As con­sul­tant, she man­ages projects on busi­ness devel­op­ment, research and assess­ment. Also, she leads pre­sen­ta­tions, train­ing, and serves as inter­preter and trans­la­tor.
Kari­na holds a Mas­ter of Arts in Inter­na­tion­al Trade from Uni­ver­sité Libre de Brux­elles-Solvay Busi­ness School, Bel­gium (2003), a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Admin­is­tra­tion from Uni­ver­si­tat Ober­ta de Catalun­ya (2010), and a Cer­tifi­cate of Teacher of Span­ish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage from Insti­tu­to Hem­ing­way, Spain (2012). She has also pur­sued stud­ies in the fields of man­ag­ing peo­ple and teams, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion, emerg­ing mar­kets, cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty, admin­is­tra­tion, pub­lic rela­tions, and lan­guages.

Rebec­ca Welt­man, Admin­is­tra­tive Coor­di­na­tor.  Rebec­ca is the Admin­is­tra­tive Coor­di­na­tor for Com­mu­ni­ties in Motion, who received a Mas­ter of Social Work from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, North­ridge this past spring. Since receiv­ing an under­grad­u­ate degree in Psy­chol­o­gy in 2015, Rebec­ca has been using her knowl­edge to pro­vide ther­a­py, case man­age­ment and advo­ca­cy for youth and par­ents in the Los Angeles’s fos­ter care and jus­tice sys­tems. She was raised in the South Bay area and is excit­ed to help indi­vid­u­als in her com­mu­ni­ty, specif­i­cal­ly youth fac­ing great social injus­tices, heal and flour­ish.