I work with nonprofits and arts organizations to help solve your biggest and most pressing pains, dysfunctions, and challenges.

The Benefits of Consulting

I provide focus and experience to a project or issue that needs additional attention. Your organization will benefit from the knowledge, experience, perspective, and additional capacity that I bring.

What Does The Process Look Like?

• Define the Issue and Understand the Work. I meet with you to understand your learning goals and the outputs that your organization desires and ask a lot of questions. I take care to invest time at the beginning of the process to deeply comprehend and clarify the intended purpose of the work and possible barriers to success.

• Create a Proposal. I clearly outline a scope of work that meets your goals, budget, and general timeline. I offer this proposal as starting point to for you to evaluate the approach. I seek feedback and we tweak the proposal to create a plan for the work that works for all the parties involved and—recognizing the evolutionary nature of projects between start and finish—also allows for some flexibility for in-process learning and pivoting.

• Work in Partnership with You. While on a project, I provide detailed action plans on how to achieve goals and proactively communicate with you. Any in-stream adjustments to the plan will be implemented with mutual agreement.

• Complete the Project and Look Forward. I deliver the outputs, I facilitate self-reflection on the process and the organization-consultant relationship to reinforce learning, and I work with the organization on developing next steps and what the next phase of project work may look like.

How Would I Help Your Organization?

• I start with your organization’s mission and your goals. Each project is different and I offer tailor-made approaches using the tools and techniques that are best for the situation and the organization.

• I have this broad base of experience in the field. I have spent my career in arts and nonprofit organizations as a volunteer, senior staff member, board member, consultant, facilitator/trainer, and coach. I have played every role from setting up chairs and ordering catering to creating curricula, leading panel discussions, and facilitating strategic conversations. I know what it takes for programs and organizations to be successful.

• I’m easy to work with. I have worked in all sorts of settings and am experienced and flexible enough to be able to work with a high degree of independence or work in close coordination with teams and supervisors.

• I stay current. I’m a curious person and stay updated on trends in arts, culture, and entertainment and organizational innovation and change management issues. I have an healthy appetite for learning about various approaches and thinking about how they might apply in other contexts.

• I’m an outsider. I bring in new tools and approaches to your organization, providing an important perspective from outside your organization.

• I’m an insider. For arts and nonprofit organizations, I bring the experience of an experienced senior leader supporting these organizations and an insider’s knowledge of how the field works, possible barriers to change, and how to navigate those barriers.

• I value sustainability and forward momentum. I don’t just deliver products and results on time. Looking to future is an important part of my approach. I look to expand the capacity of an organization to move boldly into new directions. What can my work with you help to unlock and enable? What possible directions can you go from here?

• I utilize my own network. For larger projects and those that might benefit from the additional perspectives and support of my partners, some projects may be more appropriate for Third Eye Cultural Collaborative or other partnerships with other professionals in the field.

How to Get Started

• Send me a message briefly outlining your ideas.

• Set up a time for an initial conversation.

What Kind of Consulting Work Do I Enjoy?

• Designing and implementing new programs or improving existing programs.

• Working on sticky and persistent problems that have not been solved before.

• Moving teams from aspirational visions of the future to practical and prioritized action plans.

• Improving teamwork and communication across departments. I am accredited as a facilitator/trainer by Belbin North America.

• Facilitating ideation sessions and strategic conversations.

• Serving as a temporary staff person or project manager.

• Interviewing and program evaluation (focus groups, one-on-one interviews, etc.).

• Designing small-scale intentional experiments and processing the learning from those experiments.

• Systems and process planning to enable organizational growth and/or organizational agility.

• Researching other arts/nonprofit initiatives and best practices.

• Teaching and facilitating hands-on workshops of arts management topics, especially working with under-resourced organizations.