Services Overview

I bring 30 years of consulting to nonprofits and philanthropists in nearly every mission area, working with thousands of leaders on vision, strategy, change management, reorganizations, growth plans, turnarounds, mergers and collaborations, founder and CEO transitions, leadership coaching, personal and organizational resilience, and many other points of significant inflection. While none of these will provide THE answer, experiences and case studies help to illuminate options and tradeoffs and spur creative thinking to tough questions. In order to come to principled decisions, it is important to engage in solid critical thinking and to leverage the lessons learned of others toward a unique answer that is best for this particular organization. In addition, I can provide a range of presentations, workshops, and educational conversations for board, staff, community stakeholders, partners, funders, and others in your sphere.

In many complex projects with no “right” answer (e.g., we are solving for adaptive challenges rather than technical challenges), the process is at least as important as the final conclusions. I can work with you to think through the various layers of stakeholders, their motivations, their influence, ways to leverage their insights and increase their connection and engagement, and how best to bring them into alignment. In addition, any process is a critical way of ensuring that the organization is modeling its core values and either reinforcing or possibly changing some elements of culture in order to best support the mission.

Most of my projects have a good deal of complexity – otherwise organizational leaders would have no issues tackling them on their own. There are generally numerous stakeholders, perspectives, and variables to consider throughout the process. Decision making usually involves layers of exploration, vetting, and narrowing – and leveraging both data and intuition. I leverage my experience facilitating groups to bring clarity out of complexity, and I support organizations to develop their own capacity to navigate future inflection points.

I also offer fractional CEO services, stepping in on a part-time or interim basis to provide high-level leadership and expertise. This can be particularly valuable in these situations:

1. During leadership transitions:

As an interim CEO I can ensure the important work of the mission continues, while supporting the organization to assess all its options and get clear on its next chapter in a thoughtful, values-driven way.  That might include assessing a merger or a new business model, shifting programs to become more relevant or have higher impact, improving readiness to attract and retain the next CEO, advising on internal candidates, exploring alternative leadership structures, or supporting your search process. As an Interim I am less of a “place holder” and more of a change agent, and I maintain objectivity because I am not a candidate for the permanent role.

2. To grow personal and family philanthropy:

A fractional CEO could be your first official hire, or could be a next step to providing more strategic and impactful philanthropy for an individual, family foundation, or donor collaborative. I can work on a part-time (or potentially full-time) basis to help ramp up philanthropic activities, engage the next generation, or launch a new philanthropic initiative.