Strategic Planning and Consulting for Mission-Driven Organizations
I've run a national nonprofit, built programs for vulnerable populations, written speeches for a governor, and spent a decade at Princeton studying why institutional plans break down.
I bring all of that into the room with your leadership team.
Who I Work With
Executive Directors & Senior Leadership
You're navigating a strategic inflection point — a leadership transition, a funding shift, a merger conversation, a program that's outgrown its design. You need someone in the room who's been in your chair and understands the dynamics that don't show up in the strategic plan.
Leadership Teams
You're trying to align around strategy, clarify roles, or rebuild trust after a difficult period. You want a facilitated process that produces real decisions, not a retreat that generates post-it notes nobody references again.
Boards of Directors
You're overseeing a strategic planning process and want a facilitator who can move the board beyond aspiration into honest assessment — and then into a plan your staff can actually execute.
Program Leaders & Designers
You're building or redesigning a program — especially one serving vulnerable populations — and you need someone who understands both the design principles and the operational realities.
How We Work Together
Strategic Planning & Facilitation
Your board and leadership team build a strategic plan that reflects where your organization actually is — not where you wish it were. We start with honest assessment: stakeholder interviews, financial review, program evaluation, and a clear-eyed look at organizational capacity. We end with a plan your staff can execute and your board can govern against.
Typical engagement: 3–6 months | $15,000–45,000 depending on scope
Program Design & Development
You design and launch a program that works — grounded in evidence, operationally realistic, and built for the population you serve. I specialize in programs serving vulnerable communities: oncology camps, therapeutic wilderness programs, youth development, community-based services.
Typical engagement: 2–4 months | $8,000–20,000 depending on scope
Organizational Culture & Leadership Advisory
You gain clarity on the cultural dynamics shaping your organization — the unwritten rules, power structures, and institutional habits that determine whether strategy succeeds or fails. This is where my anthropological training matters most: I see patterns that traditional consultants miss because I'm trained to look for them.
Typical engagement: Monthly retainer or project-based, scoped after discovery call
What Changes
Every engagement is different, but here's what my clients consistently walk away with:
A Strategy That Survives Reality
Not a beautiful document that sits in a drawer. A plan built on honest assessment of where you are, grounded in what your organization can actually do, with clear metrics and accountability.
Clarity About the Real Question
Organizations often come to me with one question and discover the real question is something else entirely. A "strategic planning" project might actually be a leadership alignment problem. A "program redesign" might be a mission clarity issue. I help you find the real question before building the answer.
A Different Relationship to Uncertainty
This is harder to quantify, but it's what people most often mention afterward: the ability to sit with strategic ambiguity without defaulting to false certainty. For leadership teams facing genuinely complex decisions — mergers, mission evolution, leadership transitions — this capacity is more valuable than any deliverable.
The Ability to See Your Own Patterns
Organizations develop institutional habits the same way individuals do. Some serve you; some don't. I help you see which is which — and make deliberate choices about what to keep, what to change, and what to let go.
Background
I've spent 25 years working across sectors that don't usually talk to each other — and that cross-pollination is what I bring into the room with your team.
Executive Director, Camp Mak-A-Dream — a cost-free oncology camp serving children, young adults, and families from across the country. $2.5M budget, 25 staff, 800+ participants annually.
Founding Director, Prep@Collegiate — a high-impact enrichment program for underserved Baltimore youth, designed and launched from scratch.
Division Director of External Affairs, New Jersey Department of Personnel, and speechwriter for Governor Jon Corzine.
Lecturer, Princeton University. Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, Princeton University. M.A., Georgetown University. B.A., Johns Hopkins University.
Wilderness education instructor and program director. Political campaign field organizer.
