Organizations we serve:
Educational Institutions
We help education providers create sustainable impact for their students. We offer assessment, planning, design, data use, and implementation support focused on achieving equitable outcomes.
State & City/County Governments
We support cities and counties in solving their toughest challenges. We specialize in facilitating multi-agency planning and program design, particularly in the equity and economic mobility spaces.
Foundations and Nonprofits
We help you fulfill your role within your community by building your capacity to turn stakeholder data into meaningful strategy, improve DEI practices, and improve organizational outcomes.
We are a thought partner in your implementation work.
We work as a thought partner to help you navigate the complex work of implementing your goals. Our experience with implementation means that you have the support you need to confront challenges as you transform your systems and practices. We have worked hard to craft a reliable and proven process around implementation.
Our service areas:
Antiracism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ADEI)
We help you carry out your vision to create and sustain a more inclusive environment that promotes equity, respect, and a balance of power for everyone. We carry out the work in three main ways: providing clarity of direction for your team, establishing an emotional connection to your ADEI agenda, and shaping the organizational environment in which the work will be done.
Analytics & Data Use
Data is at the heart of all of our work, and we have created best practices that very specifically support organizational analytics and data use — metric use case development, data equity assessments and coaching, and coursework in data governance practices.
Community & Stakeholder Engagement
Our comprehensive and robust community engagement processes will help you gather important community insights prior to identifying and prioritizing your goals and objectives. It is also a great way to communicate your intentions to your stakeholders. We have a thorough and flexible approach to effectively gather and analyze feedback, and we design our engagement processes with an ADEI lens.
Continuous Improvement
Our facilitated Continuous Improvement (CI) sessions are designed to help your team successfully implement your goals through a structured process that focuses on real-time, collaborative problem-solving and a shared clarity about the progress of your goals. The iterative nature of our CI process builds habits around strategic thinking, centers equity within the process, and helps you engage with data in a human-centered way.
Human-Centered Design
Our design support combines our commitment to the principles of Design Justice with expertise in Human-Centered Design, stakeholder engagement, and systems and process improvement. Our adaptable design processes have a track record of building stronger relationships and more meaningful interactions between state education departments and local education agencies, shifting compliance monitoring into programmatic collaboration. Examples of our work include visioning, design, pilot testing, and roll-out planning.
Implementation Support
Plans only lead to impact through strong implementation practices. Change leaders must explicitly support those responsible for doing the work by changing their behaviors and mindsets. Even the best planned implementation never follows a smooth or linear path. We bring decades of experience as we guide you through the rough spots and provide extra problem-solving power in challenging moments.
Organizational Assessments
Before you can plan and design new ways of working within your organization, it’s helpful to identify the gaps in where you are compared to where you want to be. Our organizational assessments combine quantitative analysis with deep employee and community engagement to help organizations quickly identify these gaps.
Performance Management
Our performance management approach evolved from the CitiStat, HousingStat and SchoolStat methodologies originating in Baltimore. We facilitate structured sessions allowing for time to be spent on collaborating around problem solving. We also provide job-embedded professional development and coaching for participants to build organizational capacity in performance management.
Professional Learning & Training
High quality Professional Learning is a comprehensive system of learners and leaders building deeper understanding, cultural responsiveness, and community. Collaboration and learning‐by‐doing are necessary components, no matter where or when learning takes place. We place emphasis on reimagining and restructuring current systems and processes together through dedicated time for learning and actionable practice.
Strategic Planning
Our strategic planning process is built on driving organizational change. With a focus on implementation, we can ensure that once the plan is completed it can immediately be used to drive action across the organization. Our methodology includes organizational capacity assessments, stakeholder engagement, data analysis, vision setting, work group facilitation, plan development, and communications strategies.
We build data practices that center around people.
Data is truly the most powerful when it is used to improve the human experience. We work with you to build your skillsets around data in a way that allows you to elevate the people you serve. You can improve the work you do by knowing the right data to focus on and how to use that data to inform the decisions you make.