My relevant experience centers on helping mission-driven organizations clarify strategic priorities, engage diverse stakeholders, assess organizational capacity, and translate strategy into practical action. I have done this both from within nonprofit governance and as an external consultant, giving me perspective on what makes a strategic planning process both credible to stakeholders and usable by the organization afterward.

Across these engagements, my systems-thinking approach means looking beyond the presenting issue to understand the relationships among stakeholders, organizational structures, processes, resources, technology, and external factors; identifying the underlying conditions influencing the issue; and helping leaders focus their limited resources on the highest-value opportunities for change.

Challenge: Village on the Ridge is a new non-profit organization based on a national aging-in-place village model..

Approach: As a founding board member, I led brainstorming sessions with the board, members, and volunteers (approximately 30 people) in the first year to write our mission, vision, and values as well as design our logo. In 2025, I facilitated in-person and offline activities to write our first strategic plan and determine a regular cadence to review and align tactics. Over the last six months as President, in partnership with Joan Stanton, Vice President, we are actively identifying and responding to grant opportunities. 

Result: The process established board alignment around grassroots priorities and created a practical framework for reviewing tactics against strategy. It also required balancing interconnected considerations—including mission, stakeholder needs, organizational capacity, membership growth, volunteer capacity, and financial sustainability. Membership growth has remained on track toward 2026 goals without marketing spend, while the organization has maintained fiscal solvency with a two-year contingency fund.

Regional Collaboration: I actively collaborate with PAVE, a statewide network of Village leaders, to share best practices and develop opportunities that strengthen the broader Village Movement, including participation in a cross-organizational grant application.

As a Higher Award Coach, I mentor approximately a dozen high school students and recent graduates undertaking Gold Award projects addressing hyper-local community needs. I help participants translate complex ideas into actionable projects, identify dependencies and risks, engage stakeholders, and build sustainability into their plans. Every eligible Scout I have coached has earned their Gold Award. This experience strengthens my ability to facilitate diverse stakeholders and help turn ambitious community priorities into achievable action.

Challenge: As a board member and technology committee co-chair, I encountered an organization experiencing board and volunteer turnover, incomplete documentation, fragmented information, and unclear priorities—conditions that made it difficult to establish and execute a sustainable technology strategy.

Approach: Rather than treating technology as an isolated problem, I identified broader organizational conditions—including unclear priorities, governance transitions, inconsistent documentation, and fragmented information—that were contributing to the challenge.

Result: The committee delivered actionable recommendations to the board to improve data trust, centralized reporting, marketing effectiveness, and the affiliate experience. More importantly, the work demonstrated that the technology challenges were symptoms of interconnected organizational conditions—including unclear priorities, governance transitions, inconsistent documentation, and fragmented information. By examining those relationships rather than addressing technology in isolation, I helped the committee develop recommendations that were more useful to board-level decision-making.

Challenge: Foster the Family sought to understand inconsistencies in branch-level staff support materials that were affecting families' experiences, creating confusion around organizational messaging and consuming staff time.

Approach: I conducted individual interviews and a survey to understand how staff were experiencing the existing materials and where inconsistencies were occurring. I synthesized qualitative and operational findings to identify connections among frontline experience, organizational messaging, standardized practices, mission and values, and compliance considerations. Rather than treating the materials as an isolated communications issue, I assessed how inconsistencies were affecting the broader organizational experience.

Result: I translated frontline feedback and operational inconsistencies into recommendations spanning mission, values, storytelling, standardized practices, and compliance. The work connected staff experience to broader organizational alignment and gave the organization a clearer foundation for consistent communication and support.

Challenge: As Director of Medicare Sales Enablement at Independence Blue Cross, I managed enterprise change affecting a 22-person team while developing and socializing a technical capability roadmap supporting a 90-person division. The work required balancing organizational priorities, workforce considerations, vendor relationships, enterprise dependencies, and changing business needs.

Approach: I mapped and managed the relationships among organizational priorities, workforce needs, vendor capabilities, enterprise dependencies, and changing business requirements. I maintained cross-divisional partnerships to surface dependencies and potential downstream impacts while using vendor relationships to influence priorities and negotiate changes that better served the organization.

Result: The work produced a transparent multi-year roadmap supporting a 90-person division, reduced vendor costs by 75%, and contributed to measurable improvement in team morale and completion of professional development goals. The experience reinforced my approach of evaluating strategic decisions in the context of the broader organizational system—including people, processes, technology, vendors, resources, and implementation capacity.