Design and implement strategies for change.
Employees thrive when they are given agency.Leaders need to take action via people, process and culture.
“It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.” – Miles Davis
Experience
What do you get when you have the guidance of an experienced change management, employee engagement, and organizational behavior professional? My work history in marketing and communications has helped companies in many industries navigate the communications revolution, harness the behaviors of the Social Age, build audiences, and modernize their employee engagement practices.
Since 2007, empathy and active listening have guided how I create and manage organizational change. In a world where 70% of change programs fail, and creativity is the most-needed skill for a changing future of business, I’m here to help you shift your employee relationships beyond the transactional and hierarchical. I use storytelling, authentic connection, and community management principles to bring about your nascent organizational superpowers.
Work with me! I am exuberant about the future of your organization and its impending transformations.
Change management, collaboration, and culture
How does your company function? What’s the culture like? What are the shared points of delight or friction for your employees? By being curious, I find most companies fail to plan for the holistic picture. They forge ahead intending to save money/time with something they can control and measure (a technology solution) and are shocked when efficiency and productivity don’t increase. This methods accrues organizational “change debt” and fosters exhausted workforces.
Employee ecosystems and organizational leaders need can be coached by someone with high emotional intelligence on how to create and facilitate change with grace and balance.
Whether you’re trying to make your team more agile, or respond internally to external and market forces, your people probably already have the answers. Using a design thinking approach, I can help you uncover and implement them.
Community & audience building
Feeling connected with other people because of a shared profession or passion is powerful. I blend analytical and behavioral inquisitiveness so businesses make the most of their online investments, build their audiences and foster healthy employee community.
I organically create audiences using social media and storytelling best practices, combined with behavioral science principles. Strategic communications practices leave positive impacts on internal communications. The result is a more aligned and unified workforce.
Services I Offer
Change management initiative design, planning, communications, and implementation/operationalization
Employee focus group facilitation
Leader interviews and communications coaching
Design thinking workshops focusing on: employee engagement, product development, culture-building
Technology education and learning design
Community design and building
Virtual education events
Internal communications planning and strategy
Content development and planning
Train-the-trainer workshops
Audience building and digital engagement
Employee recognition programs
Strategic communications and community outreach
Education
My college degree is in journalism and psychology. The combination gives me a love of finding root causes and storytelling (isn’t it interesting how those things are sometimes at cross-purposes?!). Once the digging is over and a scope is defined, I rely on my cumulative expertise working with organizations to define services that fit your company’s challenges.
I am a Prosci Certified change practitioner and I hold an Organizational Development Process Certification (ODPC) from the Institute of Organizational Development as well as a LUMA Institute Design Thinking practitioner certification. I also incorporate formal training in mediation and conflict resolution, as well as Non-violent communication (NVC) principles into how I work.
What People Say
Results
I have helped companies maintain their brands inside and outside of company walls and despite the pace of change in business and the tsunami of increasing employee and customer expectations. My work has been measured in things like adoption, risk prevention, and more humbly, in small leader behavior changes such as shifts in perspective, attitude, and actions.
From my early career in marketing, public relations, and digital communications I have helped companies craft key messages that build their brands. I have also helped companies strategically de-construct those same kinds of messages so they are instead co-created with cultivated digital networks like employee and customer communities. I saw the power of the mobile revolution and of social media networks in the mid-2000s. I made sure my expertise and my work on behalf of my employers were fully part of that communications renaissance.
Talk Social to Me
I have been a consultant since 2013. However, my tenure (2017 to 2021) with Talk Social to Me was especially formative for my current work helping companies understand how employees collaborate, what motivates them, work together and how to create cultures that engage and retain them. I have consulted with startups, non-profits, and philanthropic foundations on their change management, employee community and learning and development efforts.
Cisco Systems and Intuit
I have helped companies like Cisco Systems and Intuit use online customer communities to create new products, services, and offer more cost effective customer support. I was a founding team member for the Cisco Learning Network which grew to 450,000+ members. The community generated learning product sales of $1m+ annually. I helped Intuit retain 30 super users in the QuickBooks help community at a time of deep changes to the company’s flagship product.
Startup Companies & Non-Profits
At the beginning of my career, my skills as a marketer and in building relationships and content was part of two successful startup companies’ initial public offerings. I also spent 5 years in the non-profit sector helping organizations serving the business, humanitarian, arts and professional development sectors get more publicity, raise more funds, and serve more constituents.
In December of 2020, I joined the board of directors for Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp.
Fun Facts About Me
I am unquenchably creative and resourceful. I think “outside the box” and take action with ideas wisdom and savvy relevant to the environment or situation. The arts have always helped me keep my perspective and method fresh, creative and unencumbered.
I’m a portmanteausiast (“portmanteau” + “enthusiast” combined into a new word) who loves hybrids, mashups, extemporaneously rewriting songs, dance, and singing. I produce a podcast and blog about sound in the performing arts called Agile Vocalist. I come from a long line of horse-lovers.
Thinking & Aspiring
Career Reflection: Ten Years
2023 marks my 10-year anniversary as a consultant. My hope is that these career reflections will be helpful to the so.many.people who are in transition in this bold, bright year called 2023. I hope these resonate with how you may be feeling—because...
Creativity in Our Work
Creativity is an essential skill for a variety of professions. For internal communicators, its a skill to help find the right approaches and messages to resonate and stick with employees. My colleague Daniel Méndez tells me how he used music and...
Let’s change your world.
Work with me! I am exuberant about the future of your business and its impending transformations. My experience with organizations of all sizes and in diverse sectors are my lens of organizational experience.
Creating meaningful change is a journey. Let my design-thinking approach be your guide and trusted partner.