Strategies for Change and Engagement

Create and implement strategies for change.

Employees need agency.

Leaders need to take action.

“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 as a communicator and as a creative has helped many companies in many industries navigate the communications revolution, adapt to the Social Age, build their audiences, and mature 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, I’m here to help you shift your employee and customer relationships beyond the transactional by using storytelling, authentic connection, and community engagement principles. I help you connect with your nascent organizational superpowers.

Work with me! I am exuberant about the future of your business 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 often miss the holistic picture. They forge ahead intending to save money/time, or hoping to grow productivity. They accrue organizational “change debt” and end up with exhausted people.

Employee ecosystems and organizational leaders need to 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 new market forces, your people probably already have the answers. 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 in building their audiences and fostering healthy community.

I organically create audiences using social media using storytelling best practices and behavioral science principles. Strategic communications practices work for both your public social channels as well as in internal communications for companies looking to align and unify their workforces.

Services I Offer

Change initiative discovery and employee assessments
Employee focus group facilitation
Leader interviews and communications coaching
Collaboration and communication technology research
Data synthesis and recommended interventions
Change management initiative communications

Technology education and learning design
Community coaching and enagement building
Community design and building
Virtual education events

Community content development
Train-the-trainer workshops
Audience building and digital engagement
Strategic communications and community outreach
Organic social media audience creation

Learning

My college degree is in journalism and psychology. The combination gives me a love of finding root causes. Once the digging is over and a scope is defined, I rely on my cumulative expertise working with organizations of all sizes andtypes to define services that fit the challenge your company faces.

I am a Prosci Certified change practitioner and I hold an Organizational Development Process Certification (ODPC) from the Institute of Organizational Development. I also incorporate formal training in mediation and conflict resolution, as well as Non-violent communication (NVC) into how I work.

What People Say

Rachel can be comfortable in a variety of situations. She’s naturally observant, insightful and a clear communicator who is able to apply those talents to help inspire organizations and individuals grow and evolve. What I appreciated most about working with Rachel was her ability to, almost instantly, explain complex topics in a relatable way. Every time she engaged, whether with leaders for buy-in or with collaborators for ‘retraining,’ Rachel brought fact-based and very compelling counsel.

Kat Mereigh
Client who worked with Rachel

Rachel has been a great addition to the HRSF board, and often provides a balancing view in discussions that keeps us on track. I especially appreciate Rachel’s ability to tactfully bring up “the elephant in the room” and tackle difficult topics in a way that includes everyone’s perspective. She’s also the one who has the current knowledge of online communities to help us with outbound messaging to reach and expand our audience.

Kristin Speer
Managing Director, Advanced Technology
Westwood & Wilshire

Rachel joined the HR Strategy Forum as a committee member to add outreach to the group’s collective skills. Within a few weeks, the board recognized her unique contributions as an advocate for the interests of senior HR professionals and chose to promote her to a Board Member at Large so she could bring even more value to the organization. Rachel is an expert at fostering interactive relationships her leadership has helped HRSF challenge the way we think about our mission to build community and collaboration.

Craig Ramsay
Board President
HR Strategy Forum

Rachel stepped into a leadership role for our 2019 annual fundraising event. Her skills as a communicator, strategist, as well as in analyzing and working with data from past year’s events helped her to mobilize our community. She led a professional result from idea to implementation hat exceeded the prior year’s fundraising achievements. Rachel is a pleasure to work with and takes initiative, always finding ways to innovate and add value to the bigger picture.

Paloma Baquerizo, Director of Development
Escuela Bilingüe Internacional

Results

I have helped companies maintain their influence despite the blistering pace of technological change and the tsunami of increased customer and employee expectations. From my humble beginnings as a marketer crafting messaging and building brands, I have also helped companies strategically de-construct those same kinds of messages so they are instead shared and co-created with cultivated digital networks. I was among the first to see the power of Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s, and helped innovative content and social sharing mechanisms that were incorporated in the Jive Software community platform.

Talk Social to Me

In 2017, I began consulting with Talk Social to Me, helping companies with their employee engagement and change management efforts–including understanding how workers collaborate, coaching new behaviors, and increasing engagement. As a consultant, I’ve also worked with startups, non-profits, and philanthropic foundations on their change management efforts focused on networks and constituent relationships.

Cisco Systems and Intuit

I have helped companies like Cisco Systems and Intuit use online customer community to create new products and offer more cost effective customer care. 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 get more publicity, raise more funds, and serve more constituent need.

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 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 blogcast called Agile Vocalist. I come from a long line of horse-lovers.

Thinking & Aspiring

What’s in Your Organizational Closet?

As companies begin investing in rebuilding and re-designing corporate culture, my experiences with pre-pandemic organizational phenomena may lend a clue as to where and how to start so that change is not only accepted by employees; it should at least in-part be designed by them. Dive into your organizational closet to find and capture the wisdom inside your own people.

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Change: Do the Work

Employees are a powerful voice that your company cannot afford to ignore in the face of societal and cultural change. Organizations have a habit of tokenism and lip service to causes where the work to build healthy, diverse and equitable companies is deep and long.

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Let’s change your world.

Let’s converse!

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 systems thinking and approach be your guide and trusted partner.

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