My approach to consulting focuses on serving as a partner and guide to you and your organization. This role can include supporting the identification of your organization’s vision and values for EDI work, facilitating the collaborative work of moving toward that shared vision, and navigating discomfort and disagreement in the process.

Via phone or Zoom conversation with one or more representatives of your organization, we can identify your specific goals and the services I can provide that might best fit your immediate and/or longer-term EDI and organizational needs and culture  Those needs could range in size and scope from a series of phone calls with an external advisor/partner, to workshop facilitation with your Board/Artists/Staff, to the creation of a strategic EDI plan. To best support client efforts, I have been certified in the following areas:

  • Trained mediator, having completed forty-hours of mediation training in 2020 in accordance with M.G.L. ch.233 § 23C with MWI in Boston

  • Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Developmental Inventory

Areas of practice include but are not limited to:

  • Internal communication and collaboration

  • Meeting design and facilitation

  • Conflict exploration (including mediation), navigation and transformation

  • Organizational behavior

  • Organizational change

  • Supporting organizational leadership (including Executive Directors, Music Directors, Board Chairs)

I apply my experience to facilitate any or all of the following based on client need:

  • Implementing a culture audit/building institutional readiness for EDI work and beyond- what does “EDI” work mean to your organization? Does your organization have the essential pieces in place to begin and sustain meaningful EDI work? How can your organization prepare the communications practices and growth mindset that is necessary for healthy work around EDI and for race equity and anti-oppression work?

  • Beginning the conversation- facilitating early internal and external stakeholder discussions regarding key questions and concerns (Board, Artists and Staff, among others)

  • Advising the work of your EDI Committee- supporting your EDI Committee/Task Force/Workgroup as an external partner: co-planning meeting agendas that support a long-term path of work, suggesting shared learning resources, and facilitating meetings via Zoom if/as desired

  • Creating an organizational definition of equity, diversity and inclusion- what are the elements that comprise your organization's view of EDI? Why? Is the definition shared among internal stakeholders? What will be your organization's focus within this definition and how will the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals be centered? How might alignment around this definition be achieved?

  • Defining EDI goals- how might successful EDI work at your organization look and feel?

  • Offering learning and development/training opportunities- building and presenting customized workshop experiences around essential EDI topics such as implicit bias, power and privilege dynamics and oppression-- all through the lens of the performing arts world

  • Creating a customized short or long-term EDI strategic plan with associated action steps for your organization

  • Developing metrics that will allow you to measure and clearly communicate your organization's EDI progress

  • Advising the creation of structures within your organization that will support EDI plan implementation and sustainability

    • Including but not limited to: exploration of equity practices in fundraising, marketing, artistic planning and decision-making, education and community engagement programming and practice, ongoing professional development for internal stakeholders (including design of customized learning curricula), organizational policies and practices (including recruitment and hiring practices for musicians, staff and board)

  • Advising and facilitating long-term EDI work and conversations as a third-party partner

To address EDI in a sustainable way, a performing arts organization must plan for it as it does an artistic schedule or endowment campaign— with intentionality, dedicated human and financial resources, and cross-functional stakeholder involvement. In the words of adrienne marie brown, “what you pay attention to, grows.”

Whether you need short-term support or long-term guidance, a consultant by the hour, or a longer-term partnership by project, we can work together to customize an arrangement for your organization that is a fit for your needs and available resources.