Services

Update August 2019: For a while I was calling myself a communications consultant and then I took a full-time job which didn’t last and now I don’t know what to call myself. I’ve opted for “Writer” on LinkedIn because I’m aiming for a work schedule that allows some time for paid gigs, some time for creative writing, and some time for volunteer work. My skills and sample projects are listed below. In general, I will go above and beyond for people I like and respect and I will remove myself speedily from situations in which I and other people are being treated poorly and meetings never, ever end. 

Services I can provide:

  • Meeting design and facilitation: I can design and/or facilitate meetings, workshops, and training sessions that are reliably interactive, engaging, and productive. For several years, I designed the program for the annual conference of the Communications Network, which now draws over 600 attendees each year, and I’ve led trainings and workshops for every organization I’ve worked on topics including branding, message development, process improvement, crisis communications, and more.  I’ve been trained in various methodologies and approaches to facilitation, communications planning, and strategic planning. I can either easily learn and adapt to an existing methodology as a facilitator, or I can custom-design an approach to a meeting or a workshop to best serve the client’s needs and goals. And, I’d be more than happy to plug in as a sub-contractor for consulting groups and companies seeking to add facilitation expertise to an existing project team.
  • Writing and editing: Let’s say you want to express something, in written form, but the final product has to faithfully incorporate the multiple perspectives of many stakeholders, and has to do so in a way that engages the widest range of audience members possible. Let’s say your process involves a whole bunch of people who need to weigh in on the final piece. I can help you do all that. Also, I can take a piece of prose that someone has already produced at your behest for a really important audience (like your Board or your donors) and I can take it to another level so it is clear, understandable, and convincing.
  • Strategic communication consulting: I can lead or contribute to a wide range of communication strategies. One note of caution: most strategic communication efforts I’ve known involve more than one person and a decent amount of research and input-gathering. So I’m happy to be plugged into a project with moving parts, or to help organize and manage all of the moving parts–I’m good at playing with others, and am always on the look-out for great partners.

Other lists that may or may not be of interest to you:

GREAT PROJECTS/INITIATIVES WITH MY FINGERPRINTS ON ‘EM

  • Transforming a vacant lot in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City into a community garden (I list this because it’s one of the first projects I ever led, during one of my first jobs, and it sparked my eagerness to contribute to positive change that remains un-dampened to this day.)
  • Helping community leaders and parents and school teachers work together and communicate about improving neighborhoods, schools, and job opportunities;
  • Engaging a wide range of people to understand and act on racial and ethnic inequality in health care;
  • Ensuring that the issues of cost, quality, and inequality were part of the discussions leading up to and informing the Affordable Care Act;
  • Diving deep into the communication challenges related to our changing climate and protecting our planet and people’s health.

THINGS I CAN DO

  • Design and facilitate meetings
  • Write and edit any type of document or content
  • Create and manage budgets
  • Clarify and define roles within a team
  • Manage teams
  • Write a Request for Proposals or help define a scope of work for a project or contractor engagement
  • Keep the trains running on reasonable schedule if you are facing a staff vacancy in your communications or organizational development department and you still want to do things

ORGANIZATIONS THAT GAVE ME A REGULAR PAYCHECK (oldest to newest)

For my full CV, click here.

CLIENTS (So far)

Generally, my clients are either foundations or social responsibility teams in for-profit companies. I can provide references but for a whole host of not very interesting reasons, I’m not going to list my clients here.