what people are saying...

Leah P. Bailey
Director, The Boston Globe Foundation

"I wanted to thank you for the exceptional help you have provided to the Boston Globe Foundation with our two most important initiatives this year: creating a strategic focus for the Foundation and selecting strategic partners for 2004 and beyond.

Your expertise in strategic planning helped us to move quickly to identify our goals, our internal strengths and resources, and then to choose a strategy that would create value for The Globe and for the community. Involving our employees in focus groups was a valuable tool, and had never been done before by the Globe Foundation.

Your clear thinking, knowledge of local nonprofits, and strategic vision—coupled with your clear personal commitment to the Foundation’s success—were all key ingredients in making everything turn out so well. And I cannot fail to mention your superior software skills, especially with Excel and PowerPoint, which contributed to the successful communication and presentation of our research and data.

Once again, thank you for all of your assistance. Please feel free to list me as a contact for anyone who would like more information about the work you’ve done for the Boston Globe Foundation."

Joy C. Errico
Staples Community Relations Supervisor

"Thank you for your help in researching potential strategic charity partners for Staples Foundation for Learning. Your extensive networking base and thorough research resulted in several quality options for the foundation to choose from in two very different areas ---diversity and the environment. I am confident that the organizations we select will be dynamic fits for our foundation, due to your careful analysis.

I know the task at hand was not easy given our tight timeframe. You became up to speed with our mission and values in no time and turned around a quality product quickly that I feel accurately reflects our vision for the foundation’s future. I could not of made this happen so promptly without your support and guidance.

Your expertise on the non-profit world, big picture thinking, and overall professionalism helped make this search a success. Thanks again for all your hard work. "

Charlotte Kahn
Director, The Boston Indicators Project
The Boston Foundation

"Because of your involvement in the Boston Indicators Project, we were able to gain access to systems thinking which has been tremendously valuable to the project. Your involvement resulted in our working with graduate students at MIT and designing and piloting a new kind of workshop with over 100 people that in turn was rolled out to hundreds of people. You have really effected the quality of thinking, on this project and on many other initiatives as well.

Having you in the room was of tremendous assistance in facilitating our process. You were patient, you were very creative and you helped us capture the knowledge in the room and organize it. Your work allowed us to keep building from one session to the next until we really had a very useful product.

You added a level of rigor that we simply would never have gotten to on our own."

Geeta Pradhan
Director, New Economy Initiative
The Boston Foundation

"The most recent work of the Indicators Project, in particular your involvement, has really helped us think about this whole idea of innovation, and what is the structure and infrastructure that supports innovation. I think this is going to influence the way we think, in fact it has influenced the way we think about the indicators in all 10 sectors of the economy that we are looking at. We are looking at issues of competitiveness, of connectivity, of the kind of workforce that is necessary in each of those sectors, and a lot of it is the thinking that we developed together with your help.

One thing that I really appreciated was your objectivity, you were able to distance yourself from things and very objectively give us feedback. You took a lot of complex thinking and experiences and knowledge that we had in our heads and organized it in ways that gave structure to this project. That was one of the most phenomenal contributions that you were able to provide, constantly pushing us to be clear and focused about our thinking.

Another attribute that you’ve brought to this was a social consciousness. You constantly brought us back to looking at the ‘have-nots’ of society, you never let us go too far without coming back home and touching base with the people who really need the help including young people, and linguistic and other minorities. That was actually a perfect ‘community matters’ kind of input that you were providing, as someone who’s about community and people and is looking at the systems approach from a very community and personal point of view, but with the skills that come from strong business acumen. It was a great contribution on both sides, which is very unusual."