Hi, I’m Heather
I spent 20 years running nonprofits.
I know what it's like to be the one holding it together.
I know what it costs.
And I know what it takes to put it down.
I work with nonprofit Executive Directors in two moments. Staying, with strategy that isn't translating into execution. Leaving, with no roadmap for the handoff. I've been in both seats. I built what I went looking for and couldn't find.
If you're here, you probably already know.
You're in one of two places.
The strategy isn't translating. You've written the plans, run the retreats, handed it to the team. Six months later, the day-to-day has swallowed it whole.
Or you're leaving. Maybe you haven't said it out loud yet. Maybe the date is set. Either way, you know what lives in your head, and you know nobody taught you how to hand it off.
You know how to lead this organization. You're looking for the structure nobody handed you.
I've been in the chair you're sitting in.
Twenty years inside mission-driven organizations. Most of it as an Executive Director. All of it from inside the work, not alongside it.
I know what it's like to run an organization where the strategy lives in your head because there's no system to hold it anywhere else. I know what it's like to think about leaving for two years before telling anyone. I know the specific weight of being the person the institution quietly runs on.
I didn't come to this work from the outside. I got here because I was already doing it, and nobody had built the thing I needed.
So I built it.
WHO I AM
TWO PATHWAYS
IF YOUR TEAM NEEDS A PLAN THAT HOLDS
Strategic Planning
The plan isn't the problem. The system around it is.
A structured engagement for nonprofit leaders whose strategic plans keep collapsing back onto their shoulders. We diagnose what's actually stalling execution, build the planning work the team can own, and install the rhythms that keep the strategy moving when the week gets hard. Not a retreat. An operating system for how your organization executes.
You stop being the only one holding the strategy.
IF YOU'RE PREPARING TO LEAVE
The Legacy Leadership Transfer™
A structured departure roadmap for founders and long-tenured Executive Directors. Five modules. Eight transition artifacts. The knowledge transfer, the relationship handoffs, the board readiness work, the identity work that comes after.
Your succession plan was built for your board. This was built for you.
WHY I BUILT THIS
The short version.
When it was my turn to leave, I looked for a roadmap. There wasn't one. Not a real one. Not one built by somebody who had actually sat in the chair and done it.
So I figured it out in real time. Documented everything. Transferred what only I could transfer. Left in a way I'm still proud of. Then I turned it into a program, because no Executive Director should have to improvise their own departure.
The strategic planning work came from the same place. Twenty years of watching 40 page plans die between retreats because no one had built the system to keep them alive. I ran that system inside my own organization first. Now I build it with other leaders.
Both problems have the same root. Too much of the organization lives in one person's head. My job is to get it out.
Two doors. Same idea.
The organization shouldn't run on you.
