Thoughtful Processes. Clear Strategies. Strong Actions.
Every project is different. INS works with partners to understand the challenge, identify who needs to be involved, and design an approach that fits the work rather than forcing the work into a predetermined process.
Community Engagement & Facilitation
Create spaces where people can meaningfully shape what comes next.
INS designs and facilitates engagement processes that elevate lived experience, surface different perspectives, strengthen relationships, and help organizations make better-informed decisions.
Engagements may include community conversations, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, listening sessions, workshops, retreats, resident leadership processes, advisory groups, and multi-session convenings.
Our goal isn’t simply participation.
It’s creating opportunities for people’s knowledge to meaningfully influence strategy and action.Strategy & Initiative Design
Turn complex ideas into a path forward.
Organizations often know the change they want to create before they know exactly how to get there.
INS helps partners move from broad aspirations, research, community input, and competing priorities toward strategies that are clear, actionable, and grounded in reality.
Support may include strategic planning, initiative design, framework development, implementation planning, program development, ecosystem mapping, and facilitated design processes.Partnership & Ecosystem Building
Because complex challenges require collective solutions.
Community challenges rarely belong to a single organization.
INS helps partners build the relationships and structures necessary to work collectively — creating shared understanding, identifying common goals, clarifying roles, and helping groups determine how their individual efforts can contribute to a larger strategy.
This work may include collaborative tables, cross-sector partnerships, partner alignment, governance structures, backbone and intermediary strategy, and multi-organization planning processes.Signature Offering Culture Shift
Sometimes moving the work forward requires changing the conversation first.
Culture Shift is a facilitated INS experience designed to help groups explore the beliefs, behaviors, relationships, assumptions, and systems influencing how they interact and work together.
These experiences create intentional space for honest conversation — including conversations that organizations and groups may recognize are necessary but struggle to have productively on their own.
Culture Shift can support:
Teams and organizations navigating culture, relationships, change, or internal dynamics.
Community groups exploring issues of identity, belonging, experience, and shared responsibility.
Collaborative partnerships working across different institutions, perspectives, or power dynamics.
Leadership groups seeking greater understanding, trust, alignment, and intentionality.
Each Culture Shift engagement is designed around the people in the room and the conversation they need to have.
| Bring Culture Shift to Your Organization
Testimonials
“What sets Shari apart is her skill in balancing relationship-building with a rigorous focus on outcomes. She manages interpersonal dynamics thoughtfully and inclusively, while maintaining the discipline needed to keep teams aligned and moving forward.”
— Dwayne Barnes, Senior Program Manager, Detroit Future City
“Shari creates community engagement experiences that are exceptionally well organized while remaining deeply grounded in the people, organizations, and places being highlighted. Participants leave with a deeper understanding of the community and the people working to move it forward.”
— Katrina Watkins, Founder & CEO, Bailey Park Neighborhood Development Corporation
“Shari did more than make an introduction—she created an opportunity for our work in broadband infrastructure, workforce development, technology, neighborhood revitalization, and equitable economic development to be viewed through a national lens.”
— Jason Dixon, President & CEO, Strategic Alliance Community Development Corporation