Our services are rooted in your goals. We work thoroughly to understand what success looks like to you, and the interdependencies in your ecosystem. We then tailor an engagement that is responsive to your organizational realities while moving you forward. We ask hard questions, and don’t shy away from hard answers. We learn and we lead – together with you.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
At Crux, a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the core of all that we do. Rather than a service we provide, it is the underpinning foundation behind any work that we commit to with our clients. By working with us, you will not only get effective results, but your organization will leapfrog in how it integrates DEI from the ground up, both from within the organization and in any programs and services that branch out of it from our time together.
We do this through a customized approach that’s tailored to the specific needs of our clients. We work with you to identify what levels of intervention are optimal and the amount of change your organization has the capacity for.
We prioritize an adaptable and iterative process in our approach that regularly revisits goals and strategies and make changes as needed. We believe that ultimately you know your system best, and that knowledge is central in allowing us to design our trainings, facilitations, strategy sessions, and more, to ensure maximum buy-in and impact within your organization.
Strategy Design and Implementation – Because the only constant is change
At Crux we know that plans should do more than sit on a shelf and gather dust. Bringing strategies to life means developing the ability to manage change. We approach strategy development and implementation as a partner in bringing together expertise from within your organization, then facilitating a process that leads to deliberate and nimble execution. Our work is to help you identify anticipated changes, the barriers to increasing your impact, and an actionable path forward. Clients regularly report that the process is engaging, helps them think through complex situations, and leads to a measurable set of actions. A sample of recent projects includes:
- Leading strategic mergers and acquisitions, from fundraising professional associations to international conservation non-profits;
- Supporting a three-year-old organization developing their first strategic plan, grounded in data, after splitting from their fiscal sponsor;
- Preparing a 20-year old membership-based foundation to evolve in the face of new challenges.
Leadership Development and Coaching – Scale your impact
Delivering results, navigating change, and scaling up are hard. Leaders get better at addressing challenges and working across difference when equipped with the right tools. If you’re ready to move yourself or your team, we’ll support your breakthrough. We are passionate about adult learning and best practices in instructional design and can customize transformational personnel programs. We help individuals and groups build skills through coaching, training, and workshops on many topics. Examples of our approach include:
- Providing individual coaching for chief executives and organizational leaders across sectors;
- Designing and coordinating an 18-month program bringing together school principals and district leaders for collective coaching and professional development in a large urban district;
- Breaking down cross-group silos to align interests and priorities with multiple tech teams.
Facilitation – Make meetings useful
Meetings that matter require robust and engaged participation. Whether it’s a session designed to get multiple perspectives on an issue, or an annual meeting with board members, we put our skills and experience at the service of your agenda. Get ready to generate new ideas, solve problems and make decisions that stick. When Crux is facilitating, we deliver high returns on the time you’ve invested. Some of our efforts have included:
- Restructuring a multi-national corporate division from functional to geographic working groups;
- Advancing a shared awareness of challenges and opportunities across isolated teams;
- Building a set of recommendations from a multi-perspective group of community members and education professionals about how to address building capacity and boundary adjustments within a school district using an equity lens.
Conference Presentations – Activate essential conversations
We engage with audiences to spark thoughtful dialogue and generate field momentum. We can facilitate change in rooms of a hundreds and we can bring the house down through keynote addresses, panel participation, pre-conference workshops and other plenary sessions. Drawing on a vast array of client experiences, we present a unique perspective grounded in useful approaches. Crux has presented at several national and international conferences, including:
- 2018 Humentum Inside NGO conference: Generational Understanding and White privilege;
- 2017 Washington Non-profit Conference: Influence without Authority presentation in Spanish and English;
- 2017 Better Investing Conference: Polished Presentations Keynote.
Climate and Culture Improvement – Foster inclusion deliberately
We are committed to equity in our work, which means examining our own context, biases, and privilege. We work with our clients to do the same. Climate and culture are essential drivers of equitable results. We work with leaders to investigate the roots of their current context: what has driven the way the organization works today? What mindsets, assumptions, or structural realities underlie the systems that are producing the results those leaders would like to change? Through systemic inquiry, we surface often unexamined norms regarding conflict resolution, generational differences, racial equity, and unintended or disproportionate impacts of organizational practices. Our work as thought partners, facilitators and process designers help groups and systems shift from where they have been to who and where they need to be as intentional contributors to meaningful change. Some ways in which we’ve strengthened climate and culture include:
- Reorienting a Community Action Agency toward changing client demographics;
- Evolving systems and practices that reflect a multi-cultural and multi-racial client base;
- Facilitating public processes designed to illuminate and eliminate systemic barriers to education;
- Providing generational difference training in corporate, non-profit and academic settings.

CONTEXT
We are iaf members, committed to life-long learning as an integral part of generating lasting change.
International Association of Facilitators