Debby helps nonprofit organizations successfully navigate change.

Debby, I just want to thank you so much for your excellent work on our strategic planning. You have been outstanding. I can’t say enough about your listening skills, incorporation of everyone’s thoughts, ability to navigate our racial equity goals and the way you implement and lead our meetings.

I just wanted to follow up with a note. The work you've brought together (in helping to re-create our local leadership program) is just an incredible rebirth. It’s elements can be used to create other specific trainings. This is truly exciting. We have a lot to do between now and March, but I see it and understand it thanks to you. Excellent, excellent job.

Before we hired Debby, we hadn’t really taken the time to fully strategize and align our fundraising across our policy and business lines. Debby is a strategic thinker and conceptualizer. In particular, she helped us gather relevant data and narratives, refine them, and disseminate our findings in a compelling narrative. New grant funding, clearer reports to funders and our newfound leadership in renewable/ energy efficiency for affordable housing all came under Debby’s watch.

Thank you for your wonderful work on Friday. That was the best retreat I've experienced in my nine years at CCC. I was so impressed by your facilitation and listening skills. When you presented the consolidated statement of what we do here, somehow having pulled out key words from the many things we'd said, it was like a magic trick!

The breadth of Debby’s experience gives her an unusual capacity to comprehend the realities of rural places and imagine the possibilities for rural advancement. Her analysis of one of our major and highly complex community forestry programs impressed me -- how thoroughly she grasped the many issues involved and the dynamics of the projects and their communities. Her synthesis was rich and thoughtful, presented through skillful writing.

Your approach as moderator of the Rural/Urban project successfully stimulated collaboration, laughter and meaningful thought-mining from a diverse group. Well done!

With Debby's help, SABY organized intentional community forums that were thought provoking and led communities to take measurable action. Debby was incredibly knowledgeable, flexible, and well connected, bringing years of experience in community organizing, grant writing, non-profit structuring, and best practices to our organization. She challenged both staff and our board to think strategically and helped us put the steps in place to secure a $75,000 grant for a community outreach program.

Debby turned complex, densely written studies into easily comprehensible, strong and concise materials for staff and partners on our Energy Efficiency for All project. Her work is exceptionally good. Debby understands the worlds of both energy efficiency and affordable housing and can translate experts’ work, helping us to effect positive change in communities that need it the most.

I participated in a focus group on community leadership that Debby facilitated for the NC Rural Center. She was adept at drawing out everyone’s ideas and asking follow-up questions that led the group to go deeper in our thinking. The result was a rich dialogue with new insights and clear recommendations for the Rural Center to consider.

We engaged Debby at a very vulnerable time in the life of our organization. Two board members had died and we were floundering. Debby helped us to design, fund and manage two flagship programs, train and align our board and build new relationships in the community. Debby loves her work and is clearly motivated by the desire to impact the lives of the underserved in our society. She brings to the table excellent oral and written communication skills, grant writing abilities, strategic planning and nonprofit management expertise. Additionally, she has extremely valuable connections and relationships throughout the country that would benefit any organization in attaining its goals and objectives.