Strategy • Organization • Growth
Groundswell Change helps institutions, leaders, and women business owners turn ambitious ideas into practical strategies, stronger systems, and measurable results.
Two ways to work with us
Groundswell supports women building and growing businesses as well as executive teams strengthening established organizations. Across both, we help leaders clarify what matters, align resources, build the systems their ambitions require, and create results that can endure.
For nonprofit and business executive teams
We help executive teams align strategy, people, structure, and implementation so complex organizations can grow, adapt, and perform.
For women founders and small business owners
We help women founders strengthen positioning, offers, customer growth, operations, and the decisions that shape their next stage.
What we do
See the whole system—leadership, structure, culture, policy, process, data, and technology—then strengthen how the work gets done. We assess how these elements interact and help leaders redesign roles, workflows, decision-making, and operating practices to improve performance, collaboration, and organizational effectiveness.
Create the conditions where people can contribute, grow, and thrive. We help leaders translate values into everyday behaviors, strengthen trust and belonging, and align listening, learning, communication, and accountability with the culture they seek to build.
Build knowledge and capabilities that carry into everyday work. We design curricula and facilitate engaging, adult-learning experiences for leaders, employees, graduate students, entrepreneurs, and facilitators—from executive workshops and cohort-based courses to train-the-trainer programs and scalable learning resources that support practical application and lasting change.
Clarify the path forward and align people, priorities, resources, and measures. We help businesses strengthen capacity and workforce performance for revenue growth, and nonprofits connect stronger programs and demonstrated impact to funding and long-term sustainability.
Add senior-level capacity when important work needs greater structure, coordination, and momentum. We work alongside leaders to translate priorities into actionable plans, establish operating rhythms and decision tools, coordinate stakeholders, and provide the hands-on leadership needed to move critical initiatives forward.
We help women business owners clarify their positioning, strengthen their offers and operations, understand their customers, and direct time and resources toward the opportunities that will move their businesses forward.
The Groundswell approach
We do not leave clients with a beautiful plan that sits on a shelf. We connect evidence, lived experience, and operating reality—then stay close enough to help strategy take root.
Surveys, interviews, focus groups, ethnographic inquiry, and data reveal the conditions beneath the presenting problem.
We identify patterns, tensions, opportunities, and the decisions leaders must make to move with clarity.
Strategies, structures, and tools are developed with the people responsible for carrying them forward.
Workplans, measures, learning, and leadership rhythms turn intention into sustained action.
Selected work
Groundswell partnered with a department within a leading business school to turn an ambitious institutional strategy into coordinated action. We clarified strategic outcomes, defined priority initiatives and ownership, developed an evidence and measurement framework, and established the cross-functional structures and leadership rhythms needed to align resources, monitor progress, and adapt implementation over time.
Higher education & researchFor a multi-site behavioral health organization, Groundswell completed 200 hours of policy, brand, and industry research and gathered employee insight through 50 focus groups and 83 interviews. We assessed leadership, processes, data, and technology; translated the findings into organizational scorecards and a phased transformation roadmap; and used solutions labs to move three priority initiatives into implementation planning.
Healthcare & behavioral healthGroundswell Change built and has facilitated a 13-week business growth course over several years and across multiple cohorts, helping women business owners identify the strategic priorities that will move their businesses forward across market positioning, customers, offers, finance, operations, and team growth.
EntrepreneurshipWhat partners say
“The most impactful and meaningful leadership experience I have participated in during my 20-plus-year career.”
“We are approved and have a plan that the staff and board can really get behind. It feels great to finally be here.”
“I am grateful for the amazing work being done and felt so much trust in the process.”
“One of the best sessions I have attended. It clearly introduced the concepts and then gave us meaningful opportunities for discussion.”
“Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and detailed follow-up; I can tell how much care went into it. I had been planning to address these pieces only after securing the loan, and your note made me realize that sequencing would have put more of my own capital and time at risk than necessary. I have some theoretical grounding from my background, but your guidance is helping me translate that into something grounded in real market response rather than assumptions.”
Testimonials have been deidentified to protect client and participant privacy.
Experience on both sides of the table
Groundswell combines executive leadership, management consulting, brand strategy, organizational development, and venture-building experience. We understand the rigor institutions require and the resourcefulness founders need—because our work has demanded both.
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant
Brian is a strategist, management consultant, and entrepreneur whose experience spans corporate brand management, education, nonprofit leadership, government, and venture development. Prior to launching Groundswell, Brian worked in global brand management at Colgate-Palmolive and was tapped to serve as Head of Personal Care Product Innovation at Tom’s of Maine, bringing expertise in global brand strategy, product development, and commercialization. He began his career as a Teach For America educator before advancing into national leadership, where he directed recruitment strategy and initiatives to expand the organization’s reach and impact. He holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and a BA from Georgetown University.
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant
Theodosia is an organizational transformation executive, strategist, and venture builder with experience advising senior leaders, strengthening complex institutions, and guiding organizational change. Previously Chief Diversity Officer of the University of Colorado System and an institutional leader at Dartmouth College, she brings expertise in organizational strategy, executive advising, leadership development, institutional compliance, employee relations, organizational culture, governance, and institutional effectiveness. She holds an MA in Education Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BA from Sewanee.
Start a conversation
Tell us what you are building, navigating, or trying to change. We will help you identify the clearest next step.
Connect with GroundswellOr email us directly at connect@groundswellchange.com