Approach
We sit between the consultant who departs and the agency that invoices
A translational strategy partner co-designs strategy with communities and leadership, then builds the operational systems that make the strategy self-sustaining. Here is how that actually works.
The framework
The Translation Stack
Insight usually dies at a border: between data and decision, between community and institution, between commitment and design. Every service we offer maps onto one or more layers of the stack, and every proposal diagrams exactly which layers the engagement builds.
That diagram isn't decoration. It's how you hold us accountable to scope, and how your team knows what it owns when we leave.
The Evidence layer is where our evaluation practice runs its full journey: readiness diagnosed, evaluation built, learning sustained.
The Translation Stack is one of four frameworks behind our work. See all four frameworks
Every engagement is scoped against these four layers
Before any proposal
How a discovery call works
We don't pitch on a first call. We ask questions, in a fixed order, and we ask them of you before we ever write a proposal — so nothing in that proposal is a surprise.
Programs, public commitments, recent leadership or funding changes — read before we ask you to repeat it.
Not a rhetorical question. The answer usually tells us more than the RFP does.
What would the board be celebrating? We push past the first answer for specifics.
Where measurement, engagement, or infrastructure actually stands — not where the strategic plan says it should.
Capacity, trust, a consultant who didn't stick. Named now, so the proposal doesn't repeat it.
That conversation becomes the first two sections of every proposal we send: what you told us, quoted back accurately, and what we heard underneath it, the structural pattern beneath the presenting problem. Everything below is what happens next.
Every proposal, same skeleton
Five questions, answered in order
You will never receive a proposal from us that hides the ball. Each one opens the same way, because trade-offs named early are trade-offs you can plan around.
Your words, quoted back accurately. If we heard it wrong, we fix it here, not in month three.
The structural pattern beneath the presenting problem. This is where the diagnosis lives.
Scope mapped to the Translation Stack, with the co-design moments marked.
The artifact table: every framework, protocol, library, and dashboard, named.
Investment anchored to the cost of the status quo, with trade-offs stated plainly.
Casework
Engagement narratives
Every case study we publish follows the same format, and the results section is always titled with the same question. Client names are shared with permission or anonymized by sector.
Technology sector · Knowledge infrastructure
Capturing thirty years of expertise before it walked out the door
A technology firm faced the retirement of senior staff holding decades of undocumented troubleshooting knowledge.
Could institutional knowledge be captured at scale without pulling experts off the floor?
An AI pipeline converting recorded support calls into a structured, searchable troubleshooting repository.
A living knowledge base with intake workflows their own team maintains and extends.
New technicians resolve issues that once required a senior expert, and the expertise no longer retires with the person.
Health system · Community health
Community health planning across a multi-county system
A regional health system needed community health improvement plans with both board-grade rigor and genuine community trust.
Could a compliance requirement become an engagement asset?
Needs assessment, community engagement architecture, and prioritization frameworks connecting assessment to implementation.
An engagement and measurement cycle the system repeats each assessment period.
Plans adopted across the region with community priorities reflected in the final documents.
What we hold ourselves to
Five commitments, in writing
Data informs; communities decide. Rigor is a form of respect.
Statements are not strategy. We measure commitments by what they redesign.
Delay is a choice. Timelines deserve the same scrutiny as outcomes.
Every engagement should make you less reliant on consultants, including us.
The name is the value: people engaged as they are, not as institutions wish they were.