Integrating multiple intelligences - engaging your mind, connecting with your heart, and aligning with your values - to advance social justice and racial equity.
It’s high time we all rowed in the same direction of dismantling the systems and structures that perpetuate the impediments to optimal outcomes for people of color and others impacted by nefarious systems of oppression.
Head+Heart Advisory brings decades of lived experience and hard-earned wisdom to our partnerships and collaborations with foundations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies whose missions are to achieve social justice and racial equity. Find flow, and experience productive challenge, in strengthening strategy, understanding outcomes, and building the culture and practice of reflection and learning to achieve more equitable outcomes for the communities you serve.
Let’s reconnect all of our ways of knowing and being so that we can reground in shared humanity as we warrior on our way together to address the rampant systemic and structural injustices and inequities that plague our communities and societies around the globe.
Let’s activate all of our intelligences to pave the pathway to justice and equity with the breadth and depth of wisdom and love needed to reimagine and build a world where everyone enjoys fulfilling, choice- and opportunity-filled lives.
Services
Learning & Evaluation
Articulate the role of data and learning in your programmatic and organizational strategies, develop strategic learning frameworks, and understand the centrality of embedding equity in your culture and practice of learning to unlock potential for achieving better, more equitable outcomes.
Strategy
Move beyond conventional strategic planning processes by defining the imperatives for planning at this time, given the context of organizational lifecycle stage and the ecosystem within which your organization operates, to right-size the planning process and approach accordingly.
Building Skills & Organizational Strength
Take your organizational and programmatic skillsets and abilities to achieve better, more equitable outcomes by learning and integrating new approaches and frameworks that center principles of equity into culture and practice.
Pillars and Principles of Practice
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There is no one right way to make progress towards a fair and just society and there is no single leader or group who can get us from here to there. We are called to open up the aperture of our worldview so that we can see, value, integrate, explore, act on, and learn from the multiple truths that diverse, pluralistic societies contain. Collectively, our perspectives hold the key to reimagining and realizing the beautiful vision of an equitable future for which we yearn.
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Planning strategies for tackling social injustices and racial inequities, and understanding the outcomes of this work, is exceedingly complex and nonlinear – realities that fly in the face of dominant paradigms in the power-laden social sector where those who “hold purse strings” and those “do the work” have drastically different day-to-day lived experiences. We must push through magical thinking to acknowledge and operate within the basic facts of how deeply systemically rooted wicked problems are. There is no easy, straight line to equity and justice. Get comfortable with the discomfort inherent in the struggle.
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Equity is both a means (how we do our work) and an end (the outcomes we work towards). There is much talk about equity, but woefully little action in terms of what it means in practice. We operationalize equity in your strategy to more intentionally pursue equitable outcomes; evaluation and learning to broaden and deepen inclusive reflection and continuous improvement processes; and organizational development to create effective workplaces of belonging where all members of the team bring their unique talents to bear on mission and vision achievement.
Testimonials
“Steven worked hard, was always thoughtful, responsive, organized and proactive in anticipating our team needs, always helping us to engage in strategy work productively together. He also showed up as his true authentic self which was so important in helping the team do so as well especially when doing the extremely hard work of addressing racism in systems change. He was never afraid to challenge us and ask hard questions and always with the intention and impact to help us collectively do our best work, centering racial, gender and health equity. Last but not least, Steven was fun, nimble and engaging as a facilitator. Just wonderful to work with in every way.”
Tara Oakman - Director of Health Equity and Reform, The Century Foundation
“Over the past decade, as Unbound’s partner in monitoring, evaluation, and learning, Steven LaFrance has helped to transform Unbound’s aptitude for learning and evaluation. He has brilliantly helped us build out - and continually iterate - a robust, thoughtful, and practical system for evaluating our work and developing as a learning organization in everything that we do. Steven has partnered with us through two strategic planning processes, amidst a rapidly changing context, producing rigorous independent evaluations that have deeply informed our learning and our future planning. Steven’s super powers go beyond his ability as a strategic thought partner; he is a humble, highly emotionally intelligent individual with the capacity to interface thoughtfully and effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, from Board members, to philanthropy, to nonprofit leaders across diverse fields.”
Taryn Higashi - Executive Director, Unbound Philanthropy
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