Holistic Development
We create linked approaches that consider socioeconomic, gender, and structural challenges to impact and progress. For instance, the Ebola crisis in West Africa highlighted the inherent weaknesses of the traditional silo-focused development approaches and need for more holistic, integrated and culturally sensitive approaches. As Chair of the International Board of the Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund (SMWF) of Liberia since March 2014, Ms. Davis steered and shaped the organization’s holistic approach to the Ebola eradication, prevention and recovery effort during this unprecedented crisis. She was at the forefront of shaping a common analysis and understanding of the complexity of the Ebola outbreak as extending beyond health to simultaneously include literacy, economic development and food security. Guided by local knowledge and cultural understandings, Ms. Davis envisioned the need to leverage the existing role of market women in their communities as behavioral change agents. She identified and integrated global leadership and partnerships to align local to global narratives to achieve the most impactful fundraising and longer-term sustainable solutions on the ground. Some insights stemmed from lessons learned by Ms. Davis in her leadership and grounds-breaking roles in the concurrently-run, United Nations Development Program’s Breaking the Silence about HIV and AIDS and Race Against Poverty campaigns of 2000.
Nonprofit Consulting
Navigating within the non-profit sector and strategically connecting and managing it with public and private sectors are our specialties. This provides a perfect scenario for corporate responsibility initiatives and programs nationally and across the globe. We offer our clients senior advisory services through senior management changes to ensure seamless transition from one mission to another; conceptual frameworks with or without implementation strategies to address targeted issues and goals; shaping the solicitation narrative for fundraising and partnership building; executive producing special events and conferences; securing and managing VIPs; strategically identifying key consultants to supplement the core team; and database enhancement tailored to outreach goals.
Company Branding
We have served as the bridge between women’s empowerment organizations in Africa and the United States of America by establishing their US presence – including identifying office space – systems and organizational development, image building, branding, networking, aligning the interests of relevant stakeholders and securing their partnerships. Results include opening of first office of Senegal headquartered Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS) in New York City, Founding Board member of Ghana headquartered African Women’s Development Fund-USA (AWDF-USA), Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund and International Women’s Colloquium for Women’s Empowerment, Leadership Development, International Peace and Security co-chaired by President Tarja Halonen of Finland and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. Our approach reflects a combination of the image building expertise of Fortune magazine with the branding of issues across uniformed operational systems of United Nations agencies, African Union, U.S. Embassies and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Partnership Development
Using the goals of our clients as the centerpiece, we develop a tailor made network of partnerships extracted from an eclectic multi-sectoral combination of global, national and local leaders of international organizations, institutions and businesses. This enables our clients to develop unique partnerships that open new doors of opportunity that can lead to new markets or help them realize the improbable. Through an initiation and cultivation of a partnership between the State of Louisiana and the United Nations Special Unit for South-South Cooperation around creative economy as an economic development tool, the City of New Orleans–through a presentation on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival–was the only American city featured in the United Nations Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. The theme of the largest world expo was “Better Cities, Better Lives”.
Diplomatic and Celebrity Management
Interwoven throughout our practice areas is diplomatic and celebrity identification, incorporation and management either as individuals or as part of an initiative or program activity. Ranging from Heads of State and Government to Ministerial levels to UN Secretaries General to Nobel Laureates, actors and performing artists of all kinds, we provide diplomatic protocol requirements in collaboration with Secret Service and relevant counterparts on their team. Part of this is providing politically sensitive talking points, speeches and scripts for high level meetings such as the UN Office for South-South Cooperation’s Global South-South Development Expos held from 2005 to present in New York City, Washington, DC, Geneva (Switzerland), Vienna (Austria), Nairobi (Kenya) and Doha (Qatar); and UNDP’s Global Goodwill Ambassador Program featuring actor Danny Glover (USA), Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), football players Zinedine Zidane (Algeria) and Ronaldo (Brazil), and actress Misako Konno (Japan) along with actor Hussein Fahmy (Egypt), basketball player Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Olympic medalist Haile Gebreselassie (Ethiopia).