Strategy Group
In Practice
Our work begins in relationship.
We enter each project with care, listening for what is needed, not only from philanthropy, nonprofits, or institutions, but from the land, the People, and the patterns already in motion. What we offer is shaped by that listening.
This page holds a few reflections of our work in the world. From testimony at the United Nations to community-led strategy in forest regions, from cross-cultural convenings to regional public investment in arts and heritage, we walk alongside partners to create something that feels aligned, honest, and useful.
We do not carry toolkits. We bring presence, fluency in many rooms, and a memory of how things have been done with integrity for generations.
Rochelle moves across languages and continents, always with an ear to the unspoken. Cheryl has worked with communities from the Arctic to the Amazon, holding the thread of Indigenous leadership through every season of her life. Dawn draws on decades of experience guiding systems and shaping narratives, building the kind of trust that can hold real transformation. Together, we offer strategy that is rigorous and deeply relational.
If you are looking for a portfolio, you will need to talk with us. What you will find on our website is a glimpse into how we work, and how we remain accountable to those we serve.
Please note that we purposefully leave the sacred teachings out of this writing--keeping them intact where their complete form has been proclaimed by ritual and ceremony.
Global Convening: Designing Space for Shared Leadership
We entered this invitation through grounding, with conversations that honored place, language, and the distinct roles people carried. Rochelle Morgan-Verdin’s testimony at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was part of this larger effort, an intervention shaped by clarity, sovereignty, and the collective memory of Indigenous Nations around the world.
Throughout the convening, our role was to hold structure without control. The sessions were relational, multilingual, and shaped by respect. As participants braided ideas across difference, we paid attention to what surfaced and allowed the process to breathe. What emerged was movement toward shared understanding, responsibility, and commitment. This was restoration and reciprocity in practice.

Community Learning Journey: Repatterning Conservation
This work began with pattern recognition, an honest look at the narratives and institutional habits that had shaped the organization’s approach to land and stewardship. Together, we named what had been missing, and why.
What followed wasn’t a typical training. It was a process of weaving together Traditional Ecological Knowledge, lived experience, and internal reflection. As the sessions unfolded, participants found their own clarity, not from instruction, but from being invited to remember what they already knew. Cheryl’s role in cultural fire burning became part of the process, not as demonstration, but as relationship in action- connected to community.

Regional Cultural Investment: Public Funding, Community Roots
This work began with grounding in community, through meals, roundtables, and conversation. We met with artists, culture bearers, and organizers to understand how creativity was already sustaining their communities, and what support had been missing. Public dollars were available, but the process had been shaped by systems that weren’t made for the people doing the work.
We helped design a program that could move differently. The review panels reflected the people the funding was meant to serve. Language was clear and respectful. Foodways, storywork, and intergenerational practice were all recognized as vital. In kitchens, community centers, and performance spaces, people could see themselves in the process and know that their work mattered.
Over time, more than a million people engaged with this effort. The numbers told part of the story. The rest could be felt in how people showed up—with pride, with memory, and with the sense that they were part of something rooted and shared.
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