Agencies, consultancies, and other service providers outsource to me to:
Find new opportunities for their clients, expand their capacity, and pair strategy and research with their in-house services
Organizations hire me for insight-driven projects like:
Competitive analysis, concept testing, culture change, desk research, discovery, marketing strategy, message development, project management, service design strategy, and user experience
I help organizations make decisions with:
Qualitative, quantitative, observation, ethnographic, and secondary and social media. research findings to expand opportunities and reduce risk
FAILE’s exhibit for the Library Street Collective in The Belt, Detroit.
I apply insights, human experience, and understanding to navigate complex systems.
Over the years, I’ve listened to and amplified thousands of voices: school cafeteria workers to women who lost pregnancies late in their terms. I have honed the ability to ask the right questions and to listen actively on hundreds of studies reflecting academic, community, consumer, professional, employee, and patient stakeholder voices. I use research to better understand, to validate, and to find and compare options. I synthesize this unstructured data I collect from listening to people to yield insights, to help clients prioritize ethical and inclusive outcomes.
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Your contributions to the small business community and to our work overall over these last few years has been transformational.
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Sarah Donnelly, TechTown Detroit Retail Services Director
Louise “Ouizi” Jones in the Lost River Tiki Bar, Detroit.
I inventory assets. I listen first. I help organizations conduct ‘just enough’ research.
As outlined by strategist Erica Hall, this requires an understanding of the organization and the context of the situation. It requires alignment. It often involves thematic or trend analysis. Think of it as data translation for multiple audiences. Then, I apply these insights to inform strategy, marketing, communications, operations, or concept development. Wherever possible, I start with existing data and I often end up blending insights from qualitative, quantitative, observation, ethnographic, and datasets. Deliverables might include persona development, stakeholder journeys, needs assessments, audits or inventories, gap or asset identification designed to answer the question, “What do we most need to know now?”
“Mary excels at drawing deep insight from any audience. She never loses sight of the broader business challenge. And, she does all this with lots of laughter.”
Sarah Westrom, Independent consultant
I engage communities with content, process, and digital organization.
I have developed operational experience over more than 20 years of managing my own consultancy and delivering long-term capacity and support for other service providers. As such, I’ve revised, devised, and deployed frameworks to establish repeatable processes and adopt supporting technologies—like CRM, ticketing, online scheduling, and workflow management. Operationally, I have trained cross-functional teams on project management platforms including Wrike, Monday, Trello, Basecamp, SharePoint, and Asana. I’ve fielded and analyzed with most research technologies, though I favor Dovetail and Alchemer. I’ve worked with Figma, Lucidchart, MURAL, and Miro for affinity diagrams, mapping, whiteboarding, and visual collaboration—among many other types of organizational stack technology. I’ve built multiple research functions from the ground up and I have managed every facet of a research project from inception to recruitment to facilitation to synthesis to finding the insights and crafting the narrative. I have activated communities around content (e.g., public health, inclusive economic development, and data visualization) via systematic use of Slack.
Antonio “Shades” Agee, ShadesDetroit, LLC, located in Corktown, Detroit.
Nils Westergard, Washington, D.C.
I help clients live their values with intention and attention.
I counsel clients on marketing with intention via a range of strategies that integrate elements of thought leadership, CRM, content management, stakeholder experience, email and newsletter marketing, digital and website marketing, usability, brand development, and naming. Typically, these marketing plans are developed based on an understanding of and in service to a client’s stakeholders. Like most consultants, I rely on a variety of frameworks (my own and others’) to aid in implementation. I have come to understand that strategy and operations are inextricably linked and essential to culture creation. As such, the marketing that matters most stems from nurturing reciprocal relationships with trusted messenger communities, frontline staff, and stakeholders.
I facilitate in situations where it helps to have an outside perspective or your group needs clarity deciding on next steps.
