Empower Venture Partners

“Amy is very knowledgeable about issues of corporate responsibility and how these issues relate to the Sustainable Development Goals. Her ability to understand how our activities are tied to the SDGs and targets and to communicate that internally has impressed all on our team. I am impressed by how her understanding enables her to prioritize actions that will help us steadily reach our internal targets around the Sustainable Development Goals and her thinking around developing partnerships among Diageo, local entrepreneurs and civil society organizations both across the African content and abroad.”

“Amy listened to our dreams for Clean Start, honed our focus to be more actionable, and kept an eye on our present capacity to design a strategy for us. She created a monitoring and evaluation program so that we will be able to collect the data and tell the story of our impact going forward and played an important role in one of our largest funding proposals. She knows the value of careful planning and purposeful action and comes up with great alternatives in case of emergencies.” 

“Amy deftly navigates where to take the lead, how to stimulate others’ intellectual creativity, and where to give a group time to absorb new concepts and incorporate them into their own thinking. She was both a strategic and tactical leader – able to encourage us to look at things from different perspectives to explore more holistic contexts, and to drive our work towards consensus and completion. In addition to the remarkable quality of her work, she is personable, has an engaging sense of humor, and is a pleasure to work with.”

“Amy coached me on new techniques to assist in my strategic thinking and helped me set out a strategy focusing on ‘what does success look like’ and breaking up the various components. Since our sessions, the most significant improvements in the team were due to implementing the decision matrix we created together, the clearer division between research and program teams and the use of milestones. I now apply the decision matrix to all our thinking and work with the team so that they develop their own also. It has provided us guidance in how we work and has been invaluable – from the projects we get involved in to the groups we partner with. Amy encouraged me to explore infusing a completely different approach to our ways of working with research and programs, which has resulted in more detailed research strategies and approaches. Finally, implementing a milestone-approach has improved accountability and boosted morale among staff working on long-term, challenging projects. They now communicate their small wins, celebrating with one another to maintain enthusiasm and hope on the long-term environmental justice battles.”

“Amy is able to translate her knowledge of the financial and environmental risks of coal and her experience successfully fighting coal plants to the US to the Kenyan context to help our campaign, encouraging us to focus not only on the fenceline communities in Lamu and Kitui, but expanding to a nationwide anti-coal campaign. She has helped build awareness of the threat the proposed coal plant poses to Lamu by writing presentations delivered at World Heritage Committee and a report published by United Nations Environment Programme and by connecting us with her international network to help our campaign. On the ground, she has helped us communicate the threats of the coal plant through fact sheets for different audiences – members of the campaign, the press, politicians, and local communities thereby assisting with messaging for media and educating people on the risks of coal in Kenya.”

“I have gone through numerous strategic planning retreats facilitated by many prominent firms and must say that the planning with Amy was one of the best I have experienced.  Amy facilitated a robust discussion that helped us to expand our thinking about the work we were doing and wanted to be doing in order to analyze the different opportunities for organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, and future growth. She helped develop a rubric by which to evaluate potential projects and helped us to develop ideas for new revenue streams.”  

“Amy has been a supportive sounding board as I work on an entrepreneurial venture. She is an entrepreneur herself and has been able to translate her learnings and experiences with me. Her knowledge has boosted my confidence to interact more closely with US investors.”