Equity Consultants

The following list is by no means a complete list of the Maine consultants and businesses offering support to nonprofits on issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Is someone missing? This is an “Opt In” list, so please encourage others to complete this brief form to be listed or reach out to membersupport@nonprofitmaine.org to let us know!

For Nonprofits Seeking Support

Before reaching out to anyone on the list below, we encourage nonprofits beginning the process of hiring support for their organization’s equity journey to review Equity in the Center’s So You Want to Hire an Equity Consultant resource to consider questions, such as the following:

• What are the components of race equity work (or, what are the project types), and how do you develop a RFP for them? 
• How/where do you find a consultant? 
• How can you be realistic about goals? 
• What budget should you expect to invest.

You can find additional resources to inform your journey of learning and action to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in MANP’s Resource Library.

Consultants + Trainers (Listed Alphabetically)

Affinity DEI, LLC

Contact Name: Marwa Hassanien 
Email: Affinitydei@gmail.com 
Phone Number: 207-478-7333
About Our Work: I am a first generation Muslim-American, daughter of Egyptian immigrants. DEI and advocacy work are my deepest passions and part of my DNA! I am DEI-certified by Yale and Cornell Universities. For the last 25 years, I’ve worked with organizations across the state & country, school departments, law enforcement agencies, and now healthcare systems to develop strategic plans and DEI initiatives, improve cultural competency/sensitivity skills for community building and employee wellbeing, and foster a sense of safety & belonging across the board.

I look forward to providing trainings, conversations, and expertise for this work to help more organizations understand where they are in this journey and implement a vision to move the needle! Please email me at affinitydei@gmail.com with any inquiries. I cannot wait to expand this exciting new endeavor! Stay tuned for a website forthcoming!!  

Beyond Racial Equity

Contact Name: Tara Jenkins & Quionna Allen
Email: info@beyondracialequity.com 
About Our Work: Our vision is for us to collectively move beyond racial equity and build a world where equitable organizations are the status quo. While racial equity is an issue that touches all systems in our society, we are focused on the business world because it’s the world we know best and where we believe we can have the greatest impact. We enable organizations to drive their own ongoing equity, facilitating the awareness and actions to self-examine current and future practices, policies and procedures. We build equity into the organizational culture, leading to a truly differentiated experience for everyone that touches your business. Our purpose aligns us with leadership genuinely interested in doing their part to address systemic racism, one company at a time. 

Catalyst Collaboratives LLC

Contact Name: Kate O’Brien
Email: kate@catalystcollaboratives.com
About Our Work: Catalyst Collaboratives is a change management consultancy that supports individuals and teams seeking to shift their white-dominant organizational culture. We engage with clients ready to ensure that their teams, practices, behaviors, leadership, and outcomes can become more authentically supportive and inclusive of people representing all diversity dimensions. To do this work, we facilitate interactive sessions that engage teams to co-create a unifying vision for change. We support team members as they align around a set of organizational core values that guide leadership, collegial interactions, and decision-making. We help teams develop action plans to integrate new practices across many aspects of their day-to-day work. Along the way, we facilitate 1:1 and small group coaching sessions that build team members’ capacity, courage, and stamina for navigating the interpersonal aspects of culture change. We hold brave space for affinity groups, courageous conversations, skill-building workshops, and other peer-supportive experiences that help team members connect, learn, and grow. We start where you are, and keep you moving forward.

About Me: I am Kate O’Brien, founder, principal, and sole proprietor of Catalyst Collaboratives LLC. As a white cisgender woman who bears a deep commitment to DEIJB+, I work in partnership and collaboration with colleagues whose identities, perspectives, and lived experiences reflect diversity dimensions different from my own. Some of my collaborators are based in Maine, while others live and work in other geographic locations across the United States. I have found this adaptive and collaborative partnership model adds an essential depth of perspective, relationship, and creativity to how we approach the needs of our clients. I am always open to engaging in exploratory conversations with potential partners, fellow journeyers, and practitioners.

Chrysalis Consulting: Transforming Beyond Inclusion

Contact Name: Theresa Pizzuto
Email: info@chrysalisconsultingtbi.com
Phone Number: (864) 508-0617
About Our Work: Created by diversity, equity, and inclusion educators Idella Glenn, Theresa Pizzuto, and Beverly Williams, our organization seeks to empower individuals and organizations to maximize their potential and make meaningful connections across differences. We are passionate about empowering individuals, teams, and organizations to take the next step in your organization and create sustainable change through innovative diversity, equity & inclusion training, coaching, and consulting.

Chrysalis Consulting equips individuals, organizations, and communities with the tools and skills to foster healing from oppression, inspire personal transformation, and create equitable environments through innovative experiential programs, products, and resources.

If you or your organization is new to diversity, equity & inclusion or you are looking to strengthen your DEI culture, our partners are available to support you. With over 90 collective years of experience in DEI work, we provide services that meet your current needs. Our strengths as educators, facilitators, coaches, consultants, and event organizers will enable you to move forward in your DEI goals.

Virtual services are our specialty. We are experienced with providing our coaching, training and other services in a virtual environment. We find that our work translates very well to an online platform, and for some participants, provides an even more enriching experience. In today’s world, a virtual approach is more accessible and cost-effective, allowing greater participation by everyone in your organization. We are also available for in-person work (health conditions permitting).

Craig White Consulting

Contact Name: Craig White
Email: craig.white.consulting@gmail.com
Phone Number: (828) 231-0971
About Our Work: Craig White Consulting provides training, capacity building, planning, and facilitation services to nonprofit organizations, community groups, foundations and educational institutions. With a particular interest in dismantling systems of privilege and oppression, we support organizations with equity analysis, planning and organizing. We take an intersectional, race-forward approach that recognizes ‘race is always a factor, but it’s not the only factor.’ The tools and frameworks we offer can be used to analyze and address inequities resulting from any system of privilege and oppression. For equity projects, we typically create a multi-person facilitation team, so our facilitators bring diverse life experiences to our work with each organization.

Cross Cultural Community Services

Contact Name: Regina Phillips
Email: adr@crossculturalcommunityservices.org
Phone Number: (207) 200-6261
About Our Work: Cross Cultural Community Services is a non-profit organization established by three women of color from three different countries who have vast knowledge and personal and professional experience with the black indigenous and people of color. Therefore, CCCS is poised to provide coaching and consultation on race relations, and training on the immigrant experience, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and systemic racism.

Gwendolyn Forrest

Email: gwendolyn.forrest@gmail.com
About Our Work: I’m a queer white woman and the great-granddaughter of Welsh and Irish immigrants. I came to coaching and facilitation through community organizing, and the work I do remains rooted in the maxim that those closest to a problem hold the keys to its solution. To each of my coaching and facilitation engagements, I bring my experience as a trained community organizer, founding executive director, Buddhist practitioner, organizational development consultant (trained in the Art of Transformational Consulting through the Social Transformation Project), and certified professional coach (trained through Leadership That Works: Coaching For Transformation). As a coach, I listen deeply, ask empowering questions, provide reflections, share intuition, and attend to the full human being so they can thrive. My coaching sessions allow leaders to connect to their wholeness and inner knowing, dismantle systems of oppression within themselves and their organizations, find their own solutions, and step more fully into their power. As a facilitator, I design and hold spaces that are guided by participants’ expertise and aspirations. I support boards and teams to align with their values, move through obstacles, and make their visions real. My facilitation includes supporting white racial affinity group work, and helping white people connect with their stake in collective liberation.

Inclusion Maine

Contact Name: Muhammad Khan
Email: InclusionMaine@gmail.com
Phone Number: (207) 405-9817
About Our Work: We are dedicated to providing services directly to organizations and leading community initiatives to further DE&I within Maine. Our services help organizations build robust organizational structures from scratch for transformational change in their culture. We empower people & organizations to become more inclusive and ensure belonging for all.

Inspired Consulting Group, LLC 

Contact Name: Chris McLaughlin
Email: chris.mclaughlin@inspiredconsultinggroupllc.com
Phone Number: (207)478-0884
About Our Work: The team at Inspired Consulting Group (ICG) is here to meet the ever-changing demands of your industry.  Whether it's a keynote speaking engagement, professional development or educational sessions, leadership consultation and coaching, clinical supervision, support with your organization's policies or operations, project management, elevating your company's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, notary services, clinical ethics consultation, or providing direct clinical services for your clients and customers, ICG is here to assist in any way possible.  We specialize in assisting individuals and organizations looking to create more affirming, inclusive, and welcoming spaces for their LGBTQIA+ clients, customers, and employees and believe firmly in the idea that "Representation Matters!".

Integrative Inquiry Consulting

Contact Name: Kate Stitham
Email: info@integrativeinquiryllc.com
Phone Number: (207) 370-2097
About Our Work: Integrative Inquiry Consulting is in the business of culture change. We partner with you to design innovative, practical, and impactful strategies to transform your organization into a collaborative, inclusive, and equitable workplace. Our three-step process can meet you wherever you are at. Whether you need help better understanding the needs of your team, developing leadership skills, or embedding equity practices we can apply a tailored approach to move the work forward.

• Investigate (internal equity assessments, focus groups, committee formation and strategic planning)
• Educate (workshops, retreats, executive coaching)
• Integrate (policy change, train-the-trainer development, and sustainability planning).

Through this work, we hope to help clients take on these principles and continue to transform and evolve the way they work together long after we part ways.

The Institute for Intercultural Diplomacy

Contact Name: Deborah (Deb) Breiting
Email: dbreiting@interculturaldiplomacy.com  
Phone Number: 207-807-7751
About Our Work: We offer intercultural assessments, program development, group facilitation and coaching as a way to empower leaders and working teams to engage effectively and meaningfully across cultural differences.

It Is Time...

Contact Name: Dustin Ward
Email: itistimeme@gmail.com 
About Our Work: We look to advocate as change agents for Black & Brown individuals, or any of our BIPOC brothers and sisters, to end systemic racism in all places, beginning with Maine communities. We do this by working with both white communities, bringing non-racist practices and change through equity, justice, and reconciliation, and with Black and Brown brothers and sisters to help us bring an end to racism in our daily lives. By tackling economics, law, policy, and building a bridge between different ethnicities, we can end detrimental racism of all kinds, and teach people to speak up & speak out.

Maine Transgender Network (MaineTransNet)

Contact Name: Quinn Gormley
Email: info@mainetransnet.org
Phone Number: (207)370-0359
About Our Work: MaineTransNet provides cultural competency and allyship training to support transgender, non binary, and gender diverse populations, as well as technical support consultations. Our training programs are available to medical, mental health, social service, non profit, and educational organizations.

Mandy Levine Consulting

Contact Name: Mandy Levine
Email: mandy@mandylevineconsulting.com 
Phone Number: (207) 317-2445
About Our Work: I help individuals rethink how they think and organizations transform workplace culture. A former employment attorney, I transitioned to a career in civil rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and have years of experience facilitating DEI-related classes and conversations in the workplace for employers large and small.

My work falls within the following buckets:

• Facilitating DEI classes: related to myriad DEI topics including bias, prejudice, culture, and personal identity.
• Workplace investigations: as a licensed Professional Investigator, I discreetly and efficiently conduct workplace investigations into allegations of harassment and discrimination.
• DEI-related consulting: I partner with organizations to provide practical guidance on how to embed DEI-related goals and initiatives within their organization.
• Preventive bullying & cyberbullying programs: I facilitate highly interactive programs for middle school students exploring how different aspects of our identities may play a role in social dynamics and how to be an ally to targets of bullying.

Mindbridge Center 

Contact Name: Laura Ligouri
Email: info@mindbridgecenter.org
About Our Work: Mindbridge uses neuroscience and psychology to access the values, beliefs, motivations, and drivers of violence in order to develop more effective interventions and propel change. We partner with government and community-based organizations to co-develop a holistic approach to societal transformation. It is ultimately through our understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind that we no longer work to simply combat human rights abuses in an endless cycle of violence, but guide the psyche towards the strengthening of society built upon the tenets of human rights itself. Here, neurobiological and psychological sciences propel data-driven intervention and program design, giving human rights defenders access to the hearts and minds they need to connect to most. We employ multifaceted strategies across sectors, both locally and internationally, that seek to eliminate racism, discrimination, and Othering; establish a common understanding of human rights; and heal and center marginalized voices. Mindbridge programs:

• Translate and apply the latest in psychological and neurobiological research, encouraging and leveraging rights-based, inclusive public narratives, education, and programming.
  Design and implement interventions to counter hate speech, race-based violence, and rising extremism.
  Conduct research and develop preventative measures to impede human rights abuses before they begin.

Equity Consulting and Education Firm

Contact Name: Desiree Vargas
Email: equityconsultingandeducation@gmail.com   
Phone Number: (207) 694-8268
About Our Work: We support communities, individuals, and institutions tackling racial justice issues across the nation by providing consultation, education, advocacy, and solution based action. BIPOC owned and operated Maine-based business {Located in Wabanaki Territory}

Up With Community

Contact Name: Nico Chin
Email: nico@upwithcommunity.org
Phone Number: (207) 402- 0904
About Our Work: Up With Community is a practice for helping teams integrate equity and racial justice learning into their overall organizational growth and development.
Up With Community is also a Friend of MANP with a listing in the MANP Business Finder.

WeMaax Consulting

Contacts Names: Mary Axelsen + Doyin Richards 
Email: mary@wemaaxconsulting.com 
Phone Number: (207) 239-9326 
About Our Work: We develop and deploy an integrated DEI strategy while listening to, elevating, and engaging diverse voices. Do You DARE to CARE? Former global corporate executive Mary Axelsen and one of America’s most respected anti-racism facilitators, Doyin Richards, are teaming up to offer DEI solutions to companies that will bring lasting results. A transformative DEI strategy causes discomfort and disruption when awareness is raised, learning is absorbed, and action is taken. To be an equitable organization, a systematic approach must be designed and implemented. We partner with organizations to make theses changes which includes structures, policies, processes, and the hearts and minds of employees. We partner with companies who genuinely care and have a deep desire to make organizational and employee changes to achieve equity. Understanding and acknowledging the discomfort essential to disruption, we integrate change management practices into our approach, so you realize the human and customer-centric benefits. 

^{MANP does not screen nor endorse the businesses and consultants listed above. This webpage is offered to help nonprofits and Maine consultants find one another, and we encourage everyone to conduct their own due diligence.}

Other Consultants + Vendors

Please explore the MANP Business Finder for consultants, vendors, and venues in a wide range of areas, including fundraising, governance, financial management, marketing, and more.