Co-creation, clarity, and creativity for climate and conservation solutions

Navigating complexity with creativity and joy. I specialize in strategic planning, innovation, program design, and human-centered design for mission-driven organizations. My approach is grounded in fun, authenticity, and purpose, helping you find clarity, foster collaboration, and achieve lasting impact.

SERVICES

Strategic Planning

For impact-driven teams that are seeking to:

  • design and launch a new initiative

  • clarify priorities and direction

  • pivot or adapt their strategic direction

  • develop a clear path towards delivering on conservation goals

I curate strategic planning processes and workshops for teams across the lifecycle of a conservation project, enabling teams to move forward with clarity, purpose, and alignment

  • A Washington-based conservation organization made a courageous decision to revisit the entire organization’s strategic framework. Through this year-and-a-half process, I facilitated an inclusive and transparent strategic planning process that yielded clarity on the organization’s strategic priorities, as well as the projects to start, stop, and scale up.

Innovation & Design Thinking

When conservation teams face complex program design challenges—whether tackling large-scale initiatives like increasing global adoption of natural climate solutions or crafting a focused report for a funder—finding the right approach can feel daunting.

Through Design Sprints, we:

  • Pinpoint core challenges quickly.

  • Establish focused objectives for your program.

  • Gain insights into your target audience.

  • Brainstorm innovative and effective approaches.

  • Embrace experimentation and iteration.

  • The external affairs division at The Nature Conservancy NGO sought to set up a new Center of Excellence for Public Funding, and needed to define the foundational questions around the new program’s scope, vision, and primary offerings.

    Through a Design Sprint process we were able to collectively answer: 1) What were the primary problems they sought to address, 2) How they defined success, and 3)What key values and tenets they held to ground their decision-making, and 4) what primary services they should offer.

    These questions served as stepping stones to ultimately generate many creative ideas for services the Center could offer, and ultimately narrow down on a subset of viable paths to pursue.

Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration

Convening disparate parties can often be a recipe for wasted time or an opportunity for real magic. We help teams bring together partners and collaborators to share knowledge, identify points of intersection, build buy-in and catalyze action.

We don’t consider it a job well-done unless there’s laughter, meaningful connection, and tangible outcomes. 

  • I designed and led a sustainable palm oil accelerator program for USAID in Indonesia, focused on driving innovation in forest conservation and sustainable development. To lay the groundwork, I conducted comprehensive research through stakeholder interviews, participatory co-design workshops, and desk research, translating these insights into the program’s design.

    The culmination of the program was a multi-day forum that convened these innovators alongside scientists, industry executives, government officials, and civil society leaders to foster collaboration, catalyze partnerships, and accelerate impact.

Human-Centered Design Research

Even the most clever solution can fail to deliver it’s intended impact if it doesn’t work for your key stakeholders - whether it’s beneficiaries, users, policy-makers, partners, funders or your own staff. Human-Centered Design is a methodology that grounds problem-solving in the real needs and motivations at the center of the design process. 

I help teams define and understand their target audience and generate insights to develop (and test!) solutions that stick.

  • Naturebase The Nature Conservancy's Natural Climate Solutions science team sought to develop a global platform (Naturebase) to equip decision-makers to optimally adopt natural climate solutions. I joined a team of  brilliant scientists and engineers to bring in the human side. 

    Using a participatory process, we defined the types of stakeholders that were best equipped to influence the advancement of high carbon potential projects. I then led the audience research and engagement process, which involved dozens of interviews, as well as in-person workshops in countries like Angola, Mexico and Indonesia, which led not only to critical insights, but also awareness and buy-in among our target audience, who were eager for the final product’s release.

Process & Operations Design

When teams need to turn ideas into action, we guide them through a collaborative, transparent decision-making process, such as aligning on program priorities, developing workflows, defining and improving team processes, clarifying decision-making roles, optimizing organizational structure, or strengthening team cohesion.

Together, we create clear, actionable plans that ensure alignment, clarify roles, and prepare the team move forward with confidence and clarity.

  • With new leadership and team structure, a conservation organization’s Freshwater team sought to define their team’s decision-making roles and processes and prioritize their work. We prototyped several decision-flows using common decision scenarios and drafted a decision tree outlining the processes to follow in given situations, further, we collectively developed prioritization criteria, and ran a collaborative process to quantitatively assess bodies of work, clarifying where to invest further and where to scale back or defer to partners.

Team Retreats

When day-to-day demands make it hard to zoom out and focus on the bigger picture, team retreats offer a crucial opportunity to step back. By carving out this time, teams can deepen cohesion, address strategic questions, and bring dormant issues or ideas to the surface.

Each retreat is fully customized to your team’s unique priorities and dynamics, ensuring a meaningful and productive experience.

  • Nature4Climate, an international climate coalition, sought to revisit their overall program strategies, coordinate their annual workplan, and identify new areas of work to pursue.

    Over the course of three and a half days, we revisited the big problems they aimed to address, aligned on the target audiences they sought to reach, learned about each team’s priorities and collectively workshopped their current barriers, brainstormed and prioritized new bodies of work to fundraise around, and incorporated walks in the countryside, games, and personal connection-building.

ABOUT ME

Christine is a strategic planning consultant and facilitator with a passion for driving transformative change in the conservation and environmental sectors. With over 15 years of experience, she has guided organizations through complex challenges, using methodologies like systems-thinking, Design Thinking, and Open Standards for Conservation. She’s worked with teams across the US, Indonesia, Angola, Uganda, Mexico, and the UK.

As the Design Lead for The Nature Conservancy’s Bridge Collaborative, Christine helped shape impactful strategies that fostered collaboration across diverse teams. This experience led her to found C Change Studio, where she supports teams in clarifying their priorities, crafting innovative strategies, and cultivating creative, collaborative work environments.

Starting her career at Deloitte with a B.S. in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California, Christine combines analytical rigor with a belief in the power of connection and laughter to drive innovation.

Her passion for community-building extends beyond work - she serves on the board of the Greenermind Summit community, founded a neighborhood fitness club, and is always dreaming up her next gathering—whether it’s a murder mystery party, clothing swap, or craft night. She loves outdoor adventures, learning about animal cognition, practicing handstands, and getting competitive in a good board game.