[co]design collective purpose solution emergence

Versal Strategy [Versal] is a consulting practice specializing in deepening collective purpose and solution seeking in social justice and equity movements. Versal works with a range of community-based/led groups, nonprofit organizations, alliances, intermediaries, emerging/transforming leaders, and philanthropic institutions to harness the greatest degree of people power possible to sustain and advance our tireless efforts towards liberation and self-determination.

Versal has a deliberate focus on supporting breakthroughs in the participation and leadership development of marginalized humans and life stories, on the way to generating new narratives to drive bold and daring strategy. 

Versal is the next iteration of founder Maisie Chin’s three decades-long commitment to human rights, racial justice, community organizing, and movement building [full bio]. As the cofounder and founding executive director of a community-based parent organizing center that achieved groundbreaking policy changes and built an ecosystem of national and state alliances over more than two decades, Maisie is translating her experience and insight into being a catalytic thought partner and strategist in ongoing service of racial and social justice.  

Maisie Chin founder + principal

strategy

vision + harm prevention + seed transformation

Highest Capacity

designing and implementing infrastructure and process for the self-empowerment and inclusion of people—especially marginalized voices and experiences—in visioning, critical analysis, and conflict/problem-solving, to produce collective trust, purpose, strategy, and practice in the maturation of organizational and movement alliance capacity

Strengths

  • anticipating/navigating complexity and conflict towards collective strategy

  • vision + solution strategizing

  • process design + stewardship

  • group facilitation + coaching + capacity building

  • generating humanizing frames + narratives

  • solidarity-based relationship building

  • centering marginalized voices + building inclusive/reparative solidarity

  • cultivating shared analysis

  • aligning values to implementation

participation

dimensional ways of centering marginalized voices + stories

Working with us

Versal operates best with mutuality, partnership, and communication. This ideally includes transparency about values, principles, opportunities, challenges, most and least desired outcomes, as well as a willingness to scenario plan on the front end of project scoping, design, and contracting, so as to infuse our work together with groundedness, rigor and flexibility in the right moments, preparation for the unexpected, and agility to adjust pace and direction when needed with consensus. Versal’s stance is to honor the humanity of everyone we work with, and to anticipate the wide range of human responses to any process, activity, conversation, group discussion, or outcome. 

Versal has the capacity to apply and invest our expertise in a multitude of project types, scopes, and lengths, and we are open to discuss possibilities. Nevertheless, our ideal projects are: strategic, developmental, and organizational in nature; mid (3-6 months) to long term (6-12+ months); endowed with bandwidth for phases of onboarding, ramp-up, information gathering, continuous assessment, and refinement in order to achieve agreed-upon outcomes; poised to be sustainable in impact as a result of buy-in and capacity building among those involved; and sufficiently resourced to account for unforeseen delays and complexities. 

Consulting rates will vary according to all of the above factors and depend on the expertise/capacities needed. Flat project rates scaled to this hourly range are preferred, especially for project timelines of more than 3 months.         

transformation

root cause inquiry + critical reflection + aligning values/practice

Contact

We want to be a part of your organization’s evolution. Email us for a free consultation at maisie@versalstrategy.com about your need(s) and project idea(s). We will do our best to get back to you within 24 hours with an initial response as to mutual interest and availability to discuss further.