Change your leadership, change your results.
We help ambitious leaders discover where they create disproportionate value - and build the strategy and systems to operate from that place every day.
Most organizations don't have an effort problem. They have a focus problem.
If your results need to change, your leadership needs to change first.
You're working harder than ever. Your team is capable. But strategy is diffuse, decisions bottleneck around you, and execution keeps stalling. You're spending your best thinking on work that isn't yours to do.
Decisions wait for you. Teams can't move without your sign-off. Your calendar owns you.
The priorities look right on paper. But day-to-day work doesn't reflect them.
Good people working in silos. Everyone busy. Not everyone pulling in the same direction.
You know something is off. You can feel it. But you can't quite name it.
The work that energizes you keeps getting squeezed out by everything else.
Your mission matters to you. But impact and performance feel like they're competing.
Every leader has a zone of disproportionate value - work that draws on their deepest instincts, energizes them, and consistently produces outsized results. Our work is to find it, protect it, and build everything else around it.
Durable advantage emerges when two forces align: where you create disproportionate value, and where your organization uniquely wins. We find that intersection - and build the strategy and systems that make it last.
Your instincts, capabilities, and energy - clarified and protected
Your competitive advantage, anchored in purpose and market need
Clear, differentiated, and tied to what you uniquely do well
Decision architecture, operating cadence, accountability - built to run without you in every room
"The strategy lived in leadership conversations - but not in the business. We changed that."
When Ali was Chief Strategy Officer at Burton Snowboards, she brought in Kristy to solve a problem every scaling organization faces. Together, they designed a strategy cascade from company goals to individual contributors - and built the operating rhythm to sustain it. Every leader left with clear line of sight from their daily work to what mattered most.
Meet Ali & Kristy →Every engagement starts with a complimentary 45-minute discovery conversation. No pitch, no pressure. We listen first - and we'll tell you honestly if we're the right fit.
Book a Discovery Call →We work with a small number of clients at a time - by design.
Four phases from insight to lasting impact. Each builds on the last - and every one delivers immediate, tangible value.
Your instincts, energy, and highest-leverage work - made explicit
Competitive advantage anchored in purpose, capability & market need
Clear, differentiated strategy that's unmistakably yours
Everything aligned. Everyone moving. Results that compound.
Most clients begin with the Diagnostic and move through at their own pace. Each phase stands alone - and the journey compounds.
A focused assessment of where your leadership energy is being spent versus where it creates the most value. We surface what leaders rarely have the space to examine - then hand you a clear narrative of what we see and a concrete path forward.
The heart of our work. A Leadership Genius Deep Dive reveals where you create outsized results - and where you're leaking leverage. An Organizational Genius Assessment finds your true competitive advantage. Together, they produce a strategy that's unmistakably yours.
Most strategies fail not because they're wrong - but because the organization has no system to run them. We build the operating infrastructure that makes your strategy executable: decision architecture, strategic cadence, accountability structures, and team alignment.
Your behind-the-scenes secret weapon. Two tracks - determined by what the Genius Assessment reveals. Track A (Strategic Thought Partner) for visionary, externally-focused leaders. Track B (Execution Architect) for leaders whose genius is building from the inside out.
Focus creates advantage. Competitive advantage comes from concentrating resources where you can uniquely win - not spreading them thin.
Leadership attention is the scarcest strategic resource. Where a leader spends their time and energy shapes the entire organization.
Leaders must operate in their genius zone. When leaders spend time outside their highest-value work, the whole organization loses leverage.
Organizations must know their distinctive advantage. Purpose, capability, and market opportunity must converge around a clear strategic focus.
Purpose and strategy must reinforce each other. Impact and competitive advantage are not in tension - when aligned, purpose becomes a differentiator.
Strategy must live in systems. Strategy that only exists in presentations will never change an organization.
Execution problems are leadership design problems. Misalignment and stalled initiatives trace back to unclear strategy or leadership overload.
Every engagement starts with a complimentary 45-minute discovery conversation. We'll help you figure out exactly where to begin.
Book a Discovery Call →We work with leaders across industries. The common thread is a high-performing team that isn't delivering what it should - and a leader ready to look honestly at their own role in that.
We meet leaders where they are. Tell us which of these sounds most like you - and we'll show you exactly how we can help.
Strategic clarity challenge
You have too many priorities and no clear sense of where you can truly win. The market is moving, the team is busy, but the strategy feels diffuse. Ali's superpower is exactly this - surfacing the real strategic choices and trade-offs that create focus and competitive advantage.
→ Usually begins with the Strategic Genius Diagnostic, often leads to Phase 2.
Organizational alignment challenge
Good people working hard, but in different directions. Leaders "agree" in meetings but don't move together afterward. Kristy has built alignment systems inside some of the most complex organizations in tech - she knows exactly what's breaking down and how to fix it.
→ Usually begins with the Diagnostic, leads to Phase 3 (Operating System).
Leadership effectiveness challenge
You're over-functioning. Decisions bottleneck around you. Your best thinking is going to the wrong things. This is the most common entry point for our work - and it's the one where we can create the most immediate relief and the most lasting change.
→ Usually begins with the Diagnostic. Often leads to the Advisory Partnership.
Purpose & sustainability challenge
You're building something that matters. But your sustainability and impact work feels disconnected from your business strategy. Ali spent 18 years proving that purpose and performance reinforce each other - when they're designed to. We help you build that integration intentionally.
→ Usually part of Phase 2 (Genius Assessment), can stand alone as a focused engagement.
For technical sustainability support - carbon accounting, certification programs, regulatory compliance - we work alongside specialized firms like ClimeCo and others in the impact ecosystem. We provide the strategic clarity and leadership alignment. They provide the technical rails. Together, we give mission-driven leaders a complete solution.
45 minutes. No pitch. We listen first, then tell you honestly whether this is the right partnership for where you are right now.
Book a Discovery Call →Design for Impact was built by two leaders who have spent their careers inside the organizations our clients lead - making high-stakes decisions at the top of complex, fast-moving businesses. We don't advise from theory. We advise from experience.
Ali spent 18 years at Burton Snowboards, rising to become the company's first Chief Strategy Officer. She built Burton's sustainability program from a single proposal to Donna Carpenter into a core pillar of one of the world's most iconic brands - earning B Corporation certification, Fair Labor Association accreditation, and global recognition.
As CSO, Ali led global strategy, customer insights, environmental and social impact, and JEDI - building each team from scratch. She has led every part of a complex, mission-driven consumer business simultaneously: brand, product, culture, operations, and purpose.
Ali's superpower is seeing what leaders can't see from the inside. She holds the whole picture at once - and surfaces the strategic insight that changes how a leader thinks about everything.
Kristy built her career at the intersection of strategy and execution - leading teams, driving revenue growth, and building operating systems inside some of the most complex, fast-moving organizations in tech and commerce.
As GM of Promoted Listings at eBay, she led a $300M business - an environment where misalignment shows up immediately in the numbers, and where clarity and accountability were the difference between momentum and stall.
Kristy's superpower is translating strategic clarity into organizational reality - building the systems, rhythms, and accountability structures that make strategy executable without heroics.
We tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Real trust is built on honesty. We will name what we see, even when it's uncomfortable.
We stay behind the scenes. Our clients look brilliant. We stay invisible. That's the point.
We build things that hold without us. We never create dependency. Everything we build is designed to run on its own.
We work with a small number of clients at a time. So we can show up fully for each one. This is not a volume business.
We believe business can be a force for good. Impact and performance reinforce each other - when they're designed to.
We're rooted in San Francisco and Burlington. We work with leaders across North America.
Every engagement starts with a conversation. Complimentary, 45 minutes, no pitch. Just listening.
Start a Conversation →We work with a small number of clients at a time - by design. Every engagement starts with a complimentary 45-minute discovery conversation.
No intake team. No automated responses. When you reach out, you're reaching Ali and Kristy directly. We keep all conversations confidential.