Steve Struthers

Steve has more than 25 years of experience helping public sector and non-profit leaders guide their agencies and systems through change. His focus is on helping public-purpose organizations design new approaches for producing more value for those they serve – whether they are direct service recipients or the overall residents and taxpayers of a jurisdiction. Steve’s skills are primarily in the arenas of strategic planning, service delivery redesign, performance measurement, budget redesign, group facilitation, and change management. During his career, he has assisted clients in federal, state, and local units of government as well as non-profits and foundations in areas such as workforce development, education, economic development, and child welfare.

Prior to relocating to New Zealand in January 2021, Steve most recently consulted for Bloomberg Associates as part of their Economic Response and Recovery Program to help US cities respond to the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. For the five years prior to that, he was a Senior Principal in Accenture’s public sector consulting practice. Earlier in his career, he was a partner in the Public Strategies Group – a strategy consultancy focused exclusively on the public sector, working with elected officials and public executives to reinvent their organizations. He has also previously served as Executive Director of two non-profit organizations - one focused on using Americorps national service members to address critical academic gaps; the other’s mission is to facilitate meaningful and respectful international cross-cultural experiences for individuals of all ages.

Jennifer Billig

Jennifer Billig is the founder and principal consultant of Align Consulting. Jennifer is a strategist, social impact consultant, organizational change specialist and advocate with a consulting career that spans more than 20 years with Align, Arthur Andersen, Unisys, and The Public Strategies Group. Her systems change work helps organizations align strategy, culture and outcomes for maximum impact, emphasizing a ‘Race +’ approach for equity, inclusion and building intercultural competency in individuals and across organizations.

Jennifer’s consulting focuses on operationalizing racial equity, inclusion and other shared values to create a culture of true belonging for all employees. She also specializes in helping White-bodied leaders transform their own racial conditioning so they can effectively lead and support the creation of truly inclusive companies, non-profits and government agencies. She is a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory, a coach trained by the Coaches Training Institute and an instructor of embodied meditation practices.

Tim Gilchrist

Tim Gilchrist devoted over 33 years to public service in transportation and economic development in New York State including as Senior Advisor to the Governor for infrastructure and economic development. He has experience in budgeting, program finance, major project management, strategic planning, and asset management.

He has always focused on ensuring that missions, organizational structure, and budgets are aligned to achieve measurable results that are meaningful to the public. Since retiring he has taught public finance and budgeting at the graduate level and provided strategic advice to private and not-for-profit organizations.

Jim Chrisinger

Jim Chrisinger is a career public servant focusing on innovation, management systems, and process improvement in the Iowa Department of Management, King County (WA), US State Department and House of Representatives, and Iowa State University.

Martha Marshall

Martha Marshall is a Virginia based trainer and management consultant who helps government and non-profit organizations achieve sustainable results. She brings an in-depth knowledge of performance management developed through more than 35 years in local, state, national and international government settings. She is a highly skilled trainer and facilitator who helps public and non-profit organizations build results management capacity.

Martha draws upon extensive “hand-on” experience achieving results in government, serving 18 years as head of an internal consulting unit in Prince William County, VA that led strategic planning, organizational effectiveness, performance and innovation (1979-1997) She helped the County implement a nationally recognized managing-for-results system that engaged community members to define the desired future vision with elected leaders and engaged managers across departments to develop and measure strategies to achieve success.

Clients have included most major cities and counties in VA, and municipalities nationally ranging from large California counties to the Cities of Philadelphia and New York. With the Results That Matter Team she helped public health organizations plan and collaborate to make communities healthier, safer and more resilient. Martha was affiliated with the Public Strategies Group, (originator of Budgeting for Outcomes) and has trained local and state governments to implement BFO practices successfully. With The Abrahams Group, she has helped localities across the US establish managing for results systems. Martha has served The Urban Institute, ICMA, the National Civic League, Sloan Foundation, and the University of Vermont Continuing Education through training and research projects. Internationally in US AID funded projects, she developed a Results-Oriented Government training toolkit for the government of Jordan and a Service Delivery Improvement Model and training toolkit for managers of the Palestinian Authority.

Martha has a master’s degree in Urban Management from Virginia Tech and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Psychology from Randolph College. She has served as an adjunct professor in performance management for George Mason University. With the American Society for Public Administration, she served as a National Council member and as a fellow of its Center for Accountability and Performance. Martha resides in Prince William County Virginia and is a SWAM certified vendor in that state.

Laurie Ohmann

Laurie Ohmann has been interested in governance and public service delivery systems for as long as she can remember. For twenty+ years, she's been helping people take a customer perspective on their view of public service delivery, challenging assumptions about both the end results and the means to achieving them.  She's participated in numerous redesign efforts including ones that support greater independence for persons with developmental difficulties, improving financial literacy and access of the unbanked to asset-building tools, and increasing child support compliance among others.  She's currently the Senior Vice President for Client Services and Community Partnerships for Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis where she's working to develop opportunities for the most vulnerable in our communities to move out of crisis response systems to longer-term stability. 

Josephine Pufpaff

Josephine Pufpaff is a results driven professional with over fifteen years experience working within the homeless response and housing system in Minnesota. Her strategic thinking, ability to engage and lead others, and passion for systems change sit at the core of her past achievements including the design and development of the YouthLink Youth Opportunity Center, the first of its kind for homeless youth. Josephine has served as designer in several Design Labs across subjects as diverse as rethinking a seminary to truncating youth homelessness.  Josephine has a Masters in Public Policy from the Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota.

Bill Svrluga

Bill Svrluga has learned the presenting problem is rarely the real issue – or the real opportunity. What’s often missing is a rigorous rethinking of the question, the courage to have candid conversations and the development of strategies that produce the desired outcomes.  Whether it’s being one of the founders of four nonprofits that dramatically improve the lives of economically poor people, helping start a new General Mills company – Yoplait USA, helping communities of color achieve their goals or helping an orchestra produce better music, Bill is relentless in rethinking the status quo and getting better results.  Bill’s decision many years ago to split his time between strategy consulting and addressing inner city issues has served his clients well. He brings multi-sector experience and perspectives to bear on their thorniest challenges.  Bill is President of the WJS Consulting Group.

Laurie Ohmann

Laurie Ohmann has been interested in governance and public service delivery systems for as long as she can remember. For twenty+ years, she's been helping people take a customer perspective on their view of public service delivery, challenging assumptions about both the end results and the means to achieving them.  She's participated in numerous redesign efforts including ones that support greater independence for persons with developmental difficulties, improving financial literacy and access of the unbanked to asset-building tools, and increasing child support compliance among others.  She's currently the Senior Vice President for Client Services and Community Partnerships for Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis where she's working to develop opportunities for the most vulnerable in our communities to move out of crisis response systems to longer-term stability. 

Bill Bancroft

Bill Bancroft is Managing Principal of Conbrio, a Dallas-based consulting firm, which focuses on leaders and change. His work with leaders over the past 15 years has led to issues, including culture, teaming, strategy, innovation and succession development. He views organizations from a systems perspective and finds that successful change often touches multiple individuals, multiple components.  So solutions require multiple initiatives, including coaching individuals and facilitating teams to achieve high performance.

Tom Moss

Tom Moss started in human service direct care and moved to executive leadership in large non-profits, and state government.  Then as a consultant with The Public Strategies Group, Tom fell in love with the design process as a transformative way to help stuck organizations re-frame, re-imagine, and re-invent solutions to intractable problems.  He has participated in or led over 20 of these design experiences, successfully re-designing solutions in mental health, health care financing, child welfare, youth homelessness, services for elderly, empowerment of people with disabilities, graduate education, and other challenges. 

J. Jeff Kober

J. Jeff Kober is CEO for World Class Benchmarking which provides strategic thought leadership in building customer-centric and high-performance organizations. Jeff is co-author of Lead With Your Customer, Transform Culture and Brand into World-Class Excellence.  For nearly thirty years Jeff has worked across private, public and non-profit sectors.  He was a leader with the Disney Institute.  In the public sector, Jeff has focused on creating learning and development solutions at all levels of government. This includes a multi-year focus in increasing management and communications capacity for Federal Student Aid. Jeff designed strategic initiatives for state groups such as the Iowa State Department of Administrative Services.  He provided transformation support for cities, including the New York City Department of Finance which improved tax compliance and attitudes toward government. Currently, he is leading a customer-focus initiative for the over 9,000 employees of a major U.S. Intelligence Agency.  

Lorraine Chang

Lorraine Chang is strategic consultant and coach to leaders in government, non-profit organizations, and communities on organizational and systems change. A lawyer by training, she has been involved in creating and implementing new frameworks in the education, employment and training, health and human services, transportation and administrative arenas in the private sector as well as at the federal, state and local levels of government. In 2008, she was elected to serve on the Learning Community Coordinating Council, a collaborative body established to measurably improve educational outcomes for children and families in poverty across eleven school districts in the Omaha metropolitan area and she has served as its Chair since 2012. 

Beverly Stein

Beverly Stein is passionate about public sector innovation. Bev has organized numerous Design Labs and has written articles on the process of innovation in government.  She recently organized a Prosperity Design Lab sponsored by the Oregon Business Council and Portland State University to surface breakthrough ideas to address poverty in Oregon. She is a former state legislator and elected county executive and currently is a Senior Fellow at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University.