We help you shift from responding to change, to actively shaping it

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Advisory Services

Want to enhance the impact of your products, programs or services?

Whether you’re making improvements to an existing strategy or shaping the next idea, we’re here to help you dream big and offer invaluable insights that help you stay ahead of the curve without compromising your values.

Here’s how we can help

Scoping

Contextualize the problem you’re approaching (within systems, place, time and positionality)
Understand the beings who are impacted and those who hold influence (human and more-than-human)
Get clear on your relationship to the problem (including your goals and assumptions) to understand how this influences your approach, and enable more thoughtful and relationally responsible outcomes
Inquiry and Sensemaking

Refine your research approach to achieve more meaningful insights through a trauma-responsive, consensual, and care based process
Conduct inquiry by designing and facilitating research experiences that honor participant autonomy and dignity
Conduct collaborative sensemaking to translate what we learn in a way that reflects and respects stories and lived experience
Visioning and Co-creation

Facilitate participatory engagements to generate bold ideas and strategies
Identify patterns, emerging possibilities and future scenarios centered on equity, sustainability, and regeneration, to help you anticipate risks, uncover opportunities
Deliver insights and strategies that empower you to adapt and thrive in a changing world
Design Reviews

Identify systemic barriers, biases, harmful or exclusionary practices that may be unintentionally built into your design
Identify design opportunities by thoroughly assessing your existing systems, processes, or products
Offer recommendations to reshape your offerings or better embed equity and decolonial praxis

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Capacity Building

We create lasting impact through transformative learning experiences, immersive cohorts, and personalized coaching.

Our programs equip you with practical tools and actionable insights, so that you can seamlessly integrate what you learn into your workplace, community organizing, and beyond.

Learn more

What clients have said

"The Pause and Effect team designed and executed a thoughtful audit of our product development process. They were able to summarize many trends into a cohesive report, helping us concretely identify and name gaps we previously felt but couldn't quite put our finger on. Their audit helped us begin important conversations on how we can create a more inclusive customer experience at Outschool. We were so happy with the audit that we are continuing to work with Pause and Effect to address some of the product, research and marketing gaps they identified."

Jing Jin, Outschool
"Pause and Effect is our first choice as a product design consultancy. Their approach aligns deeply with our values in bringing greater inclusion to STEAM. Their team partnered with us to develop our member journey maps through an inclusive lens, and built design workshops for the youth. Both have truly set us on the right path towards making the impact we desire."

Anthonia Ogundele, Ethos Lab
“System changers are often faced with a tension between: 1) making changes within existing systems, or 2) deconstructing the systems to rebuild new ones. I've always leaned towards the first approach. Until I sat in a session by Pause and Effect that challenged my approach and made me reflect thoughtfully on my impact as a researcher. I highly recommend following Pause and Effect if you're interested in research methods that are truly decolonial and inclusive.”

Anonymous
“Pause and Effect has been instrumental in helping us design an equity and inclusion strategy that considers the employee experience and the business needs. We partnered with their team of consultants to conduct an audit, and provide learning opportunities, resources and tools for our staff to use which has allowed us to co-create an approach that we continue to see results from today”

Laurie Murdoch, VP People and Organization, Sony Imageworks
Pause and Effect's Relational Design session facilitated by mayed and Sabrina yesterday was an eye-opening and soul-healing reflection on how we do what we do, what lenses we view the world and our work through and how we can begin healing the broken ways we were taught to interact with the world around us. If any of this resonates or sparks curiosity, I whole heartedly recommend following Pause and Effect's work and joining future sessions. I, for one, can't wait to learn more.”

Anonymous
“As a UX leader in my organization, it can be easy to make assumptions about how inclusive digital experiences are, but Sabrina’s presentation really helped broaden our views of what it means to build accessible experiences. She provided a welcome reminder of our individual and collective accountability for diversity and inclusion in our workplace and for those we serve.”

Steven Hoose, Director of Digital Engagement