Innovating in ecosystems designed to preserve the status quo is hard. Frontier supports an innovation team in a large, global university seeking to change the models and methods of higher education. Alongside our clients, we built and are now implementing a product and services studio to create and sustain novel offerings across their university campuses. To help integrate these newly designed innovation practices and products, Frontier also provides executive coaching, organizational development, impact measurement, strategic communications, and culture-building support as the university seeks to revolutionize the landscape of higher education.

In partnership with a U.S.-based foundation devoted to improving economic pathways and entrepreneurship for women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities, Frontier built a new approach to measuring impact in target communities, helping governors better understand how their grantmaking influences outcomes for individuals, businesses, partner organizations, and the broader ecosystem and share their story of impact in a more meaningful way.

Participatory, employee-fueled strategy sticks! For a global organization with over 3,500 staff, Frontier facilitated the development and implementation of a new, 10-year strategy that field teams, headquarter leaders, and the board equally own and are invested in. Coaching leaders to successfully navigate change, while cultivating psychological safety and practicing their skills as situational leaders, provided additional support to sustain the new strategy.

Many Foundations and corporate philanthropies we support are pivoting from the “confetti philanthropy” model where dollars are spread widely across a diverse set of non-profit organizations to more targeted giving that is focused on achieving specific outcomes. These outcomes range widely from economic mobility to education to workforce development to environmental sustainability. Regardless of the intended outcome, donors want to know if their dollars are achieving the intended impact with targeted communities in a cost-effective manner. We have worked with organizations across the US to clarify their intended outcomes and put systems in place to continuously monitor progress.

One of the big takeaways from the COVID pandemic and the “Great Resignation” that followed was the importance of ongoing workforce development initiatives to retain top performers, boost morale, and develop the next cohort of leaders. Over the last 3 years, many of the organizations who called on us for support were facing low morale, high turnover, and leadership vacuums. To address these challenges we’ve worked with clients to develop Fearless Leaders, instituted tools and resources to foster thriving employees, and codified career pathways for the development of next-level leaders.