Questions
Before We Begin
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What kinds of organizations are a good fit for Voices?
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Voices works with nonprofits, public agencies, schools, foundations, and other mission-driven organizations that want to better understand, celebrate, or learn from the people who make their work possible.
Whether your organization has six employees or several hundred, what matters most isn't size, it's having stories worth hearing and a genuine desire to learn from them.
How are participants selected?
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Participant selection is one of the first conversations we'll have together. Depending on the purpose of the engagement, we may seek representation across departments, roles, tenure, geography, or lived experience.
The goal isn't statistical sampling. It's ensuring the stories we hear reflect the richness and diversity of your organization.
Every Voices engagement is tailored to the organization's goals, number of participants, and desired deliverables.
Some organizations are looking to celebrate a milestone. Others want to better understand their culture, support a leadership transition, or inform strategic planning. The scope—and investment—reflects those goals.
The best place to start is with a conversation.
What does a Voices engagement cost?
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We already have a communications team. How is Voices different?
Each participant takes part in a one-on-one conversation and an environmental portrait session.
There are no scripts to memorize or presentations to prepare. Participants receive a few reflection prompts in advance, but the conversation itself is informal and guided by curiosity rather than a questionnaire.
Many people tell me afterward that it reminded them why they do the work they do.
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Do you travel?
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What do participants actually experience?
How are participants' stories and quotes handled?
What does the photography look like?
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The Results
How is Voices different from an employee engagement survey?
Yes. Voices is based in Austin, Texas, and I regularly travel for engagements throughout the United States.
Travel costs are discussed up front and included in your project proposal, so there are no surprises.
During the Engagement
These aren't traditional headshots.
Portraits are created in the places where people actually do their work—a classroom, a park, an office, a community center, or another meaningful setting.
The goal is to create authentic, documentary-style portraits that reflect both the individual and the work they do.
Not very.
Most sessions take about 45-60 minutes, including both the conversation and photography. Because everything happens on-site and is coordinated with your team, the experience is designed to fit naturally into the workday with minimal disruption.
Every participant has the opportunity to review and approve their written profile and any attributed quotations before they're shared publicly.
When organizational themes are presented, they draw on patterns across many conversations rather than identifying individual participants. If someone shares something they'd prefer remain private, that is always respected.
Surveys are excellent at measuring what you already know to ask.
Voices creates space for people to describe their experiences in their own words. It uncovers stories, perspectives, and themes that structured surveys often miss.
The result isn't quantitative data—it's qualitative insight that helps organizations better understand themselves.
Absolutely.
Some organizations engage Voices to celebrate their people or mark an important milestone. Others use it to inform strategic planning, organizational learning, leadership transitions, or culture initiatives.
The themes that emerge often help leaders better understand their organization before making important decisions.
Internal communications teams play an essential role in sharing organizational stories and advancing the organization's message.
Voices complements that work by starting somewhere different. Rather than beginning with a message, it begins with curiosity. The stories, themes, and insights emerge from conversations with participants, not from a predetermined narrative.
Many organizations find that the insights generated through Voices strengthen future communications because they're grounded in lived experience.