Melissa Sines has extensive experience holding space for developing emergent and adaptive structures, strategies, practices, and tools for the leaders that are courageously working to shift power and resources to the global majority. She works with partner organizations and networks to support collaborative “big thinking” efforts with multiple stakeholders and solutions within a complex system. She is an organizer at heart, helping to organize networks and people around equitable strategy, operations, learning, and technology.

Melissa specializes in supporting organizations during times of leadership transition, shifts in organizational strategy or programming, or shifts in organizational structure. She loves the mess, because she knows on the other side of that mess is a strong and powerful team that can strengthen the way they work together, and as a result, their work will be stronger, better, and more inclusive of their community. Melissa reconstructs and weaves leadership, power, strategy, program efforts, operations, and culture in a holistic approach to change.

If you’re looking for someone to fill in for an FTE and keep things stable for six months, that’s not her. From administrative to frontline to middle manager to executive staff to board, she can get intimate with the day-to-day to reshape the work from the inside, supporting the team - the experts of their own work - to grow their skills, collaboration, leadership, and resilience to change. She fills the role of embedded strategic leadership that can also build a product, framework, curriculum, or SOP that is able to be maintained for years after her departure. And if she needs to, she’ll jump in to reconfigure the database to ease workflow.

In most cases, Melissa’s work with organizations or networks spans over a period of two - four years to nurture and cement the transition as transformation.

“My goal: after we’ve completed the engagement, you’ll miss me, but you won’t need me!”

Melissa is a co-founder of Colmena Consulting, a producer cooperative for consultants, facilitators, strategists, and coaches who work with organizations and networks navigating moments of emergence, transition, or redesign.