Emilie Smith Email and Phone Number

The SET collaborative is a boutique, human and equity-centered coaching and consulting firm that helps mission-driven leaders and teams create more ease, clarity, joy and justice at work and in life.

Lead flagship people development and culture function. Set strategy through justice and values forward process and practices including hiring, onboarding, performance management, employee engagement, career development, compensation strategy. Provide people-centered, justice-forward human resources support and handbook design. Facilitate team and 1:1 learning engagements with staff, board, executive team and the broader nonprofit community. Manage execution of annual planning, goal-setting and progress monitoring. Coach and develop people managers. Trusted ombudsman support. Liberatory design facilitation.

Coach executives to lead from their most whole and authentic selves. Consult on strategy, aligning work and talent to broader vision and values. Facilitate workshops and trainings for small groups and large teams with special interest and talent in design thinking, strengths-based leadership, diversity and inclusivity, broadening the imagination, access to and expression of full self. Create, execute and monitor progress and outcomes of values-aligned talent recruitment, attraction, interview, onboarding and retention strategy. Cultivate highly engaged and highly successful staff through performance management systems focused on strengths, growth and feedback. Create and execute innovative and in-tune engagement to meet the needs of leaders and their teams through onboarding, change, and in celebrating talent milestones. Clients include United Way of the Greater Triangle, The Diaper Bank of NC, Duke University, A Helping Hand, Triangle Charters for Equity, Teach For America.

Set vision and direction for program. Hired, onboarded, coached and grew 30-person program team to outstanding performance in teacher experience and retention, student results, staff engagement and retention. Aligned all component parts of program towards a common vision. Facilitated strategic planning across multiple teams and subregions.

Coached, managed, and catalyzed outstanding performance of 8 content specialists. Built deep relationships with and laterally managed 4 community team leads to set and pursue aligned programmatic strategy specific to the strengths and needs in Richmond, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Facilitated aligned and inspiring process to set vision, strategy, goals, and metrics for regional programming. Designed and executed staff development aligned to strategic opportunities and promising best practices.

Designed and facilitated staff development in which 85% of staff were satisfied/extremely satisfied with content as a great use of time that positively impacted their job performance on topics such as effective performance management, mitigating bias in hiring, and managing across lines of difference. Established region-wide manager training with 100% participation and 95% reporting positive influence in their work. Developed partnership with Dismantling Racism Works to consult, train, and support staff implementation of radical and feasible racial equity strategy. Set vision, strategy and goals for People, Equity, and Operations team, impacting team of 40 across functions.

Set vision and strategy for organization-wide learning loop that culminated in honoring a select group of teachers for excellence in teaching while also more precisely articulating the narrative of organizational learning. Innovated a learning loop based on listening tour and organizational core values, resulting in increased levels of participation, investment, engagement and learning from 48 regions throughout the nation. Increased the racial and regional diversity of the corps member nominee pool by 35% and 40%, respectively. Consulted on and edited Teaching As Leadership, X.O, Teach For America’s most current thinking of what it takes to realize its vision.

Supported, developed, coached, and consulted with 4 regional program managers who lead teams of varying sizes in urban and rural communities in Alabama, Rhode Island, Miami, and Jacksonville, FL supporting them to attain outstanding student achievement, teacher leadership, staff effectiveness and engagement results. Partnered with executive directors to make effective hiring, onboarding, and strategic programmatic decisions. Influenced national Teach For America decision-making via the national Teacher Support and Development Execution Team. Planned and executed onboarding retreats for new program directors and program managers.

Set vision, goals, strategy and direction for 19-person team charged with achieving outstanding classroom results and fostering leadership development over two years for 400+ teachers. Achieved top 1% of managers in Teach For America’s Organizational Strength Measure, a Gallup-run survey assessing direct report engagement and seen as heavy influencer on staff effectiveness and retention. Enabled 5-person leadership team to execute on personal and job-specific vision and goals. Recruited, hired, matriculated, and onboarded highly effective team. Served on regional leadership team, influenced the direction of broader region and served as key decision-maker for and executor on change management project to decentralize the regional office into 4 community-embedded offices. Achieved effectiveness results in which 86% of first year and 75% of second year teachers enable students to grow at least 1 year in reading and reach 70%+ mastery on rigorous summative assessments in math.

Supported high-impact skill, knowledge and mindset development and managed relationships of 35 teachers. Retained 94% of first year teachers.