Our Team
Reaching new heights requires a trusted guide. Our team is dedicated to helping you create lasting change within your organization.
Alison Hart
Founder & Chief Strategist
I’m a servant leader, a natural connector, and a strategic problem solver. After a long career as an executive in the private sector and at nonprofit organizations, I founded A. Hart Associates so I could serve as a catalyst for organizational change.
I’m living my passion, helping leaders sharpen their focus, evolve the conversation, drive consensus, and transform their organizations and communities. I approach every interaction with honesty and integrity, seeking to create space for others to learn, share, and grow.
I love tending my vegetable and herb garden and using the harvest to create beautiful, seasonal meals from scratch. I’m fascinated by exploring the amazing world around us, both locally and abroad. Yoga centers me, as does spending time outdoors hiking a trail or paddleboarding. And I gain tremendous inspiration from losing myself in a good book.
What sets me apart
Years of executive-level leadership
Expertise in building public-private partnerships
A proven strategic planning framework for long-term adoption and outcomes, organizational growth and stability, and sustainability
A gift for gaining consensus and alignment
Facilitating connections within a carefully-curated and trusted network
Deep experience working associations, small business, nonprofit, government, economic development, and tourism
Foundational experience
More than 15 years of executive-level leadership for associations, honing proven methods for strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and program development to move complex initiatives forward.
Over two decades of experience building public/private partnerships, most notably as launch director for the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center, a five-year project that resulted in exponential growth in partners and public/private funding
10+ years of experience crafting strategic plans from alignment to execution, including a key strategic consulting relationships with Small Business Development Center networks nationwide.
Carrie Hays
Leadership Sherpa and Coach Extraordinaire
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire!” That’s how I describe my path to the field of leadership and team effectiveness. My first job after earning a B.A. and then an A.A. from a culinary school was as a chef for a large hotel company. In that role, I learned two things: that I wasn’t that great of a cook, and that the real challenge of preparing food was leading a team. Effective leadership intrigued me more than cooking, and so I hopped out of the kitchen and into the field of leadership and team effectiveness.
While I still love good food and wine, (I make a mean crème brulee), I find delight in helping leaders learn ways to confidently apply rigorous approaches to effective leadership. I am living my passion – helping others benefit from what I have learned: The “ah ha” moment for me was re-thinking how I was thinking about leadership and that changing behavior is only one step towards effective leadership. What is really required to be an effective leader is shifting how one is thinking – one’s mindset. That’s the path: shifting thinking to shift behaviors to get good results.
When not working, you can find me swimming, and riding bikes among vineyards in Napa Valley where I live. Every now and then, I meet with clients while riding bikes side-by-side, exploring leadership and team challenges while enjoying the beauty of the valley.
What sets me apart
I am endlessly curious: What does it take to be a truly skillful leader? And what are the highest leverage ways leaders can stack the deck in favor of their teams becoming exceptional?
Drawing from several powerful coaching approaches and neuroscience, I guide clients to make changes to their mindset, aka their “operating system”. Clients learn to actively reflect and make intentional, rather than habitual, choices. That’s how lasting behavioral change happens.
There are six conditions that any great team must have in place. Applying training in the science of great teams, I coach leaders what it takes to form, launch and develop teams and lead organization-wide culture and systemic changes.
Foundational experience
More than 25 years of consulting and coaching senior leadership teams and individual leaders in powerful and well-researched ways of thinking and leading.
Hundreds of organization development projects with federal and local government agencies, private and nonprofit sector clients.
15+ years of international and domestic managerial and leadership positions in a Fortune 500 company
Casey Curry
Digital Dynamo
Years of working in the art world has made me an expert at collaborating with visionary thinkers to help make big ambitious ideas a reality. I am passionate about designing strategic organizational and operations solutions that help Alison and everyone we work with spend more time operating in their zone of genius — and I have an eye for detail to help keep those systems running smoothly.