Lauren Rayburn

Lauren Rayburn is an independent organizational and strategy design consultant, supporting the unique needs of small & medium-sized non-profits. She offers: 

• Organizational Development Support:
  • "Current State" Assessments
  • Clarity Mapping
  • Board Governance & Staff Leadership Coaching
• Strategy & Facilitation
  • Retreats
  • Refresh Workshops
  • Full Planning Processes & Documentation

Click here to learn more about these services.

Lauren specializes in working with organizations who are struggling to define the roles of board & staff – thus redefining the organization’s shape to meet current and future needs.  She uses appreciative inquiry (the original AI 😉) and strength-based approaches to highlight what's most important to teams and impacted community members. This allows for greater clarity on what to prioritize first as groups move into practically and sustainably enacting goals tied to their vision.

 Lauren formerly served as a customer experience (CX) strategist and analyst for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development mission area.  There, she was part of a founding team that designed listening programs – administering surveys and facilitating listening sessions, focus groups, and interviews.  Equipped with this data, she facilitated workshops with collaborators, resulting in scoped projects and experiments to test for the purposes of improving federal service delivery. With this background in human centered design and analysis, she grounds her current nonprofit work in centering the voices of people that programs are designed to serve.

In 2019, Lauren was honored with a Tzedek Impact Award for facilitating deep relationship building among the Youth Elevation Collaborative members, a group of five grassroots organizations serving youth of color in Asheville, NC.

Lauren enjoys working with emergent leaders and teams exploring community-led governance models.  She partners with organizations building their capacities for strategic visioning, planning, and implementation while also exploring group alignment. As a certified facilitator in Crucial Learning’s Strengths Deployment Inventory and Conversations Worth Having/Strategic Conversations, Lauren loves using participatory and reflection-based approaches in facilitation, training, and coaching.

 When not working, you can catch Lauren in the mountains of Western NC helping out on her family’s small herb and spice farm.