"Belinda brings a rare combination of heart, mind and spirit to her work - she is instantly likable and trustworthy, and equally knowledgeable and strategic. Belinda led a team that was hired to help our growing nonprofit move to the next stage of organizational life. She was consistently perceptive, responsive, insightful, patient and able to weed through large amounts of data to figure out which issues were most important and how to address them to maximize positive change. Her keen intellect, deep organizational experience and warm personality are truly a winning combination. I recommend her without hesitation to any non-profit leader needing help with strategic planning, change management, team building, or coaching."

“We have worked with Belinda for years: She has supported our strategic planning process, facilitated staff retreats, and advised us on our fundraising and development. Across all of those projects, she has earned the trust and admiration of our entire staff—we consider her an extended member of our team. She is rigorous in her preparation, always asks excellent questions, and facilitates challenging conversations with tremendous skill and sensitivity. I especially appreciate that she brings to her work a passion for our mission, combined with a clear-eyed view of the real challenges that organizations like ours can face, based on her own experiences as an executive director as well as a consultant. As a result, she always guides our conversations in practical, productive directions and offers unfailingly insightful suggestions. On top of all that, she's a pleasure to work with—fun, flexible, and empathetic. I look forward to many more years of collaboration with Belinda!”

“We hired Belinda to help us develop a strategic plan for our organization, but we got so much more. Belinda really understands the importance of process in creating a plan of integrity and commitment from all levels of the organization. She is a skillful facilitator, with the ability to engage and synthesize diverse perspectives and the flexibility and creativity to design a process in response to our needs and input. As a result of her work with us, we not only gained an actionable strategic plan, but perhaps more importantly, we gained a stronger organization with enhanced teamwork, better communication, and greater alignment between the Board, the CEO and the executive leadership. Her follow through, generosity, and dedication to supporting us throughout the process was unwavering. She was a joy to work with as a consultant and I wouldn’t hesitate to hire her again for future projects.”

“Belinda is a real gem as a strategic planning consultant, with her authentic, warm and gracious personality matched by her keen insight, extensive knowledge and experience, and her ability to effortlessly draw the best out of diverse teams. Her special skill is in melding the organizational roles with the human side of teams. Our strategic planning process also became a team building exercise under Belinda’s skillful facilitation. She is exceptionally perceptive, creative, well informed and flexible. Her approach is collaborative and systematically generative as she excels at socializing emerging ideas to get buy-in from all stakeholders. She is particularly adept at honing in on critical elements from varied resources and translating abstract, complex ideas to make them actionable. It was a real pleasure to work with her. I would highly recommend Belinda for strategic planning, team building and change management.”

“We were so fortunate to have found Belinda to lead our Strategic Planning process. Having participated in other planning exercises that were cumbersome and tedious, Belinda brought a breath of fresh air, building group collaboration, fostering a sense of joint purpose, expertly facilitating through difficult times, and most importantly, listening; i.e. letting everyone in the room participate, pulling out feedback as necessary, and ensuring that each individual felt like a positive force working towards a common goal. Her calm and respectful demeanor generated a feeling of trust and respect. The resulting document was universally accepted as our three year road map, providing a clear, concise, and inspirational strategy for moving the organization forward.Without reservation I recommend Belinda, and hope to work with her again.”

“We hired Lyons-Newman Consulting each year for the last three years as a facilitator, to oversee a six-month long annual citizen engagement and community planning process. Working with Belinda is a dream! Balancing the personalities and needs of our volunteer leaders and staff members, Belinda is able to successfully navigate our program, facilitate meetings and support our volunteers, steering committee members, and other stakeholders through her coaching, troubleshooting, and research. Each year Belinda’s facilitation has concluded with fully developed, citizen-led project proposals, ready for community voting. We love working with Belinda and her team and highly recommend her services!”

“The Early Care Educators of San Francisco Board selected Belinda to guide our strategic plan and board retreat—and were glad they did. What were they looking for? Someone who would listen first, be down-to-earth, and have responsive interactions while bringing in her own knowledge and experience guiding a 501(c)(3). Belinda was a great fit, and has worked with us for continued consulting updating our strategic plan, and advising on board manuals, operations, new board member training, as well as website and communications consulting.”

“Belinda was a pleasure to work with. She was thoughtful, asked great probing questions, provided great insights, kept us on track and moved us forward in completing our strategic plan. What was delivered was exactly what we wanted!”

“Belinda is an experienced professional with a deep understanding of community-based organizations and the process of strategic planning. Her approach was incredibly helpful. We engaged in a process that commits the organization to some much needed change. The process was transparent, inclusive, thoughtful, and realistic. Our board and our staff were pleased with the results. Belinda was a pleasure to work with. I would enthusiastically recommend her to any nonprofit looking for a consultant to assist with strategic planning.”

“Belinda was absolutely great to work with. Her role was to work with our board, development committee and staff to create a development and communications plan. In addition to being responsive, timely, and within budget, she was also really easy to work with. We all really enjoyed working with her throughout our process. The plan document that she developed, along with the work plan that we'll be using, is incredibly user friendly, and it will make it so easy to track our implementation as we move forward. I highly recommend Belinda!”

“I’ve worked with Belinda for years, and continue to return to her as a reliable, valuable, and consistent nonprofit consultant and coach—and a resource in my life. She has supported me, my board, and our leadership team through many of the challenges and opportunities of running a nonprofit, and she does so with grace, compassion, and kindness—and a great deal of wisdom and intelligence. I highly recommend her as a consultant for your all of your nonprofit needs.”

“If you are seeking someone who you can partner with to optimize your organization from both a mission and a financial perspective, and need a person who can talk to all members of your organization, from the board to the front lines, with an engaging personality and flexible attitude, Belinda is the person for you. It was such a pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic, collaborative team member and a very disciplined, caring person.”

"I found Belinda to be skilled, professional, intuitive and gracious in her work with me. I highly recommend her! I was able to do a much better job of pitching my work to prospective clients after doing this work with Belinda.”

“At every turn, Belinda's insightful guidance has proved critical in helping shape the direction of this project, and her team-building skills have been invaluable in bringing together and focusing our growing collection of board members, advisors, and volunteers.”

“We were lucky to secure Belinda as a dynamic speaker at the Dress for Success Affiliate Leadership Conference. She lead an interactive workshop for our global audience on nonprofit board governance best practices. Our affiliate leaders raved about Belinda’s session and came away with tips and tools to bring back to their communities. She was a pleasure to work with and comes highly recommended!”

“Belinda was engaging, thoughtful, and a fabulous facilitator. Our Fellows left with a deep understanding of nonprofit governance.”

“It was a rarity to meet someone who was so organized and calm as Belinda Lyons-Newman. Belinda’s professional and organizational skills enabled her to efficiently execute the Board strategic planning process. Her input was extremely helpful. Her calming presence helped immensely to direct board members’ thoughts and energy. I’m very grateful for her service and dedication, the summary of accomplishments created by Belinda was insightful and encouraging, and provided visibility as to the progression of the board’s agenda last year.”

“Working with Belinda and the team at Lyons-Newman Consulting was not only inspiring, but also very successful. Belinda was thoughtful in every aspect of the process. She developed a virtual environment that supported active participation of our Strategic Planning Taskforce members. The process enabled us to gain greater clarity and insight into our next steps, and kept board members and staff engaged in the progress. It allowed us to have tough conversations. The clarity that it provided applies not just to one aspect of the organization, it applies to every single thing, and that is tremendously helpful! Our plan also provides us with an Opportunity Screening tool. We now have a well articulated path that the entire organization is proud of and it feels achievable.”

“Belinda has a warm, calm, clear, accessible, and collaborative approach. She guided our staff, community, and Board of Directors in an empowering and positive strategic planning process at a pivotal time in our development as an agency. As a result of her supportive consultation and facilitation assistance, we are much more aligned and coalesced organizationally, with a clearly articulated vision and plan for our future. The process was illuminating and clarifying, and the value we received was enormous.”

“For 50 years, our agency has been small but mighty. In the last three years, our staff doubled and our programs tripled to help meet the critical needs of our community. Our systems could no longer support what our agency had become, and it heavily impacted the staff. I turned to Lyons-Newman Consulting to help assess and rank our most important priorities. By partnering with us to get feedback from our staff, board, funders, and community, Belinda and Karla supported us to demonstrate that we are all in this together. They strengthened our capacity so that we could all grow out of this pandemic together and build the new agency our community needs.”

“Belinda and her team were fantastic to work with. They engaged our planning committee, community stakeholders, staff, and board in the process, helping our team focus on the organization’s future. We were really impressed with their ability to help us synthesize our ideas into a useful and well-structured plan that accurately reflects our goals and aspirations.”

“Belinda and Erica were warm, empathetic, creative, and knowledgeable - all critical qualities a nonprofit uniquely situated like ours would need in a strategic planning consultant. They helped us dial in to exactly what we envisioned for the future of the agency while incorporating the input of our participants, partners, and community stakeholders. The process was full of excitement and deep discussions. We identified priorities and goals, learned more about ourselves as an organization, and determined a plan for moving forward as a team. We were amazed at how easily they synthesized our ideas into a well-crafted plan for the next five years. We built a stronger team with shared goals and priorities through Belinda and Erica’s artful facilitation. At all times, our needs and interests were at the forefront. They were a joy to work with, and we highly recommend them and their team. This was such a great experience, and we are so excited to make moves toward our goals!”

“Refreshing our strategic plan at times felt like an overwhelming task, but we knew we had to ask the big questions to be effective in the changing landscape of the East Bay. And I’m very happy with the result. The Lyons-Newman team provided steady guidance and structure throughout. It was impressive to see how they brought us from brainstorming to some clear themes and strategies. While the plan was absolutely created by EBHO staff and members, Belinda and Erica provided the framework to ensure a clear path forward.” 

“The board and staff retreat was the highlight of our strategic planning experience. With our strategic plan to guide us, we are ready for the next 3-5 years of our work and have already started new ways to expand our services and partnerships with other service providers to support the well-being of our community.”

“Our collaboration with the Lyons-Newman team was highly effective. It allowed for authentic conversations and flexibility, which ultimately resulted in the co-creation of a strategic plan that truly reflects who we are as an agency. The outcome is a three-year plan that incorporates the perspectives of our staff, clients, and community. I feel an immense sense of pride for what we created and am excited about the positive impact our strategies will have, both internally and externally, for our organization and community.”