Let’s build supportive, diverse communities together one step at a time.

K Holley Consulting (KHC)

We are a consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio. Our mission is to help create equitable, inclusive, and empowering communities by supporting public and non-profit partners in forging authentic relationships with diverse communities that bring power to people.

KHC specializes in creating and facilitating meaningful community building strategies, providing continuing education on equity-focused topics for neighbors, advocates, and community servants of all stripes. Let us know how we can help your community!

Meet the Team

Kip Holley is an independent consultant and the founder of K Holley Consulting, LLC. His primary areas of focus are developing civic engagement, organizational development, and civic leadership strategies to promote social justice. Kip has a background in social work, urban planning, and applied research and has worked with several non-profit, public, and private partners to forward the work of racial equity for over 15 years. Kip is the author of The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement: A Guide to Transformative Change, a key publication regarding civic engagement. He has also played a primary role in developing curriculum for community education and leadership programs, and has facilitated over 300 presentations, trainings, and workshops related to social justice.

Collaboration

KHC looks to make change by acting as a convener between stakeholders and making the best use of the diverse skills, abilities, knowledge, and experiences of all involved. This starts with taking an appreciative approach to both stakeholders and existing systems, taking what’s already working and finding ways to add to that in ways that bolster supportive, inclusive relationships both in the workplace and in the community.

Authenticity

KHC believes that a key ingredient in making transformative, lasting changes for the better is a possession of the courage to be as authentic as possible. No one is perfect and often, the challenges to positive community and workplace relationships are long-held beliefs and norms that can be difficult to move away from. KHC strives to practice authenticity, humility, and courage alongside our clients and other stakeholders.

Innovation

KHC adheres to specific, research-based models of analysis, engagement, and strategic change for communities and organizations. However, we also know that it’s sometimes important to embrace new ideas and take new roads in the face of real-world challenges. Models and frameworks can provide a roadmap for where we want to go, but they shouldn’t prevent us or our clients from finding solutions that work for each individual client.

Systemic Change

KHC works with a bias towards solutions that create changes to systems and structures that cause community and organizational challenges, rather than focusing just on their undesirable outcomes. In order to accomplish this, KHC uses systems-level metrics based both in numbers and experience to measure change and design sustainable solutions. We feel that stories and figures can work hand-in-hand to accurately describe conditions on the ground and work better in tandem to help us and our clients design better solutions.

Person-Centric

Community and organizational assessment and change often occur in the midst of people’s day-to-day lives. Furthermore, community stakeholders and workplace staff have whole lives outside of the issues that bring KHC into their lives. KHC strives to mold its processes to the rhythms and systems of the organizations and communities with whom we partner. We also strive to ‘meet people where they are’ in terms of their knowledge and experience with important concepts, and readiness to engage n the process by providing learning resources, material and personal support, and solutions that are relevant to those who are most affected.

  • KHC believes that creating an equitable world is about habitual, transformative action. We offer a selection of training and learning resources ranging from suggested libraries of work to workshops to full curricula that are designed to provide clients with practical, actionable, and effective resources to understand important equity-focused resources and put them into action to create a more equitable world.

  • A significant portion of our lives are spent in our workplaces, so it is important that those places be inclusive places where everyone can feel that their unique experiences, knowledge, and humanity are honored. KHC’s efforts with organizational clients are always predicated on conducting analysis and providing solutions towards this aim.

  • KHC is rooted in the idea that the most important outcome of any community engagement strategy is community members who are more empowered to make community change with the skills, experience, and love for community that they bring to the table. We design community engagement strategies that not only bring everyone to the table, but expand it so that everyone has a chance to be heard and feel a sense of belonging among their neighbors.