What We Do

Assessment & Perception: From Insight to Alignment

Understanding how your audiences — whether students, employees, families, patients, or donors — perceive your organization is key to shaping authentic and effective strategy. Through surveys, audits, and benchmarking, we identify where narrative and experience align and where greater clarity or visibility is needed. We turn perception data into actionable insights that inform communications, planning, and stakeholder engagement. Our assessments connect narrative, operations, and experience—ensuring institutional efforts are consistent, data-informed, and aligned with strategic goals. Key levers include:

Institutional and organizational presence (websites, reports, stakeholder portals)
Audience sentiment monitoring (forums, reviews, digital channels)
Cultural and identity insights (national guides, organizational representation)
Social and media monitoring

Narrative & Communication: Telling the Story that Matters

An organization’s story — and the voices it elevates — define its values and leadership. We help clients design communication strategies that unify internal and external messaging, ensuring that every story told reflects the institution’s lived experience and strategic priorities. Serving as an advisory partner, we ensure that communications reflect lived experience, advance institutional goals, and reinforce reputation for authenticity and responsiveness. Key levers include:

Narrative & strategic communication planning
Stakeholder and community testimonials
Program and event communications
Orientation and early-term initiatives
Affinity group visibility and engagement (programming, communications, and interfaith positioning)
Specialized initiatives and centers of expertise

Network Activation: Partnerships that Sustain

Strong networks turn strategy into measurable impact. We help organizations activate the relationships — internal and external — that bring mission to life. By connecting leadership, communications, advancement, and community stakeholders, we move goals from planning to implementation with clarity and shared purpose. Our work focuses on building alignment across departments, identifying the right messengers, and creating communication pathways that sustain engagement. This collaborative approach strengthens coordination and ensures that initiatives are shared consistently and credibly. Key levers include:

Stakeholder engagement and partnership planning
Cross-departmental coordination and communication systems
Families, alumni, donor, and student engagement strategies
Strategic partnership mapping and activation, including Jewish life and faith-based organizations
Board and advisory council collaboration
Volunteer leadership and succession planning
Board and advisory council collaboration

Institutional Support Systems: Structures for Daily Belonging

An organization’s strength is reflected in its systems — the structures and operations that shape everyday experience. We help clients evaluate and strengthen these systems through strategic planning and implementation support, ensuring that operations, communications, and culture align with institutional goals and values. In partnership with leadership teams, we assess how existing frameworks function in practice, identify opportunities for greater efficiency and coordination, and guide teams in building processes that promote clarity, consistency, and measurable results. Key levers include:

Advising and consultative support for leadership teams
Operational alignment and service evaluation
Inclusion and identity integration within organizational services
Accessibility of campus support systems
Academic and observance accommodations
Communication frameworks for internal and external trust-building
Integration of identity and belonging into organizational culture

Our Approach

At E. Shekhman Consulting, we don’t just design strategy — we help organizations put it into coordinated action. We serve as trusted partners to leadership teams, providing tools to evaluate, refine, and implement initiatives that align brand, operations, and communications.

Our Commitments:

Aligned Systems: Identify where stakeholder experience intersects with communication, operations, and reputation — then build alignment that reinforces clarity and trust.
Building Cohesion: Connect the dots between strategy, service, and perception through frameworks that unify goals and narrative.
Strengthening Perception: Monitor how your organization is perceived internally and externally, and design strategies that make your efforts visible, credible, and trusted.

I bring both professional expertise and lived experience to this work. By combining strategic marketing, branding, and communications with actionable frameworks, we help institutions strengthen belonging, trust, and reputation. My understanding of Jewish campus life adds a complementary lens — helping institutions consider identity, visibility, and inclusion as part of a holistic strategy for student success.

How We Work

We give leadership teams a clear roadmap for action. Rather than deliver static recommendations, we stay engaged — testing assumptions, refining strategies, and building solutions that can be implemented and measured.

Collaborative: Strategies are shaped through facilitated conversations that bring together diverse perspectives to ensure strategies reflect lived realities.
Data-Driven: Insights grounded in measurable data from surveys, audits, and benchmarks provide evidence to guide decisions.
Lived Lens: Informed by professional expertise and personal perspective — helping organizations anticipate how diverse stakeholders experience their culture and policies.
Actionable & Measurable: Every recommendation includes milestones and metrics to track progress, adapt in real time, and demonstrate impact.

Our Process

Our structured process moves strategy from insight to implementation.

Initial Consultation: Define scope, goals, success measures, and stakeholder landscape.
Discovery & Assessment: Use surveys, digital audits, and external reviews (rankings, forums, listening channels) to highlight strengths, gaps, and quick wins.
Strategy Development: Co-create an action plan that aligns communications, programs, and support systems across departments—with clear ownership, sequencing, and success measures.
Support & Follow-Up: Provide ongoing advisory sessions to troubleshoot challenges, sustain momentum, and adapt strategies as organization dynamics evolve.

This process ensures institutional efforts are coordinated, not fragmented — embedding alignment and visibility into daily organizational operations.

Who We Work With

We support institutions that:

Strengthen marketing, student life communications, and brand reputation.
Seek to better understand and represent student experience across diverse communities.
Recognize narrative or support gaps but need guidance on where to begin.
Want sustainable, cross-functional systems of engagement — even with limited resources.

What Makes Us Different

Whole-Organizational Lens: Informed by decades of communications expertise.
Integrated Insight: Ensures representation is authentic and sustainable, grounded in stakeholder voices.
Cross-Functional Approach: Connecting people, programs, and policies for coherence and visibility.
Authentic Storytelling: Building trust through real voices, not just messaging.

Our role is to serve as strategic partners, helping institutions align brand, operations, and engagement into sustainable, data-informed frameworks that strengthen the stakeholder experience and institutional trust.

Let’s Work Together

Every organization has a story — one that can unite, include, and inspire. We help uncover that story, strengthen its reach, and share it in ways that build trust with the people who matter most. Together, we create clarity, alignment, and measurable impact.