Why organization development (OD) consulting?

I've had this personal goal of earning a 2nd masters for several years. I can no longer remember when this goal began, but it's been a solid part of my consciousness for many years. Timing and situations were never right for me to make graduate school and my full-time job work out. When I moved to the greater Washington, DC area, the timing and opportunity worked itself out. Managing a full-time job that didn't always conclude at 5 pm was difficult for me, so was graduate school, for many reasons, but it got done. One aspect of graduate school that I enjoyed throughout the program was consultancy. It was this component that would help me grow into consulting work. Five years later this year, I formalized this consulting work with this new website under my middle name, Jehan. 

The meaning of Jehan (pronounced Juh-haa) is 'world.' This same middle name belongs to three generations of women in my family, including my late mother. The start of the new year also includes my mother's birthday, so it felt appropriate to begin this new journey of this website, to move forward and remain connected to my mother's strength, kindness, and humor with her name, my name. 

Making this formal web presence official was tough for me. It's a significant personal and professional change. It took standing still in a pandemic and loss to help me to move forward with my own goals. I enjoy being a librarian, yet I knew that I could not let this second degree sit idle when I could also be helping organizations grow and change. Despite the unprecedented last year, I have enjoyed the challenge of doing OD, equity, and inclusion work virtually and seeing my work's positive impact.

I am excited about the future where I can do more of this work with organizations, particularly a post-vaccination world where it's safe to gather and discuss the more profound issues holding back organizations from being effective and inclusive.

Stay tuned for occasional updates here. Thanks for stopping by and good health ~nikhat jehan