Optimize your organization to grow your impact.
At Optimize for Impact, I help education and nonprofit teams align their vision, strategy, and talent and systems so they can move forward with clarity, operate more effectively, and stay focused on what matters most.
Services Include:
Strategy Design and Activation: I help organizations clarify their vision, set strategic priorities, and design practical roadmaps to bring them to life.
Organizational Design and Effectiveness: I assess how to strengthen alignment between your structure, talent, and systems to better support your strategy.
Talent & Operations Infrastructure Building: If you're building internal systems for the first time or reworking ones that no longer fit, I help you design values-aligned systems and processes that support both people and performance.
Interim or Fractional Leadership: I provide interim or fractional leadership in operations, talent, Chief of Staff, or COO roles during growth, change, or gaps in capacity. I stabilize key functions and build systems your team can sustain.
As needed and appropriate, I also work with trusted partners to ensure the full scope of expertise needed to support your organization is in place.
Who I Work With:
I work with education and nonprofit organizations that are growing, evolving, or building from the ground up. Most of my clients are teams of under 50 with budgets below $10M, often in start-up or early growth stages, or navigating a new strategic chapter.
Whether you're implementing your first strategic plan, growing your team, or rethinking how to scale your operations, I help you build the clarity and internal alignment to move forward with confidence.
Interested to learn more about optimizing your team or organization? Let’s chat!
ABOUT ME
Samantha Bray Ader
I am passionate about helping social impact leaders and teams bring their vision to life. With 15 years of experience in the social impact sector, I specialize in organizational design, talent management, operations, and strategy. Prior to launching Optimize for Impact, I served as Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness at Latinos for Education where I built and led the internal functions of the organization. During my tenure as a founding team member, I built the talent, operational, and development systems from the ground up and co-led annual and multi-year planning — helping the organization grow to a multi-region national organization. Previously, I held professional roles at Teach For America, United Way, and Butler University. My diverse background has given me a unique understanding of building effective organizations and teams.
I hold a masters degree in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University where I also received my graduate certificate in Designing for Organizational Effectiveness. Through my education, I have developed a research-backed tool kit of organizational design and effectiveness, change management, and design thinking models and practices to compliment my diverse professional experience.
I reside outside of Chicago with my partner and two daughters and serve as President of the Board of Education for the second largest elementary school district in Illinois.
Does your organization or team need some optimizing?
If any of these sound familiar, I can help!
Lack of clarity around organizational or team-level strategy and goals.
You have a strategy but your current infrastructure isn’t aligned to support it.
Your systems and processes are slowing you down or non-existent.
You have a talented team but no infrastructure to support them.
Leadership is stretched too thin and stuck in the weeds instead of focusing on strategic priorities.
You’re a new organization and don’t have in-house capacity for your internal infrastructure building.