Deena Class, PhD

Dr. Deena Class brings 23 years of eclectic experience to help organizations better understand, meaningfully engage, and serve diverse stakeholders and community members. She retains a birds-eye view of matters that can feel overwhelming to leaders, while still getting into the weeds to listen, guide, coach, and help organizations thrive. Deena spent more than two decades working with clients such as the World Bank, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Park Service, helping them better understand their stakeholders, members, and audiences. She brings deep expertise in helping organizations build capacity in inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA), transforming the conversation from one of piecemeal efforts to one of holistic vision brought to life.

Through constant and deep collaboration with cross-functional peers, Deena honed her unique skill set in bringing together disparate professional disciplines into a cohesive whole. Chief among her contributions to strategic planning efforts is creating meaningful and actionable monitoring and evaluation plans, service design artifacts, and journey maps so organizations can share their progress toward strategic goals.

A lifelong passion for horticulture and ethnobotanical uses of plants brings Dr. Class full circle as she combines her applied social sciences assessment and capacity building with her plant passions, helping nature-based organizations better connect with and serve their human communities.