Through our suite of services, we will help you develop a transformative vision for your institution, implement a strategic project, and make your systems efficient, so you can keep thinking big on what truly matters – your mission values.
archives. libraries. public history.
Our Services
Have a need but aren’t sure where it fits? Contact us to discuss.
Strategic Planning & Vision
Support strategic planning: Whether for a standalone project or to develop a transformative vision for your institution.
Grants
Level-up your grant-seeking: Clarify your needs, coalesce opportunities that match your goals, and fill gaps in getting the work done.
Special Projects
Manage or advise on special projects: Especially for sensitive materials or populations.
Workstream Creation
Implement efficient workstreams: Ensure your teams can always find their way.
Meet the Team
Amanda E. Strauss
Founding partner, Providence RI
You Belong Here is the collaborative, justice-driven approach that informs the strategic framework I bring to archives, libraries, museums, and non-profit organizations. It is born of my personal story, my research and scholarship, and my core values. I am committed to creating welcoming and inclusive environments that make cultural heritage truly accessible. I will help you analyze and shape your organization from the nuts and bolts to the overarching vision so that all who walk through your doors can begin to see a place for themselves, their stories, and their histories.
Learn more about Amanda
Areas of Expertise
Leading diverse, high-performing teams, organizations, projects, and large-scale initiatives that drive academic success, diversity, equity, and inclusion
Steering and implementing intentional change management that embeds mission and values into organizational structures
Nurturing partnerships and community engagement efforts to broaden audience and user base whether through engaging, impactful, and sustainable programs or creative approaches to collection development
Anne Ray
Founding partner, New York City
I help organizations and people connect the day-to-day work with the big picture. I’ve implemented large-scale projects across domains, devising and launching efficient workstreams from the ground up that utilize team strengths. With an approach driven by narrative and story, I treat every dimension of a project—all the way down to stuffing folders—as a chance to advance the higher vision.
Learn more about Anne
Areas of Expertise
Using my superpower of narrative strategy to raise up hidden connections across people, organizations, and domains
Generating powerful, clarifying language and stories that stakeholders can return to again and again to strengthen a cause
Grantseeking that matches visions across organizations, and grantwriting that turns needs into opportunities
Recent Projects
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Collection Policy John Hay Library, Brown University
Archival repositories are at a crossroads. The sheer breadth of material produced in the 20th century and the dynamic challenges presented by electronic archives and digital content, combined with the fiscal and environmental costs of acquiring, storing, and equitably describing rare material, necessitate a renewed, strategic approach to collecting. Amanda E. Strauss as Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the John Hay Library
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American Prison Newspapers 1800s-present
Awarded Mellon grant to create a first-of-its-kind digital archive of newspapers published in prisons from nearly every state in the United States. Convened advisory panel, prioritizing lived experience and community archives needs. Collaborated on cross-team initiative to release innovative curriculum materials and original public humanities journalism. Anne Ray, as Managing Editor for Reveal Digital
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Voices of Mass Incarceration: A Symposium
Voices of Mass Incarceration: A Symposium will examine the history and impact of U.S. mass incarceration through scholarly analysis along with music, poetry, and reflection. The three-day symposium gathers together more than two dozen noted experts and artists working and studying incarceration and its wide-ranging effects on society. The second day of the symposium will also mark the opening of the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers for research at the John Hay Library, the anchor for the John Hay Library’s Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States collection. Amanda E. Strauss as Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the John Hay Library
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Documenting White Supremacy and Its Opponents in the 1920s
Spearheaded a major reframe of a legacy digital collection of press materials depicting the history of organized white supremacy in the United States. Through recruiting and convening a diverse panel of experts to gather and synthesize complex stakeholder feedback, strategic external and internal communications, the result was a strategic pivot toward organization-wide awareness of practices for culturally sensitive materials. Anne Ray, as Managing Editor for Reveal Digital
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Monumental Archives
A critical perspective on monuments and memorials has helped illuminate how monuments are situated not in the past they memorialize, but in the instances of their creation and perpetuation. This project explores how architecture and aesthetics have joined with collecting and organizational development to create –and to exclude– particular paths to accessing the past within libraries and archives. Amanda E. Strauss, You Belong Here
Endorsements
“Amanda's capacity for galvanizing change in libraries and archives is matched only by her fierce commitment to equity and inclusion; I've seen firsthand and been lucky to partner with her on some projects to make a real difference.”
— Karin Wulf, Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian at the John Carter Brown Library and Professor of History at Brown University
“Amanda Strauss is the rarest kind of leader: a visionary realist. As a library leader, cultural resources catalyst, and as a scholar, she sets lofty goals, and then rigorously assesses and implements the steps that will allow an organization to realize them.”
— Jane Kamensky, President and CEO, Monticello
“I worked with Amanda to place my library of first edition AfroAmerican fiction at Brown University's John Hay Library. I was concerned about 'losing' a collection I'd spent a lifetime building. Amanda is a superb listener and reassured me that the collection would be respected. I have learned so much about collecting as cultural work from Amanda and look forward to working with her again.”
— Oliver Saint Clair Franklin, CBE, HM Hon. Consul in Philadelphia
