About me
My name is Andrea Lynch, and I am an independent consultant and facilitator based in Philadelphia, U.S.A. I founded my consulting practice in 2016, building on 15 years of work as a staff member and freelancer for progressive grantmaking and advocacy organizations. In those organizations, I worked as a communications officer, and later a program officer, forging relationships with organizations and activists in Latin America, West and Central Africa, and the U.S. South. My origins are in the Northeastern United States, but I’ve also lived, worked, and studied in France, Nicaragua, and England. Ever since I began to develop a political consciousness, commitments to exploring feminism and racial justice transnationally have been grounding forces in my life and in my work.
My consulting practice seeks to address the inevitable gaps that can be sources of persistent frustration in our work as activists and organizers, and as people who work in social justice and progressive philanthropic organizations: gaps between theory and practice, strategy and implementation, values and practices, immediate necessities and long-term goals. Since the dominant systems and norms that shape our work often fail to reflect the complexity of our challenges and conditions, the realities of our communities, and the nuances of our successes and failures, closing these gaps often requires new tools and approaches. Drawing on many useful resources that already exist, I am committed to helping my clients build the muscles, develop the frameworks, cultivate the cultures, and strengthen the practices needed to deepen both the impact and the sustainability of their work.
Andrea, a white woman in her mid forties, is sitting in her workspace smiling at the camera. She is wearing a black top and a red scarf, her light brown hair is pulled back, and she has a tattoo of a dancing cat on her right arm.
The work I did before launching A. E. Lynch Consulting gave me the opportunity to learn from hundreds of groups and organizers fighting to advance social justice and human rights in a wide range of contexts. The skills I built while pursuing a Master’s degree in Participation, Power, and Social Change from the Institute for Development Studies, which centered on participatory methodologies, reflective practice, action research, and a critical analysis of the international development industry, informed my global and historical analysis and my practical approaches as a consultant and facilitator. Since launching my practice, I’ve also worked to strengthen and deepen my practice through participation in:
Social Transformation Project’s Art of Transformational Consulting
Training for Change’s Training for Social Action Trainers and Facilitating Online Meetings
Leadership That Works Essentials of Coaching for Transformation
Finding Freedom: White Women Taking on Our Own White Supremacy
These experiences, alongside all I’ve learned from clients, fellow consultants, mentors, and trainers, shape my consulting practice today. In particular, I have been deeply influenced by countless Black feminists and other feminists of color, whose thinking, writing, teaching, and facilitation have reshaped how I approach social justice work. Thanks largely to their influence, my practice is rooted in a belief in the centrality of strong relationships, shared vision, supportive community, and clear purpose in any collective undertaking concerned with deepening social justice. My practice is also rooted in a deep and intersectional analysis of power—how it plays out in group and organizational dynamics, how it shapes what is possible, how it can be gathered and leveraged in order to create rather than destroy, and how as leaders and practitioners we must learn to acknowledge it, hold it, share it, and shift it. This includes a daily commitment to interrogating how I hold and share power as a white American woman working with colleagues and clients across the U.S. and around the world—a lifelong practice of learning and accountability.
Finally, as someone who has served as both a staff member and an independent contractor for a range of organizations, I also appreciate that much of our work to deepen and advance social justice takes place in the context of institutions. In my experience, people seeking to spark change and advance justice struggle daily to reconcile the fulness of their identities and visions (as well as a sense of accountability to their communities and values) with the legacies, possibilities, and constraints of the institutions that employ them. My work as a consultant is to meet my clients where they are—institutionally, and as individuals—and to support them to reconcile these tensions while growing the space for transformative work both inside and outside their institutions. This often looks less like detailed strategy planning and more like supporting groups to root in their purpose and their values, clarify their visions, strengthen their relationships, and work together to develop the culture, practices, and structures needed to do their work sustainably and with integrity.