A woman with short gray hair and glasses sits at a table in a cozy setting. She is wearing a purple blouse and has a smartwatch on her wrist. She is holding a white mug in her right hand, and there is a laptop, some papers on the table in front of her. A large white vase with pink and white orchids and green plants decorates the table. The background features a wooden wall, creating a warm, inviting atmosphere.

Build the kind of organization that can thrive during your 5-week vacation.

Julia Cuba Lewis partners with for-profit and non-profit executives to examine what is shaping their organization and build the systems that make it sustainable.

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Prisons. Police stations. Emergency rooms. Court rooms. Domestic violence shelters. Crisis hotlines. Classrooms. Board rooms. State legislatures. The White House. Before she was a CEO or a consultant, Julia was a social worker who learned to read what's actually happening in a room — and that's the same attention she brings to the organizations she works with now.

Ways to Work Together

Consulting

For CEOs, senior teams and boards to examine their organization on strategy, succession, team dynamics, governance, growth, or whatever question is in front of you now.

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Executive Coaching

For leaders who want a one-on-one space to think out loud with someone who knows where to listen and what to ask.

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Six Accelerator

For experienced nonprofit leaders who want a weekly facilitated practice of examining their organizations alongside other experienced leaders.

Explore Six Accelerator

  • “I don't think Gemini Ink would be where we are today without the key advice, guidance, and expertise of Julia Cuba Lewis. She helped us re-evaluate our mission, programs, and financial processes at a time when sustainability was a true challenge.”

    —Alexandra van de Kamp, Executive Director, Gemini Ink

  • “I hired Julia to conduct a deep dive into my organization and she delivered a thorough and exciting map which guided our new mission, vision, values and culture.”

    Kay Creath, Co-Founder, Integrate Recovery

  • “Julia Cuba Lewis has an exceptional talent for active listening, quickly pinpointing the root causes of complex issues.”

    Heather Bendes, Owner, Bendes Consult

  • “As an Executive Director, I benefited from Julia’s supportive, insightful but also honest and unflinching coaching style. Her empathy, expansive business and nonprofit acumen, sense of humor and generous view of what is possible all contribute to her ability to help people through some of their most challenging professional periods.”

    Alexandra van de Kamp, Executive Director, Gemini Ink

  • “Julia has an engineer's command of systems-level detail, a futurist's eye for strategic vision, and an academic's embrace of data, but it is her social worker's grounding in compassion and curiosity that anchors her work.”

    Michael Kellerman, Nonprofit Change Management Executive

Most of what shapes an organization happens beneath the surface.

How we respond to disagreement. Who gets included in a decision. What we step in to solve. What gets questioned, protected, repeated or left alone.

Examining it well surfaces what's easy to miss: a pattern, a system quietly holding things together, or quietly not. That's what makes it possible to build something that lasts.

My organization did not become sustainable over night.

We built it over time.

We got clear about our purpose. We measured whether we were accomplishing it. We built stronger systems for raising and projecting revenue. And eventually, we built a senior team that could examine and lead the organization together.

By the end of my tenure, I could leave for five weeks in the summer and come back to an organization that was humming.

Not because I had become less important. Because the organization had become more capable. And that’s what I love to help other organizations do too.

“Julia Cuba Lewis is a remarkably perceptive individual who has the skills and experience to determine why some organizations function well and others do not, particularly at the level of senior management.”

John Wikswo, University Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, and Physics, Vanderbilt University

What does your organization need so you can take that 5-week vacation?

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