Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Recent Professional Development
Robin Neidorf

Robin Neidorf

Summary

Persistent leader eager to lead and grow programs and initiatives making measurable progress towards mission. Skilled in strategic planning, problem-solving, and collaborative communication with good understanding of nonprofit and grant-making principles, project management, stakeholder engagement, and team leadership. Collaborative with relentless work ethic.

Overview

26
26
years of professional experience
21
21

Years of community strategy and leadership

Work History

Chair, Kadima

Minneapolis Jewish Federation
03.2020 - 12.2021
  • Led community-wide emergency planning to respond to COVID crisis, activating productive collaboration among and across professionals and volunteers of more than 20 local Jewish organizations
  • Secured diverse organizational buy-in through mindful facilitation of difficult biweekly online discussions
  • Guided design of an equitable process to prioritize and urgently distribute over $15 million.
  • Maintained impartiality and objectivity during meetings and decision-making.

Director of Community Impact

Minneapolis Jewish Federation
03.2016 - 11.2016
  • Maintained stability and momentum during a critical period of changes in program design and grant-making
  • Assessed community needs for a permanent Director of Community Impact, crafted job description, and successfully hired a full-time director.
  • Developed and maintained positive working relationships with key stakeholders in community.
  • Taught in-house employees strategies for successful internal and external communications.

Owner/Principal

Roadmap2impact
01.2022 - Current
  • Re-focused mature consulting practice on the change cycle of situation diagnosis, strategic planning, sustainable change, and impact evaluation
  • Secured two multi-stage projects to design, implement, and test innovative methods of “measuring what's hard to measure” (social impact, abstract value).
  • Consulted with customers to assess needs and propose optimal solutions.

Director of Research

Jinfo Limited
04.2005 - 06.2022
  • Visionary executive leadership and strategy partner for the business, responsible for expanding services, growing revenue, deepening client relationships, and serving as “the face of Jinfo.”
  • Tripled revenue by shifting the commercial model from one-off sponsorships to long-term renewable income, high-value consulting contracts, and leveraged intellectual property (training, events, consulting)
  • Invented three industry-defining methodologies on information value, now in use at Pfizer, Dow Jones, Syngenta, and the Bank of England, among dozens of others
  • Designed and oversaw robust pipeline of research results, including 15+ webinars per year, 50+ reports per year; adjusted plans based on measured performance against business goals
  • Designed an efficient, teachable model for situation diagnosis to enable a small team to assess prospects and develop consulting proposals quickly and accurately; doubled consulting revenue in the 6 months following implementation
  • Partnered with Managing Director (equivalent to CEO) on long-term and mid-term strategies, staff/contractor management and growth, branding, expanded services and day to day management of operations/P&L – annual budget of ≈$2 million
  • Coached clients to enhance their visibility and value to their C-suite stakeholders through mentoring/coaching over multi-year consulting contracts; examples include managers of research and information at American Financial Group, Unilever, DuPont, the Federal Reserve Bank, and Cargill
  • Built and managed international team of remote, technology-enabled colleagues working collaboratively on all creative, client-facing and back-office task and projects; tenure of team members was seven to fourteen years
  • Established connections with liaisons to industrial and commercial stakeholders, allowing industry trends to inform research and vice versa.
  • Built organizations research and intellectual property portfolio in accordance with long-term strategic plan.
  • Performed research into business information strategy to increase knowledge and to establish global thought-leadership.
  • Developed advanced skills with Salesforce, Google Workspace, and online collaborative tools.

Co-Chair, Twin Cities Population Study

Minneapolis Jewish Federation
08.2018 - 03.2020
  • Directed the design, execution, and dissemination of the first comprehensive demographic study of the Twin Cities Jewish population since 2000.
  • Established stakeholder education program to build knowledgeable partnership and baseline understanding of the purpose and uses of demographic data.
  • Addressed potential information overload by designing topic-focused communication program in bite-sized chunks.

Board Member and Chair of Community Planning

Minneapolis Jewish Federation
07.2008 - 06.2019
  • Leadership roles including Board Member and Chair of Community Planning, Offered service then leadership in a range of roles in strategy, planning, budgeting, organizational health, and board development
  • Directed the re-invention of collaborative community-wide planning, strategy, and grant-making with an emphasis on data-driven decision-making
  • Co-created strategic plans, board retreats and board development programs
  • Spearheaded annual grant distributions between $9 million and $14 million.

Board Member, President, and Past President

Sabes JCC
01.2006 - 01.2013
  • Approved to the board during a period of overhaul following organizational crisis
  • Partnered with the CEO to sustain the organization's cash flow, services, member relations, and viability during financial collapse of 2008-2009
  • Chaired search committee to hire first new CEO in 10 years.

Owner/Principal

Electric Muse
07.1996 - 04.2006
  • Established and grew solo consultancy focused on strategy, data-driven decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and organizational capacity building, with a local and national client-base.

Education

MFA - Creative Nonfiction

Bennington Writing Seminars, Bennington, VT

BA - Religion

Williams College, Williamstown, MA
  • Graduated cum laude

Skills

  • Systems Thinker
  • Strategic Planning
  • Stakeholder Relations
  • Business Consulting
  • Motivational Leadership
  • Program Design, Evaluation and Improvement
  • Change and Growth Management
  • Effective Communicator and Public Speaker
  • Defining Company/Community/Organizational Vision
  • Results Orientation
  • Analytical and Critical Thinker

Recent Professional Development

  • Liberating Structures (8-hour workshop on facilitation by Voltage Control)
  • Virtual Facilitation (12-hour online workshop on facilitation in digital environment by Virtual Facilitation)
  • Community: The Structure of Belonging workshop (6-hour online workshop by Peter Block)
  • Turn Your Process into a Product (self-paced course on scaling consulting services on Creative Live).

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