ALIGNING OPERATIONS +
CHARTING PATHWAYS TO JUSTICE

Reparations Commission | Greenbelt MD

In March 2022, City Council members in Greenbelt, Maryland, empaneled the Greenbelt Reparations Commission as a result of a referendum passed by voters for a commission to review, discuss, and make recommendations related to local reparations for African American and Native American residents of Greenbelt.  In order to meet its charge, the Commission has been researching actions that led to inequities over time among Greenbelt’s African American and Native American population and will suggest ways for the City to rectify these inequities.

One of their partners in that work has been imPACT Educational Consulting’s Cristina Easton and Arcadia Strategy Group’s Peter Metsopoulos. Peter + Cristina facilitated a Theory of Change process to align the Commission’s operations with its charge, and co-created governance, reporting, and meeting structures with the Commission to both center the Commission’s content expertise and to ensure accountability within the Commission’s committees.

GUIDING LEADERSHIP + EVALUATING STRATEGIC DIRECTION

BCMC + FEARLESS | Baltimore MD

The Baltimore Community Mediation Center (BCMC) partnered with change-management experts, Fearless Guides, to refine its aspirational vision for a thriving Baltimore and how the leadership of the organization can make the choices to make that vision a reality. Peter facilitated a Strategic Direction process to derive a comprehensive strategy for mission-aligned funding, operations, and community engagement. Engaging with and through Fearless’s content, Peter worked with the board and the executive team in group facilitation settings, project management best practices, and 1:1 executive coaching.

EVALUATING + OPTIMIZING OPERATIONS

HEBCAC | Baltimore MD

The Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition (HEBCAC) needed an operational audit of one of the buildings they manage. Peter structured a Discovery process to evaluate what the resulting output should consist of, and he created a manual and SOP documents that will enable the new deputy director to begin their work smoothly.  As a part of that work, Peter took on the comparative research and bidding for building signage and mailboxes for the tenant organizations.

EVALUATING STRATEGY + OPTIMIZING OPERATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

Training & Facilitation

United Nations Population Fund | The Philippines

Peter, as ED for the Center for Theory of Change, had the pleasure of co-creating and delivering a three-day training in Theory of Change as a part of the partnership between the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Center for Theory of Change (C-ToC). The C-ToC team then led a two-day consultation between the UNFPA team and their stakeholders in the Philippines, as well as a final session to debrief and consider how best to turn that two weeks of experience into the UNFPA’s 9th Country Programme. Prepping the session gave us the opportunity to dig collaboratively into Theory of Change methodology and the Filipino historical and current geopolitical context so that our work had the most useful framing for the UNFPA and its stakeholders

FRACTIONAL OPERATIONAL SUPPORT

Endeavor TBD | Baltimore MD

As Studio Manager—a hybrid Chief of Staff and Director of Operations—Peter had the opportunity to partner with Endeavor TBD’s founder and CEO to capture the best practices of the consultancy “studio” as it serves the socially-vested. He created SOPs, project managed the consultancy’s internal operations, distilled practices to fit the consultancy’s needs, and streamlined E.TBD’s onboarding processes. He was also focused on telling the consultancy’s story by authoring its digital Statement of Capabilities and writing proposals for potential engagements.

PROGRAM DESIGN + IMPLEMENTATION

CHARM: Voices of Baltimore Youth

Working with the visionary founder of CHARM Lit Mag, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of Baltimore City youth, Peter developed a programmatic mission and vision tied to that of the organization as a whole, then built the framework for the Summer Publishing Internship: a woven structure of on-site intern engagement and a parallel workforce skills curriculum, culminating in a capstone reflection on their experience. Finally, he led the advisory board through discussions about the best ways to bring their networks to bear in finding entities and individuals with whom to partner.

Among the program’s impacts in its first year:

  • 20 interns collectively spent 1407 hours gaining practical work experience

  • Partnerships with 8 publishing and media sites

  • Students met with 12 guest speakers

  • Three students were offered part-time employment following the program

CHARM is now entering its third year of the program

“The opportunities I've had and the industry connections I've made were the highlight. I'm most proud of the work I did with the paper, and the articles I got to produce and publish.”
- Khira Moore, CHARM intern at The Afro

STRATEGIC INITIATIVE - FROM VISION TO REALITY

Roland Park Country School | Baltimore MD

As a leader of strategic and tactical change, Peter started with his understanding of each student as a powerful agent of change to create the Leadership & Entrepreneurship program at Roland Park Country School. After researching the most successful models in the country, he designed the program to harness community partnerships and collective best practices toward real impact. Leading a group of 12-15 teachers, he supported our collaborative development of our vision, along with the strategy and operational model to complement it. As the founding director, he launched this new program that centered faculty /student / community collaboration and co-creation; the Institute’s offerings engaged over 300 students a year, and connected them with a wide variety of Baltimore-based mentors and partners. To support the program’s continued success, he built partnerships, budgets, and fundraising approaches in coordination with admissions and development staff—and collaborated with the Communications team, writing for quarterly magazine updates, promotional pieces, and social media. Two years after he launched the program, it was endowed as The Gore Leadership Institute.

FROM IDEA TO OPENING DAY: DESIGNING AND OPENING A SCHOOL

Lillie May Carroll Jackson Public Charter School | Baltimore MD

As a co-founder of the Lillie May Carroll Jackson School—where the collective founding-group vision centered on seeing each student and their families as agents of transformational change— Peter’s involvement began with writing the Case Statement for the initiative when it was just an idea. As it gathered momentum, the effort gave him the opportunity to work within a shared leadership model to ensure that each student had an education that would open up her future in ways informed by the 7 years of research, development, and community engagement the working group put into the process of crafting the school’s mission, staffing structure, and curriculum.  Peter and his co-founder then constructed an operational plan and policies to align the school’s daily practice with that mission. The resulting final charter application was over 200 pages and was the first charter ever granted to a secondary school. To support the school’s continued success, I wrote grants and made proposals that resulted in $950k in funds for the school before it had even opened its doors. At the same time as the conceptual work advanced, he was deeply involved in scoping physical sites and engaging with community organizations. LMCJS opened in the fall of 2015 and thrives to this day.