Pro Bono Consultant Profile

Ken Su

Strategy Associate in San Francisco Bay Area

What was your Taproot Foundation project?

The Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California (H&SC) help those who are hard-of-hearing and deaf, and those with speech/language disorders fully participate in their surrounding environment. H&SC asked Taproot to help organize the vast amount of information available in preparation for a new strategic plan. The project team also included four other professionals, from a broad range of experience. On my upcoming project, we'll be working with the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center to help build a strategic scorecard to track their progress as part of their strategic plan.

What was your team experience?

Even with such different backgrounds and personalities, setting up expectations and working styles early in the project help set the pace for the rest of the project. For our team, setting a weekly call-in meeting was the best way to meet on a regular basis. As the strategy associates and consultant dug into the details to complete most of the interviews and analysis, the project manager still stayed closely involved, overseeing the project plan and timeline to ensure we stay on task.

What was your Taproot Foundation project experience?

Coming out of college, I was always interested in integrating the public and private sectors. For many of my friends, typical volunteering opportunities consisted of building houses for a day, serving food at a food bank or other day activities, which can be rewarding in its own way but not usually the most mentally stimulating. This was one of the first opportunities where I felt I could leverage my work experience and knowledge to help build solutions for the future. From a commitment standpoint, I think ~5 hours was about the average and like other typical consulting projects, there were some weeks that were heavier (e.g. interview weeks) balanced with lighter weeks.

What were the biggest challenges?

The team had a deep expertise in strategy and project management but working with a non-profit in this field was something new to most and presented its own sets of challenges for the team. One of the major challenges on our project was figuring how to collect information on all of their diverse set of service offerings (researching five main areas) and then trying to integrating those results into one final report. What we also realized as we analyzed all the information is that there's a fine line between recommendations considered within and out of scope.

How can the business community and nonprofit sector strengthen one another?

For the nonprofit sector, I believe there's a lot of business models, insights, and data analysis created from the private sector that haven't yet been applied to nonprofits and doing so I believe would help improve their efficiency and organization. For the private sector, I think there's an increasing interest in finding a way to make our work more meaningful to society. Finding partnerships like this is a great step towards integrating the two areas.

What impact did your work have on the nonprofit?

Through our work together, I believe we've helped H&SC find gaps in their current understanding and help them place more emphasis on understanding their vision for the future. At a detailed level, we provided client feedback that will help them understand how to market their total service offering while at a higher level, we found insights into their overall brand value, something they'll evaluate as they create their strategic plan.

How have you grown from your pro bono work?

To me, helping others has this way of making you feel better about yourself; so completing this project has made me more motivated in my own work as well as carry that enthusiasm into a new pro bono project. As a bonus, I've met new team members and friends who I've found had similar interests, and become connected to an organization where I feel committed to track and contribute to their progress even after our project has completed.

What do you do when you’re not doing pro bono?

I play in several soccer leagues in the city, heart beach volleyball, follow Michigan sports probably too much, and try to complete a few triathlons throughout the year. I'm also trying to become a better cook and love being outside enjoying beautiful California.