Strategy & Program Design
to turn the tide

If you’re shaping the future, you need a strategist who can guide teams through the unknown. Whether you’re launching a moonshot, scaling new technologies, or reinventing how you team, Water’s Edge Strategy is where bright ideas break through.

Core Services

We Offer

So That

Strategy Development
Program Design
Branding & Identity
Team Facilitation Leadership Alignment
Stakeholder & Ecosystem Development
Messaging & Positioning
Storytelling

... resources focus where they'll have the greatest impact

... systems and structures hold the spark of your idea
... you are known for what you stand for
... you benefit from shared direction and purpose

... you accomplish more than you could alone

... people understand your offering, and why it matters

... you inspire others to adopt your technology or approach

Service Spotlight

Program Design

No two efforts are ever quite the same. But most teams tackle these questions while shaping or reformulating initiatives.

Answers to some are provided by leadership from the outset. Many are explored and crystallized through a facilitated process.

1. Our Why
What vision guides us? Why now? Why us?

2. Funding Sources
Who funds today? Co-funding later?

3. Theory of Change
What needs to change to achieve our vision? Who can help?

4. Stakeholders
Who are we fundamentally serving? To what ends?

5. Functions, Roles & Responsibilities

What is our most strategic approach? Who will do what?

6. Venue
What functions happen within our organization? Any without?

7. Governance
Who decides what along the way?

8. Programmatic/Funding Priorities
What will we invest in? What criteria will we use to make choices?

9. Investment Means
How will we invest? Directed funding, prizes and challenges, competed models, a mix?

10. Measurement

How will we know we've been successful? Who will we tell? How will continue to learn and adapt as we go?

Legacy-Building for Individuals & Families

Services we once offered only to large organizations are now available also to individuals.

We help families and private wealth holders to:

Establish their legacy vision and commitments.
Hone what they offer in the context of what people and the planet need most.
Realize their desired impact, such as by aligning their resources, venture capital and philanthropy to achieve it while inspiring others to join the cause.

Meet Rob

Rob has worked with visionaries and mavericks from the start.
From supporting Dr. Muhammad Yunus with the Grameen Bank’s expansion to new parts of the globe; to close collaboration with Dr. Jane Goodall, on whose behalf he developed the first conservation plan for the famous chimpanzees of Gombe; to his current work with NASA to design and support new biodiversity initiatives.

Rob holds a Masters in Conservation Leadership from the University of Cambridge.