Imagine Another Way Forward.
Executive counsel for leaders and institutions navigating disruption, complexity, and the moments when the old way no longer works.
Dr. Best advises leaders at their most consequential thresholds — helping them see clearly, decide wisely, and build what does not yet exist.
Four decades. 4,000+ leaders. Institutions at their highest stakes.
For more than forty years, Dr. Best has counseled foundations, universities, cultural institutions, public officials, and enterprise and mission-driven leaders through transformation, transition, and moments of intense scrutiny.
— Directed Connecticut's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships across multiple gubernatorial administrations
— Founded a leadership institute that trained more than 4,000 leaders
— Stewarded more than $25 million in strategic and philanthropic investment
— Trusted with the questions leaders cannot ask anyone else
For leaders standing at a threshold.
This work is for chief executives, founders, boards, presidents, and senior leaders facing the moments when familiar answers stop working — when the path is unclear, the stakes are high, and the decision is yours to make.
You may be navigating:
— A transformation that demands more than a new strategy
— Erosion of trust, alignment, or culture beneath the surface
— A leadership transition or succession of real consequence
— A redefinition of mission, identity, or purpose
— The pressure to innovate before the future arrives
— A decision with no obvious path and no margin for error
When the way forward is uncertain, the work begins by learning to imagine another.
THE COUNSEL OF DR. BEST
Most advisors offer strategy. Dr. Best offers judgment — earned across four decades of leading institutions, moving audiences, and galvanizing communities.
Rev. Dr. Shelley D. Best is not a consultant who analyzes organizations from the outside. She has led them, funded them, and built them — and brings to every leader she advises the authority of someone who has sat in the chair, carried the public mandate, and held the microphone.
A gubernatorial appointee under Governors O'Neill, Weicker, and Rowland — trusted across three administrations and both parties — she oversaw a $5 million state portfolio, served on the Commissioner's executive staff directing statewide campaigns, and produced an Emmy-nominated documentary. She led Connecticut's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and represented the state to the federal office under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
She is also one of the region's most enduring public voices: for twenty-two years she hosted Rich Answers on WRCH, reaching more than 70,000 listeners every Sunday, and today writes Creative Disruptor® Diaries on Substack. A community organizer of uncommon force, she galvanized more than 3,000 people — Black, white, and Latino together — for the Universal Health Care Foundation, the kind of cross-racial coalition most are told is impossible.
As President & CEO of The Conference of Churches and CEO of the Greater Hartford Arts Council, she led major institutions and stewarded multimillion-dollar grantmaking. She founded the 224 EcoSpace as a working social enterprise, founded a leadership institute that trained more than 4,000 leaders and drew federal Recovery Act funding to Connecticut, and has raised more than $25 million for mission-driven work. Operator, fundraiser, public official, institution-builder, broadcaster, organizer — most advisors can claim one. Dr. Best has been all of them.
That is why leaders trust her with the decisions they cannot delegate — the ones where the spreadsheet runs out and judgment takes over. The creator of Creative Disruption®, she brings the rigor of a Master of Divinity from Yale and a doctorate in ministry, the discretion of a trusted counselor, and the imagination of an artist. A descendant of James Mars, whose 1864 autobiography stands among New England's most important slave narratives, she carries a lineage of transformation and narrative reclamation into every room she enters.
When the questions are largest and the stakes are highest, leaders call Dr. Best because she has already done what she counsels others to do.
Trusted by Leaders Across Sectors
Dr. Best's work has engaged leaders from government, higher education, philanthropy, arts and culture, faith communities, and social impact organizations.
Her work sits at the intersection of systems change, human flourishing, and courageous imagination.
