& Workflow Design
Situation
When I joined Pace Center for Girls, each of the 21 centers was running its own marketing and creative work independently. A new brand had recently been launched at the national level, but with no centralized system in place, the result was significant brand inconsistency and confusion across the network. More critically, it created a lack of trust between the national office and regional executive directors who felt they were losing control of their local identity without gaining anything in return.
The challenge was twofold: rebuild trust with 21 regional executive directors while simultaneously centralizing and professionalizing creative operations at scale, all without making centers feel they were losing autonomy or support. These two things had to happen together. You cannot build a system people do not trust, and you cannot build trust without demonstrating value first.
My Role
I led this initiative from the ground up, overseeing four distinct phases spanning six years. The work began with a trust-building strategy I designed and executed with a small team, bringing on a contracted designer and offering free creative services across the network before introducing any new systems or processes. Once that foundation was in place, I led the design and build of the Advancement Request System in Asana, working with the team to create the full workflow infrastructure including intake forms, tracking stages, approval workflows, and capacity management. I guided the system's evolution year over year and introduced the lookbook as a cost and efficiency tool in 2023, maintaining strategic oversight and direction throughout.
The result was a system that consistently delivered more with the same or fewer resources. Design costs were reduced, headcount was not increased, and request volume grew more than tenfold over three years. The system continues to operate and evolve today.
The Work
The system was built in deliberate phases, each creating the foundation for the next. The process began by offering value before asking for change, which was key to adoption across a distributed organization.
- Phase 1: Building trust through service (2019–2021). The first step was offering value before asking for anything in return. A contracted designer was hired and free creative services were provided to all centers. Over roughly 18 months this approach rebuilt trust with regional executive directors, unified brand presence across the network, improved turnaround time, and increased satisfaction with creative support. It also surfaced the next problem: there was no system in place to manage the growing volume of work.
- Phase 2: Introducing Asana and building the system (2021). In 2021 Asana was brought in as the project management platform to create a sustainable, replicable infrastructure. The Advancement Request System was designed and built from the ground up, creating a full-service internal platform for submitting, tracking, and managing all creative requests. The system included standardized intake forms, defined request categories, approval workflows, revision tracking, and a board view for managing capacity and prioritizing by urgency. The system was updated and refined year over year as the organization's needs evolved.
- Phase 3: The Lookbook (2023). In 2023 the team worked with the designer to develop an online lookbook, a curated collection of approved templates and production-ready visuals organized by material type. The lookbook simplified the design process, shortened lead times, and reduced costs by giving centers immediate access to on-brand materials without starting from scratch each time.
- Phase 4: Efficiency gains without headcount increases (2024–2025). By 2024 and 2025 the system was delivering measurable efficiency. Design costs were reduced and headcount was not increased despite significant growth in request volume, from 264 completed requests in 2023 to 414 in 2024 and 505 in 2025. Improved systems and processes, not additional resources, drove that growth.
Request Volume Growth
Completed request volume grew dramatically year over year, reflecting both expanding adoption across centers and the increasing scope of work the system was able to support.
System in Action
The system operates across three interconnected layers: the request intake form, the Asana tracking system displayed as a board for managing active work, and the project and task management tracking that keeps work moving from submission through completion.
The Lookbook
Alongside the request system, a concept was developed to streamline the creative process across all 21 centers: an annually updated digital lookbook giving regional teams a content-rich, plug-and-play resource for their creative needs. Built in collaboration with the team and contracted designer, the lookbook walks regional leadership through available templates, customizable assets, and brand standards -- giving centers creative freedom within a consistent framework. It launched in 2023 and has been updated each fiscal year since.
The impact was immediate and measurable. Centers could move faster on straightforward requests without going back and forth with the national team, custom request volume for repeatable work dropped, and design costs decreased year over year without sacrificing quality or brand consistency. The lookbook did not replace the request system -- it made the system significantly more efficient.
Outcome
The Advancement Request System transformed how creative work was managed across Pace's 21 centers, replacing an inconsistent decentralized model with a unified, scalable platform built on trust. Request volume grew from 264 completed requests in 2023 to 414 in 2024 and 505 in 2025, with 981 total requests completed as of this writing. That growth was achieved without increasing headcount, with design costs reduced through the efficiencies created by the lookbook and streamlined intake process.
Centers gained better, faster service without losing local autonomy. The national office gained brand consistency, workflow visibility, and the ability to support all 21 centers equitably regardless of their individual capacity. The trust deficit that existed when the work began was replaced by a system that regional executive directors rely on and have adopted as a core part of how they operate.
The system remains in active use and continues to evolve. It is one of the clearest examples in this portfolio of how leading with trust, building the right infrastructure thoughtfully, and improving processes year over year creates compounding organizational value over time.